A long-serving Metropolitan Police sergeant has failed in his attempt to sue the force for harassment after claiming that being called a “numpty” by a senior officer created a hostile work environment. Had the case succeeded, it would have set a troubling precedent, potentially lowering the threshold for what constitutes speech-related misconduct and further constraining the boundaries of acceptable expression in the workplace.
Sonny Kalar, who served in the Met for 30 years before retiring in 2023, lodged a series of claims against his employer, including race and disability discrimination, harassment, victimisation, and whistleblowing detriment. He alleged that senior officers had subjected him to a “collective witch-hunt,” orchestrating a sustained campaign against him.
However, Employment Judge Richard Nicolle, sitting at London Central Employment Tribunal dismissed all his claims.
At the centre of Kalar’s case was an allegation against Chief Inspector Marlise Davies, a senior officer in the SO15 counter-terrorism command, who, he claimed, had discriminated against him by twice calling him a “numpty” during a phone conversation in July 2022.
The tribunal heard: “CI Davies accepts using the term, once not twice, but said that it was used as an affectionate term as in ‘don’t be so silly’, rather than in a disparaging manner. Nevertheless, she apologised to the Claimant.”
In its judgment, the tribunal states: “We accept CI Davies’ evidence that the comment was made during her call with the Claimant on 15 July 2022 in a light hearted manner.
“We do not consider that the term ‘numpty’ has any racial or disability connotations and in the context that it was used, in what we considered to be a light hearted manner, not one which was capable of constituting harassment when looked at objectively.”
The judgment continued: “We acknowledge the Claimant may subjectively have perceived the comment to be directed at him and to be disparaging but consider it relates to his heightened sensitivity rather than how the comments would be objectively viewed.”
The tribunal also rejected Kalar’s claim of discrimination arising from disability “given our findings above that the comment was not in any way related to the Claimant’s disabilities.”
Kalar also took issue with a remark by CI Davies about “living the dream,” which he perceived as a dismissive reference to his struggles with disabilities and health issues. Davies, however, stated that the comment referred to the poor state of the building at St Pancras International, where officers were working in a facility with water “running down the walls”. She also pointed out that at the time of the comment she did not know who the Claimant was, and was addressing a room full of officers.
Her evidence was accepted, with the tribunal ruling that there was no basis to infer that the comment had been directed at Kalar personally, nor that it could constitute harassment on the grounds of race or disability.
The tribunal also heard that in his final year prior to retirement Kalar expressed a wish to return to operational duties – prompting Davies to respond: “And I want to be a ballerina.”
As with her other remarks, the tribunal found that this was “informal, arguably self-deprecating and humorous language” and that “given the context in which these comments were made, they were not intended, nor could they reasonably be construed, as constituting harassment.”
