{"id":256890,"date":"2025-03-11T18:45:10","date_gmt":"2025-03-11T18:45:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/11\/met-pc-luke-goddard-sacked-for-avoiding-train-fares\/"},"modified":"2025-03-11T18:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-03-11T18:45:11","slug":"met-pc-luke-goddard-sacked-for-avoiding-train-fares","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/11\/met-pc-luke-goddard-sacked-for-avoiding-train-fares\/","title":{"rendered":"Met PC Luke Goddard sacked for avoiding train fares"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align:center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i3.wp.com\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/026f\/live\/48731380-fe98-11ef-b95e-dd2955f18f8f.jpg?ssl=1\" class=\"attachment-post-thumbnail size-post-thumbnail wp-post-image\" alt=\"Met PC Luke Goddard sacked for avoiding train fares\" title=\"Met PC Luke Goddard sacked for avoiding train fares\" \/><\/div><p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">A police officer who admitted to knowingly avoiding paying train fares has been sacked for breaching standards of &#8220;honesty and integrity&#8221; and &#8220;discreditable conduct&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">PC Luke Goddard, who joined the Met Police in 2000 and moved to Devon in 2003, has been on long term sick leave following an on-duty injury in 2019. <!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">During a home visit by a supervisor, Sergeant Edwards, in June 2024, he was asked whether the cost of travel was a barrier to his full return to duty.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">The officer disclosed that he only paid the \u00a334 fare between Axminster in Devon and Salisbury in Wiltshire &#8220;around half of the time&#8221; as ticket barriers were open and staff allowed him to travel for free on production of a warrant card.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div data-component=\"text-block\">\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Mr Goddard, who legitimately used a concession for Metropolitan Police officers to travel as far as Salisbury, told the hearing that he did not believe he had acted dishonestly when he relied on &#8220;the discretion&#8221; of train managers.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">But the panel found he used his position as a police constable to &#8220;circumvent payment&#8221; between Wiltshire and Devon &#8211; two stations that he was not entitled to travel between without a valid ticket.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Assistant Commissioner Matt Twist found that Luke Goddard had used his position as a police officer to &#8220;gain a financial advantage&#8221;.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Mr Twist said the public would not expect a servicing police officer to behave in the way the officer had and that only dismissal without notice was appropriate.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">Mr Goddard left the building before the dismissal sanction was handed down.<!-- --><\/p>\n<p class=\"sc-eb7bd5f6-0 fezwLZ\">He will be added to the College of Policing barred list.<!-- --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c5y09gxzn0eo\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A police officer who admitted to knowingly avoiding paying train fares has been sacked for breaching standards of &#8220;honesty and integrity&#8221; and &#8220;discreditable conduct&#8221;. PC Luke Goddard, who joined the Met Police in 2000 and moved to Devon in 2003, has been on long term sick leave following an on-duty injury in 2019. During a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256891,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/026f\/live\/48731380-fe98-11ef-b95e-dd2955f18f8f.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[604],"tags":[60373,43913,198351,6964,7109,8474,6612],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256890"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256890"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256892,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256890\/revisions\/256892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}