Met Police officer charged with misconduct 'for stealing cash from dead man in street'

A Metropolitan Police officer has been charged with misconduct over allegedly taking £170 cash from a man who lay dead in a busy street for six hours. 

PC Craig Carter is accused of taking the cash from Claudio Gaetani, 45, who tragically died on a bustling north London street and was left in full view of children for six hours while officers awaited an undertaker.

Gaetani, an Italian filmmaker and actor, suffered a heart attack during the morning rush hour while cycling to meet friends in Hornsey. He had arrived from Italy the previous night for a theatre festival in Southbank, having exchanged more than 200 Euros at the airport.

After a lengthy investigation, anti-corruption detectives handed their evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service this month. The evidence allegedly includes CCTV footage of an officer counting the stolen money.

In a statement, the Met Police announced: "A serving police officer has been charged with misconduct in public office. PC Craig Carter, who is attached to the North Area Command Unit, was charged via postal charge requisition. He will appear at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Friday, 28 June."

The force further stated: "The charge relates to the alleged theft of money from a man who died following a collapse in September 2022. Following the charge, PC Carter was suspended from duty."

The police who responded to the accident confiscated Gaetani's passport and wallet, but allowed his distressed host couple to hold onto his bike and backpack. Upon collecting his belongings from Edmonton police station, the wife found that the money Gaetani had exchanged was no longer in his wallet, sparking an investigation by the Met.

She told the Mirror: "The money is not the issue. [Claudio] comes from quite a wealthy family. I'm still doing [this complaint] not because of the money but because people who are in uniform they should have a kind of trust. I think it is really disrespectful. I was really, really upset."

Her husband, who studied alongside Gaetani at university, described him as "the type of person when you meet you can fall in love with, absolutely cheerful and positive, even with his physical condition of dwarfism he was never saying no to any adventure. We spent a lot of time travelling".

According to the wife, the Met communicated to her that body camera footage revealing an officer tallying the cash from Gaetani's wallet had been secured. The accused officer took sick leave shortly after the allegation came to light and has since not reappeared for work.

According to the Met, the officer has been on restricted duties since June, preventing them from interacting with the general public or participating in evidence collection.

The couple are puzzled as to why it took seventeen months since the complaint for a file to be sent to the CPS earlier this month. Documents reveal that the police watchdog initially spent three months deciding that the Met should handle the complaint.

The case was initially dealt with at a local level before being transferred to a specialist investigations team last summer in the Met's Line of Duty squad.