It took just 22 minutes to end the 12-year policing career of Constable Roberto Rossi of the Metropolitan Police. It would have been shorter had the chair of his disciplinary panel not taken five minutes to ponder his fate.

The outcome was effectively sealed in August when Rossi pleaded guilty in court to making indecent images of a child. He was caught when the US Department of Homeland Security uncovered suspicious online activity and alerted their counterparts in the UK.

Rossi was arrested in July 2014 and since then, he has been suspended on full pay. When he was informed that he was facing a disciplinary hearing in December, his response was limited to four words. He accepted what he had done and had nothing to add.

He did not turn up to the disciplinary hearing in a small room on the 14th floor of a police building in west London, and nobody spoke in his defence. The force ‘friend’ who was supporting him had retired, and Rossi showed no inclination to seek the help of anyone else. His character reference came from his borough commander who had met him only once, on the date that he had been suspended.

The hearing was told that Rossi had a law degree, no black marks on his disciplinary record and he had been the leader of the volunteer police cadets. Although he was described as being “well-liked and hard-working” his borough commander did not want him back where he worked at Kensington and Chelsea as it had “significant challenges concerning culture which we are working hard to change”.

The hearing was only the last humiliation heaped on Rossi. Since his conviction, his marriage has failed and he has moved from the family home in Oxford to the Welsh Valleys. As part of the terms of his conviction for producing the images over an eight-year period, he has had to attend 20 sessions of a sex offenders’ programme.

As Rossi was not there – as was his right – the chairman of the panel Assistant Commissioner Martin Hewitt told the seven people present that police officers were subject to the highest standards of behaviour, or it would undermine the confidence of the public. Dismissing him with immediate effect, he said Rossi’s behaviour had been a “gross betrayal of responsibility” that had brought discredit on the force.

It followed the case of another constable, PC Russell Bridges, 35, who appeared before the panel after he was cautioned for possession of cocaine. Officers in Surrey had been called by a neighbour complaining about the noise from inside the officer’s house. Bridges let them in, and the officers found drugs paraphernalia and a small amount of cocaine.

Bridges, who had worked for the Met for 11 years, was described as a highly-effective and motivated officer but had shown a “gross lack of judgement” that was a “real shame for the organisation”, said AC Hewitt. Then he sacked him.