Police sergeant’s ‘scattergun’ allegations dismissed by tribunal

A Met Police sergeant who brought 271 individual allegations to an employment tribunal has had all claims of race discrimination, disability discrimination, harassment, victimisation and whistleblowing detriment dismissed.

Sonny Kalar worked for the Metropolitan Police for 30 years until he retired in 2023. He brought the claims to tribunal after what he describes as a “collective witch hunt” and an “overarching culture of institutional racism, misogyny and disablism”.

He cited multiple incidents pertaining to each claim, including one where a colleague called him a “numpty”, which the tribunal found to have been said in a “light-hearted manner” that did not constitute discrimination.

The tribunal also heard that while Kalar was on sick leave recovering from a knee operation in July 2022, his chief inspector telephoned him and used the phrase “living the dream”.

This annoyed Kalar because “it was not a dream but a nightmare”, he told the tribunal, and amounted to disability discrimination.

A further allegation was that he was given a “punishment post” when he was moved to Heathrow Terminal 2 in August 2017, which he described as a “regressive step” because he had been there as acting inspector in 2008.

Kalar made multiple accusations of race discrimination, including that he was being “monitored” by CCTV during his time working at Heathrow for non-policing purposes, but the tribunal found that this had nothing to do with his race, nor did it constitute harassment.

Employment Judge Richard Nicolle said that “from early 2020 increasing evidence existed that the claimant was focusing on creating potential evidence for a likely legal claim”.

This was backed up by a text exchange between Kalar and a colleague in March 2020 stating that “this is great fuel once again”, suggesting he was looking to find evidence to support contentions of discriminatory or less favourable treatment.

The judge found that many of the allegations were “inherently inconsistent” and “scattergun”, adding that “he labelled virtually every allegation as constituting harassment on account of both race and disability”. All of Kalar’s claims were dismissed.

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