Credit;PA
A serving officer in the Metropolitan Police has been charged with sexually assaulting a colleague while on duty.
PC Joseph Demir was charged by post on 9 March, Scotland Yard said in a statement.
The incident is alleged to have occurred on 10 March 2020, when Demir was a student officer at Hendon Training School. The offence was reported on 1 July 2020.
Demir, who is part of the North West Basic Command Unit, is set to appear at Willesden Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday morning.
He has reportedly been placed on restricted duties and was charged after an investigation by the Met’s Directorate of Professional Standards.
It comes just weeks after campaigners called for “real change” in light of “shocking” Metropolitan Police data which showed five children are strip-searched every day on average by the force in London.
The figures, first reported by LBC, have prompted fresh anger in the wake of the case of Child Q – a black teenager forced by officers to strip while on her period.
Out of 5,279 children searched after an arrest in the past three years, 3,939 – around 75 per cent – were from ethnically diverse backgrounds.
The data did not cover children who were not arrested but still strip-searched – like Child Q – so it is likely the number in London is even higher.
Weyman Bennett, co-coordinator of Stand UP to Racism campaign group, said the figures are “shocking”.
He said: “You judge a society on how it treats its children. These figures are shocking and expose institutional racism in the Met Police.
“We cannot have another statement without real change.”
There have been protests and political condemnation since it emerged the 15-year-old black girl – referred to only as Child Q – had been strip-searched by female Metropolitan Police officers at her north London school in 2020 without another adult present and in the knowledge that she was menstruating.
The girl had been wrongly suspected of carrying cannabis.
Following the “traumatic” search, family members described her as changing from a “happy-go-lucky girl to a timid recluse that hardly speaks”, who now self-harms and needs therapy.
The IOPC launched its investigation following a complaint in May 2021, and said it has completed its inquiries and is finalising its report.
London Mayor Sadiq Khan reacted with “dismay and disgust”, and equalities minister Kemi Badenoch called it an “appalling incident”.
