Mr Augustine Toko v The Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis — 2021

The claimant, a probationary police officer who identified his race as black, alleged direct race discrimination by his line manager, Sergeant Graham. The alleged treatment included being ignored or snubbed, not receiving a PDR when due, inaccurate statements about the PDR, delayed overtime validation, and the uploading of a PDR which the claimant had not seen or discussed.

The tribunal found that Sergeant Graham did not ostracise, ignore or snub the claimant. It accepted that there had been insufficient specific mentoring and that this was unfortunate, but found no evidence that other probationers were better treated or that a hypothetical white comparator would have been treated differently. The tribunal also found that the delay in dealing with the claimant's overtime was not shown to be less favourable treatment because of race.

On the PDR issues, the tribunal found that the claimant's PDR was completed later than alleged but at the same time as another probationer's PDR, and that late PDR completion was a wider practice. It found that Sergeant Graham did not properly discuss the claimant's PDR before attempting to upload it and that this was unreasonable, but concluded that the facts did not establish a prima facie case that this was because of race. The PDR was ultimately uploaded by PS Button, not Sergeant Graham, and the tribunal found that Sergeant Graham's later inaccurate account was an attempt to protect his own position rather than to disadvantage the claimant because of race. The direct race discrimination claim therefore failed and was dismissed.