Merseyside PC admits illegal birthday party and drinking pint of beer on shift

A firearms officer who went to the pub while on duty claims he was “fit for duty” despite having a pint 20 minutes before his shift ended.

PC Daniel Johnson, 43, had lunch with his wife and allegedly drank wine at The Jug and Bottle pub in Heswall on April 30, 2021 – the same day he was due to serve a shift between 8am and 4pm as Firearms Duty Officer. . According to CCTV footage, he left the pub at around 1.20pm and returned with his friends at 3.25pm ​​and continued to drink alcohol.

At a misconduct hearing at Merseyside Police headquarters today, the officer said he had “a sip” of his wife’s wine during lunch and admitted drinking a pint of beer at around 3.40pm, 20 minutes before end of shift. However, he maintained that he was “fit for duty and available for any option”, adding that he had never been challenged as unfit in his entire 20-year career.

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He said it was “highly unlikely” he would have been called at 3.40pm and that if there had been a call it would have been attended by duty officers, with on-call officers serving as a second option. .

The firearms officer, who joined Cheshire Constabulary in 2003 before transferring to Merseyside in 2009, also denies stealing from his employer on no less than three occasions.

On 4 August 2021, he allegedly stole two rams from Smithdown Lane station because he “thought it would help to weigh down his parasol at home”. PC Johnson said he took the battered battering rams from a parking area known as “shock bins”, where officers frequently picked up old and decommissioned pieces of equipment for personal use.

He said: “The only way I can describe it is as a little jumbled sale. A lot of mess, really.

“Clothing, old police equipment, operational equipment was no longer fit for purpose, but could be reused by other officers. Old police skins, helmets, police bike skins, handcuffs, old batons, jackets, boots. There was a lot of police equipment being thrown away for other officers to help themselves.”

He also denied stealing a saw blade from a storage room at Speke police station the following day, 5 August 2021. The panel heard that officers frequently borrowed equipment from the station, noting what they borrowed in a logbook. However, the book contained no mention of the saw blade, despite PC Johnson being caught on CCTV taking the item.

He said this was because the logbook was not in the room at the time. He said he never intended to keep the blade and just didn’t get around to returning it before he took paternity leave on August 25. He said: “That week was quite a hectic week. I was planning an operation for another force in Cumbria and constantly changing shifts, the blade wasn’t on my mind at the time.”

He also denied another historic theft of a chainsaw in 2017, claiming the item was given to him by a now-retired policeman after he asked him for help cutting down some trees in his back garden.

He admitted holding an illegal house party to celebrate his 40th birthday in June 2020, in breach of Covid-19 restrictions.

He is also accused of sending homophobic and racist messages to a colleague. On 12 March 2019, he sent a text message to a fellow officer describing two senior colleagues as “two p***s together”, and on 2 May he sent the same officer a picture of a woman in traditional Islamic dress at a fair. walk, with the words “detonator bombs away”.

PC Johnson reportedly claimed he was “in no way homophobic”, adding that “it was simply a common term he used to describe anyone he thought was weak”. He claimed he shared the image of the Muslim woman because he thought it was in “bad taste”.

The hearing continues.

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