Greg Brinklow, attached to Met Operations, appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, 16 March, where he pleaded guilty to theft by employee and fraud by false representation.
Assistant Commissioner for Met Operations Louisa Rolfe said: “The Met is committed to rooting out any kind of behaviour that lets us down and this is an example of that.
“The Directorate of Professional Standards acted immediately when informed about Brinklow’s activities and as a result, he has now been rightly convicted. Dishonesty has no place at all in the Met.”
In August 2020 intelligence was received that Brinklow had stolen cameras, lenses and other electrical items from MPS stores before selling them for his own financial gain via eBay.
On 27 August a warrant was executed at his home and a number of items were seized.
Investigations matched several items via their serial numbers to those which had been entered into a central MPS storage database.
He was interviewed under caution in November 2020 and charged in February 2022 with theft and fraud relating to around £7,000 worth of MPS equipment.
He was suspended from duty and will be sentenced at the same court on Wednesday, 6 April.
Misconduct proceedings will progress now that the criminal process has concluded.
We cannot and are not waiting for the findings of ongoing inquiries to begin rebuilding the public’s trust and confidence that police officers and staff will protect and respect them. We have already taken a number of significant steps to start real change across the organisation.
These include two independent reviews, an examination of all current investigations of sexual and domestic abuse allegations against Met employees and an increase in the number of investigators in our professional standards directorate.
