Met Police officer sacked for dodging £4.30 train fare ‘said he did it all the time’
A Metropolitan Police officer caught dodging a £4.30 train faire said he’d gotten away with it plenty of times before, a panel has heard.
PC Isaack Gnadou arrived at Albany Park station in south-east London on February 27 last year to find the ticket gates were open.
He boarded a train to Woolwich without tapping in or buying a ticket but soon found himself face-to-face with a ticket inspector.
He told the inspector he didn’t have a ticket and had no way of paying for one.
After receiving a prosecution notice letter two days later, he owned up to his line manager, sparking a misconduct hearing which led to him being sacked this week.
The hearing was told that, when challenged over his behaviour by the manager, PC Gnadou said the gates at his destination were usually open too and that he had skipped the fare many times this way.
But the prosecution led to an appearance at Bromley Magistrates Court, where he pleaded guilty to one count of fare evasion but insisted his comments had been misunderstood.
He told magistrates: ‘On that day, I did not intentionally board without a ticket. The barriers were open and I realised that I had not tapped in once I was already through and was stood on the platform.
‘I considered returning to the barriers to tap in, but my train was arriving in a matter of seconds and I did not want to miss it. I therefore made the foolish decision to proceed with the journey without paying.
‘I accept that I made a comment to the effect that I never buy a ticket, but that is because I never buy a physical ticket.
‘I always tap in using Apple Pay [a contactless payment system on iPhones]. It is not the case that I never pay for my journeys at all.’
The court ordered him to pay fines, costs and compensation totalling £213.
On Monday the Met’s panel found him guilty of gross misconduct on grounds of honesty and integrity and dismissed him without notice.
The panel concluded: ‘We’ve found that PC Gnadou’s actions were premeditated and deliberate. It resulted in PC Gnadou receiving a criminal conviction for fare evasion.
‘Such offending involves such a fundamental breach of the public’s trust in police officers and also has a severe adverse effect on public confidence in the police.’
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.