Hackney man wins IOPC appeal after botched Met Police drug raid

Gwenton Sloley, 39, from Hackney, claims officers targeted him with false smears after he raised concerns that police failures had contributed to a child’s death.

After raiding his home in 2018, officers circulated a safeguarding warning to Mr Sloley’s clients that he was suspected of “drug supply criminality” and might pose a “risk” to young people.

No such charges ever materialised, but Mr Sloley said his business was badly damaged.

The anti-gangs advisor, who worked with the Met Police, various London councils and the Home Office, said circulating the false allegations had amounted to a professional “blacklisting”.

The Metropolitan Police Service rejected his complaint in March, but the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has now overturned that decision and ordered a reinvestigation, branding the Met’s decision “not reasonable”.

Among the IOPC’s concerns was that the officer who handled Mr Sloley’s complaint had been involved in the criminal investigation into him.

His complaint will now be reinvestigated by a different officer.

Whistleblower?

Mr Sloley claims police began targeting him after he raised concerns over a child murder.

In 2018, he was living in Lewisham and working with police investigating south London gangs.

He had access to police files and meetings and even received a police commendation.

Mr Sloley was living at the time in Sedgehill Road, Catford, in an address which had once been occupied by a drug-dealer. That was the basis upon which police raided his home (Image: Google Streetview)

He claims he learned in autumn 2018 that officers withheld safeguarding interventions from a vulnerable boy in an effort to pressure him into becoming a police informant.

During that time, he alleges, the boy’s home was targeted and his younger brother was murdered.

The murder remains unsolved.

Mr Sloley said that after he criticised the alleged safeguarding failure, he became a target.

We put this claim to the Met Police. It did not respond to it.

“Blacklisting”

On October 4, 2018, a neighbour told Mr Sloley he had seen plain clothes police officers trying to pick the lock on his front door in Sedgehill Road.

Mr Sloley called the police to report the attempted break-in.

He said he now believes officers may have been planning to plant something in his home.

Four days after the strange incident, police raided the house, citing an investigation into a known drug-dealer who had once occupied the property before Mr Sloley.Mr Sloley called police on October 4, 2018, after a neighbour told him plain clothes police officers had tried to pick the lock on his house. He now believes they may have been trying to plant evidence (Image: Charles Thomson)

Mr Sloley said he had been the tenant for several years and it was the same address to which public sector clients sent his invoices, so the force knew the dealer had moved out and he had moved in.

Mr Sloley was in Manchester when the raid occurred, training police officers. He did not know his home had been raided until the following day.

Without arresting or questioning Mr Sloley, police began contacting his clients and telling them his address had been raided in a drug-dealing investigation.

They did so on safeguarding grounds, saying he worked with vulnerable youngsters and could be recruiting them into the illegal drugs trade.

Yet despite telling others he was a safeguarding risk, Mr Sloley says the Met continued employing him to work on murder investigations, including interacting with vulnerable witnesses.

Raid? Or burglary?

Police seized £1,985 in cash during the raid.

But Mr Sloley alleged that other property, including a watch, went missing and was never accounted for.

Paperwork which should have been completed as part of the search was not filled out.

Mr Sloley said the Met caused damage during the raid on his home, including tearing the screws out of his boiler and making holes in his walls - but police body camera footage from the raid was incomplete (Image: Gwenton Sloley)

He called the police on October 9, 2018, after discovering the items were missing, and reported that police officers had burgled his home.

Mr Sloley also alleged that police had “smashed up” his home, damaging his bed, sofa, walls, boiler and an air vent.

A review of body worn camera footage proved the headboard on his bed was intact when police arrived, yet broken by the time they left.

However, there was no footage of it being broken. The body cam footage was not complete.

Police also never conducted a filmed walk-around of his property before leaving as they should have.

They now cite the lack of evidence that they broke his possessions as justification for refusing to pay for the damage.

“Snitch”

After Mr Sloley’s property was raided, but he wasn’t charged, false claims began to appear social media that he was a “snitch”.

