Happen to be the officer commanding a dog (5)

I believe the answer is:

occur

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'happen to be' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'the officer commanding a dog' is the wordplay.
'the officer commanding' becomes 'oc' (this could be a standard abbreviation of which I'm unaware).
'a dog' becomes 'cur' (both can mean a despicable person).
'oc'+'cur'='OCCUR'

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for occur that I've seen before include "Go on" , "Happen - to come to mind" , "crop up" , "Turn up" , "appear" .)

I've seen this clue in the Evening Standard.

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