UPDATED A Met sergeant has been sacked for groping a colleague at a work night out, two years after a jury found her not guilty of sexual assault.
Acting Sergeant Rachel Bright hugged the woman, told her she loved her, tried to kiss her on the lips, touched her bottom while a group photograph was being taken and touched her through her clothing between her legs, according to the Met, calling it repeated, deliberate and unwanted sexual touching.
A misconduct panel found the allegations had been proven. Bright, of the Met’s South West Command Unit, which polices Wandsworth, Richmond, Merton and Kingston, was sacked without notice for bringing the police into disrepute. The hearing sat in public for four days at Palestra House in Southwark and finished on 4 September.
It was 5 December 2022, and the bar in Clapham Junction was hosting Bright’s own team on a work night out. The woman was a junior colleague.
The same night produced a criminal charge. Bright had been drinking prosecco and complimenting the younger woman on her body through the evening, Wimbledon magistrates were told when she first appeared in October 2023. Melanie Hardwick, prosecuting, said Bright was a senior officer, that at the end of the night she put her hand up the woman’s skirt over her clothing, and that it amounted to an abuse of trust.
Bright, 45, of Worcester Park in Sutton, was charged by postal summons in September 2023 and denied the offence, electing trial by jury. A district judge bailed her on condition she did not contact the complainant. A jury at Kingston Crown Court found her not guilty in October 2024.
No account of her defence was reported at the time. PutneySW15 has since reported that Bright told the court she could not fully recall the evening, and that she said she was married to a man and was not sexually attracted to the complainant.
Met investigation continued
That was not the end of it. Bright had been suspended since her charge, and the Met’s own internal investigators kept their case going and sent it to a hearing.
The jury and the panel were asked different questions. To convict, the jury had to be sure Bright touched the woman sexually, that the woman did not consent, and that Bright had no reasonable grounds to think she did. The panel was only asked whether what she did brought the police into disrepute, a rule that applies off duty as much as on, and it only had to decide that was more likely than not.
Since May 2025 a misconduct panel that finds gross misconduct proven has to sack the officer unless there are exceptional circumstances. Bright will now go on the College of Policing’s Barred List, which stops her working in policing.
She is the latest officer from the unit to lose her job this way. Two others have been sacked since last summer with no criminal conviction: a sergeant sacked for coercive abuse of an ex-partner, in a case never prosecuted, and a detective who turned up drunk for duty at Jubilee House in Putney.
Four officers from the unit have faced serious sexual offence proceedings since 2023, with three of them convicted of rape. PC Cliff Mitchell was jailed for life in 2024. PC Dion Arnold and PC Rupert Edwards were convicted this spring, and Arnold was jailed for 25 years in June. PC Nick Whitcombe was charged with rape and sexual assault last year; his case continues.
The Met has sacked more officers faster since a serving officer murdered Sarah Everard in 2021. The review that followed found the force institutionally racist, misogynistic and homophobic, and it reopened ten years of sexual offence and domestic abuse cases in which nobody had been sacked. Panels dismissed 101 Met officers in the first ten months of 2025.
This case shows the Met doing what it promised after Everard: pursuing an officer even when a jury did not convict. But a significant flaw remains in the process. Asked in March how the force records sexual misconduct, a Met spokesperson told the South East Londoner there is no professional standard by that name, so sexual assault cases are logged as discreditable conduct, alongside every other kind of embarrassment.
Chief Superintendent Dan Knowles, who is in charge of policing for south-west London and spoke after each of the rape convictions, said: “I would like to firstly thank the woman who reported Acting Sgt Bright for the courage she has shown throughout this process.
“Acting Sgt Bright’s actions were wholly unacceptable and fell far short of the standards expected of police officers. Anyone who fails to uphold our standards should expect to be held accountable.”
How to complain about a police officer
You do not need a court case to raise an officer’s behaviour. Complaints go to the force’s Professional Standards Department, in the Met’s case through its website, by calling 101, or at any police station. You can also use the Independent Office for Police Conduct’s online form, which passes the complaint to the force and can review how it was handled. Forces may not look at something more than 12 months old. An MP or a solicitor can complain on your behalf.
Update, 9am: This story has been expanded since publication. Contemporaneous reporting of Bright’s first court appearance in October 2023 has been added, including that the night out was her own team’s, that the woman was a junior colleague, and that the prosecution described her conduct as an abuse of trust.
Her defence at the 2024 trial, which does not appear to have been reported at the time, has been added and is credited to PutneySW15. A reference to the date of her suspension has been removed: the Met says December 2023, but she was reported as already suspended in October 2023.
