Race ‘jokes’ claim thrown out by panel - Sacked community support officer has own discrimination claim dismissed
Published: 25 February 2011
by JOSH LOEB
A BLACK community support officer sacked for making “racist” remarks to a colleague had his own claim of racial discrimination thrown out by a tribunal yesterday (Thursday).
Jocely Adhel, 48, an Afro-Caribbean Police Community Support Officer, who was based in south Westminster from September 2002 until March 2010, admitted telling an unnamed black colleague: “I’m your master. I’m French” and “You should go back and look after your land” during a conversation in the Belgravia police station canteen on November 22 2009. During an earlier incident on November 12, Mr Adhel told the same colleague, who was Congolese: “You people eat gorilla meat”.
Mr Adhel’s solicitor Montclare Campbell argued that his client’s remarks had been intended as jokes and said that his dismissal had been “disproportionate”.
He said: “These comments are like those made all the time between English, Scottish, Welsh and British individuals.
“It’s accepted that it is sometimes not the best way of communicating but it is not seen as a reason for dismissal. If satirical jokes like these were made among white British officers, those officers wouldn’t have been dismissed.”
He cited a private police malpractice hearing regarding white officer who he said had posted on Facebook about his “thoughts of gassing Jews” but who had not been struck off.
The unnamed PCSO was, Mr Campbell said, “a member of his [Mr Adhel’s] race – somebody who did share his cultural identity and had a similar immigrant experience.”
Giving evidence at the London Central Employment Tribunal in Holborn, Mr Adhel, who is from the French territory of Guadeloupe, described his colleague – who complained about his remarks to senior Westminster officers – as “my best friend”.
He denied his comments were intended to cause offence and said they had been made in the context of “banter”.
However, Gillian Crewe, solicitor for the Metropolitan Police, said: “In his perception of the comments that you made, he did not find them as a joke. He found them to be racist, offensive and shocking.”
The tribunal, headed by Judge Paul Stewart, dismissed Mr Adhel’s claims of unfair dismissal and race discrimination. After the hearing the Metropolitan Police Service said it welcomed the tribunal decision.