A police sergeant from Sutton has avoided a jail term for running up more than £9,000 on a Scotland Yard credit card.

John Gallagher, 52, of Sorrento Road, made 213 transactions over two years while working for the child abuse investigation unit.

The chronic alcoholic used a corporate charge card to pay off his tab at the Coach and Horses pub in Barnes.

Southwark Crown Court heard how he also handed his teenage daughter about £6,000 after she started sleeping rough.

Gallagher, who received several commendations, retired last December having been convicted of drink driving by magistrates in Redhill.

Nicholas Lobbenberg, representing Gallagher, said: “This is a tragic case, 29 years of service ending up drowning in a bottle of Scotch.”

Handing down a seven-month suspended jail sentence on Friday, judge Geoffrey Rivlin said he had previously commended Gallagher.

He told him: “The last few years, you were working in the difficult area of child protection, it is a very great irony that almost certainly you committed this offence because you felt it was your duty to protect another child, namely your own, from the difficulties in which she had sunk.”

“It is something that quite a number of us forget, that police officers are family men to and all have their own problems and you certainly had yours.”

The judge added: “The money being misused was public money. An offence of this nature committed as it was a by a serving police officer involved a serious breach of trust.”

Gallagher, now a grandfather, was also put under a supervision order and must do 100 hours’ unpaid work.

An accounting review into £4.7m of missing expenses last year led to the cancellation of more than 1,400 of the Met’s 3,533 cards.

In September Richard De Cadenet, who investigated the 7/7 bombings, was jailed for 10 months after admitting using his card to take his wife and mistress on luxury holidays.