Mr Sloley said the damage to his property during the 2018 police raid included a broken cupboard (Image: Gwenton Sloley)

In October 2018, police noted: “There is credible intelligence that would suggest Mr Sloley is at risk in his current address.”

Mr Sloley said he and his children had to abandon their home. He no longer lives in London.

Months later, a senior officer sent an email containing Mr Sloley’s name and the word “snitch” to a member of the public.

It was about another woman who had been labelled a snitch after appearing in a promotional video for the Met Police.

The email referred to the similarities between her complaint and Mr Sloley’s complaint about being falsely accused of snitching, but was written in confusing police jargon which a civilian might not have understood.

Mr Sloley said this data breach had the potential to further endanger his life.

Police upheld this element of his complaint, admitting the email should not have been sent to a member of the public. The officer said he sent it by mistake.

Mr Sloley is a former gang member who turned his life around and became an award-winning government advisor, training councils and police forces in how to foster better relations with their communities and keep kids out of trouble (Image: Julia Gregory, LDRS)

Charged

Mr Sloley was eventually charged with two offences.

The first was perverting the course of justice, because he had reported police officers for burglarising his house, which the force said was false.

The second was possessing criminal property. Police claimed the £1,985 in his home were “the proceeds of crime” – but he was not charged with any crime that the money had supposedly come from.

When he attended Woolwich Crown Court in February 2020, the judge threw both charges out of court before the trial could begin.

But Mr Sloley said his £1,985 was never returned.

“They also refused to give me back phones and other property,” he said.

“How, when the case is thrown out, can they start picking and choosing what they give back?”

“Violated”

After the safeguarding concern was raised, Mr Sloley said clients immediately began cancelling speeches and training they had booked through his consultancy, Crying Sons.

They included local authorities and NHS trusts.

Within the first year alone, he estimated that it had cost the business £140,000.

Mr Sloley claimed the police's 'safeguarding' alerts to his clients cost his consultancy, Crying Songs, £140,000 in a single year and has left him thousands of pounds in debt (Image: Charles Thomson)

He said his financial situation also deteriorated because police seized important business papers in the raid.

“I was taking out loans and borrowing money,” he said. “They took all my bank papers and I had to beg for them back. I’m in thousands of pounds of debt because of this.”

He said he had to undergo counselling.

“Not in my wildest imagination could I have envisaged elements in the Met, the organisation I have worked tirelessly with over the years, would seek to destroy my reputation and set about maliciously ruining my career,” he said in 2019.

“I feel completely violated by the experience.”

Complaint

In March, the force admitted the sending of the “snitch” email was wrong, but defended its decision to contact Mr Sloley’s clients with supposed safeguarding concerns.

He filed an appeal with police watchdog the IOPC.

“Your appeal is upheld and I am directing a new investigation,” the IOPC adjudicator wrote on August 31.

“I am not satisfied that your complaint has been fully understood and addressed.

“I am not satisfied there was sufficient engagement with you to fully understand your complaint and it follows that the outcome to your complaint is not reasonable and proportionate.”

Mr Sloley said that despite his ordeal at the hands of the Met Police, he still supported the force's 'amazing' officers and believed a few 'rogue' operators were damaging the Met's reputation (Image: Charles Thomson)

Despite the victory, Mr Sloley said he was unimpressed because the IOPC allowed the Met to investigate itself in the first place.

“If the IOPC would have picked this up in 2019, it would have been dealt with,” he said.

“Instead, I’ve had to suffer for another three years and now they want me to wait for another investigation. So I’m not really looking forward to that, to be honest.”

“Amazing police”

Mr Sloley said that despite his ordeal, he still supports the police.

 “This is not an attack on the police, but I will call out anyone that is doing wrong,” he said.

“I know amazing police officers. I think the commissioner is an amazing man. Rogue people abusing their power bring the Met Police into disrepute.

“I’m sticking up for the commissioner. These officers give him a bad name and then get promoted. The officer in charge of my case now runs high-profile investigations.”

We sent a detailed account of Mr Sloley’s allegations to the Met, which made no comment other than to say: “We are aware of the decision by the IOPC and we will be reviewing Mr Sloley’s complaint. We are unable to comment further whilst this process takes place.”