Five Met Police officers taken off duty after bag of weapons is left in the street

The question at the centre of this incident is not just that weapons went missing, but how officers whose sole function is close protection of one of the country's most senior politicians could misplace an entire holdall of police-issued firearms within streets of his home.

The bag was found on a kerbside in Clapham at approximately 9.40pm on 31 March 2025. It contained an MP5 semi-automatic Heckler & Koch carbine, a Glock pistol, a Taser, and ammunition. It was first noticed by a pregnant woman who kicked it; the weight prompted her to alert her partner, scaffolder Jordan Griffiths. He took it inside, initially thinking it might be full of coins, and found an arsenal instead.

"I could not believe my eyes," Griffiths said. "There was a handgun in the front pocket and a submachine gun in the main part of the bag." He called police, who arrived within seven minutes. When officers collected the weapons, Griffiths said they "were really shocked" and "hurriedly took them away," telling him the bag had been left by one of the Mayor's security officers. "It was lucky one of the guns inside didn't go off," he added, "or else she and our baby, due next month, could have been shot and killed."

The five officers involved were part of Sadiq Khan's personal protection team, a unit of approximately 15 officers providing 24-hour armed security following repeated threats to his safety linked to his race and religion. The Metropolitan Police confirmed a formal referral to its Directorate of Professional Standards, which is reviewing how the bag came to be left unattended. The force said it believed the bag was "misplaced by on-duty officers a short time before the member of the public located it."

A spokesperson for Khan called it "a very serious incident" and demanded the Met "take all steps to ensure an incident like this never occurs again." The language pointedly framed the response as a demand for systemic reform rather than individual sanction.

The potential consequences were stark. Retired Detective Chief Inspector Mick Neville warned that gun crime is prevalent in south London and "too many villains would have been very pleased" to find the holdall. A neighbour noted that a nearby crack house could have been the point of retrieval, with the weapons potentially sold and used for killings. London recorded 1,116 firearm-related offences in the year to March 2025; had the bag been found by someone other than Griffiths, its contents could have fed directly into that toll.

A former Met firearms officer said privately that the error should carry repercussions, noting that while Special Forces operatives have made comparable mistakes, a lapse of this scale by a dedicated close-protection unit requires accountability.

The incident coincided with serious disorder on Clapham High Street the same evening, where a large group of youths forced branches of Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's and Boots to close early. Police made two arrests and deployed dozens of officers. M&S Chief Executive Stuart Machin subsequently wrote to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood about the disorder, a parallel crisis that sharpened scrutiny of policing across the capital.

The DPS review will need to establish what chain-of-custody protocols govern protection officers' weapons, who audits compliance, and how a bag of firearms and live ammunition was left on a public street long enough for a civilian to find it first.