This is the story of my client Sharon who was subjected to a terrifying abuse of power when a Nottinghamshire Police Officer took up the side of a Bailiff in a minor dispute and through his aggression and arrogance escalated the event into what was, frankly, a home invasion.
Sadly, as Sharon was to learn, trauma caused by a Police abuse of power is not confined to a single day and for many years afterwards, Sharon was forced to suffer further reminders of the event, and added insult to injury, as the Officer involved in this incident went through an apparently never-ending series of Misconduct Hearings and eventually escaped with his career intact.
In the end however, justice was done through the terms of a highly significant financial settlement which I secured on Sharon’s behalf from the Police, as I will recount in this week’s blog. It is a story about the power of perseverance.
“Come On In And Help Yourself To Whatever”
The incident in question occurred on 24 April 2017. Sharon was at home alone in her house in Nottingham when she received a visit from a bailiff (High Court Enforcement Officer) who stated that he had come to collect a debt relating to a Penalty Notice.
Sharon initially panicked, as she had no means to pay and denied who she was. The sad background to her financial distress was that a business venture which she had entered into with her sister to open an Afro-Caribbean restaurant the year before had not succeeded, and Sharon had fallen into arrears with her mortgage and council tax. She had resorted to having to borrow money from friends and family and it was a very difficult and stressful time for her.
Sharon refused to allow the bailiff to enter her house – and was entirely within her rights to do so, as the debt which the bailiff was seeking to enforce did not give him a power to force entry to the house against the occupant’s wishes. However, Sharon’s car was parked up outside the house and so the bailiff clamped it. She did also offer him an old TV and computer but he said he wasn’t interested in taking these things. In a state of distress, Sharon phoned her auntie for advice.
Shortly afterwards Sharon’s auntie and male cousin arrived at the house and Sharon saw them talking to the bailiff and went outside to join them.
The bailiff explained that the debt Sharon owed was about £400. As Sharon did not have the means to pay she was content to allow her car, which was worth about £500, to be seized and she therefore began to remove personal items from her car and take them into the house.
The bailiff announced that a recovery truck was now on its way. At around this time, Sharon’s adult son also arrived (with some washing for his mum to do!)
Whilst allowing the bailiff to take possession of the car (which he seemed content with) Sharon was careful to maintain her householder’s right to refuse the bailiff entry into her home and was therefore careful whilst making trips between her car and the house with her possessions not to leave her door unlocked/open. The bailiff seemed to fully understand that Sharon was refusing him entry into the house itself, and did not attempt to press this point.
Time passed and the situation was calm, but then suddenly the bailiff began to made allegations that a parcel had been removed from his own car, which was parked nearby. Sharon’s family members – including her auntie, cousin and son were all still present outside the house at this time.
The bailiff then accused Sharon’s son of ‘keying’ his car, which had a scratch on the side.
Sharon’s son was angered by these accusations and Sharon tried to calm the situation down. She encouraged her son and male cousin to go home so as to de-escalate the situation – as she could now hear the bailiff on the phone to the Police and she was concerned that racial stereotyping might cause any Police Officers called to the scene to ‘zone in’ on the two young black men who were present. She was concerned that the Officers would ‘arrest first and ask questions later’. The lads therefore followed her advice and walked away, in the direction of some local shops. They emphatically did not go inside Sharon’s house, and the bailiff witnessed this.
Sharon now went back into her house, whilst her auntie remained outside talking to the bailiff.
Sometime later a Police car arrived.
Sharon came back outside the house and was confronted by Police Sergeant Flint, who was immediately aggressive towards her. He demanded that she allow the bailiff entry into her home so that he could ‘do his job’. Sharon stood her ground, knowing that the Officer had no power to force her to do this – and furthermore pointed out that arrangements were now in place for her vehicle to be seized. Sergeant Flint was not prepared to give up however. He now stated that the bailiff had reported a parcel stolen from his car and that he suspected it was in Sharon’s house. He threatened to ‘kick in’ Sharon’s front door if she didn’t open it for him willingly.
A second Officer (PC Elliot) now also arrived, and the Officers walked through the side gate to gain entry to the back garden of Sharon’s property and PS Flint attempted to force open the (locked) back door. Once again PS Flint threatened to ‘put through’ the door if Sharon did not immediately unlock it.
Scared and intimidated by the level of aggression from these two male Officers and concerned that Sergeant Flint would carry through his threat and then leave her with a broken door that she would not be able to afford to fix, Sharon agreed, under duress, to let the Officers (although not the bailiff) into her house.
Accordingly, she returned with the Officers to the front of her property and unlocked the front door.
Both Officers entered Sharon’s house and Sharon followed them. She was determined not to allow the bailiff entry and so closed and locked the door behind her.
However, PS Flint continued his bullying and aggression towards Sharon – now he had got what he wanted, entry into Sharon’s house, he accused Sharon of ‘imprisoning’ him and his colleague and demanded that she unlock the front door. Trying to avoid unnecessary trouble, Sharon acquiesced, but kept the key in her hand.
Unfortunately, PS Flint was still not satisfied and continued his animus towards Sharon. He now demanded that she surrender the key to her house to him, threatening her with arrest if she did not.
Sharon walked into her living room, refusing to give the Officer her key but pointing out that the door was unlocked.
Sergeant Flint then threatened that he would ‘lock up’ Sharon’s son, only increasing her distress and upset.
PS Flint then started to advance towards Sharon in a threatening way, causing her to scream, step backwards, lose her balance and fall onto the sofa. She turned her body away from the Officers in a protective manner, curling up into a ball on her knees, half on and half off the sofa.
Both of the Officers now started grabbing and pulling Sharon’s arms and it was clear that PS Flint was intent on removing the keys from Sharon’s hand.
Matters then escalated even more sickeningly as Sharon felt several blows to the back of her head which felt like punches; she was unable to see which of the Officers delivered these blows.
Understandably, Sharon couldn’t believe what was happening to her and was screaming for help. PS Flint then demanded “Give me your keys or I’ll spray you”. A fearful glance told Sharon that the Officer was not just making an idle threat, as he was holding his CS incapacitant spray cannister at the ready and Sharon, terrified, closed her eyes and put her head down.
Thankfully, PS Flint did not discharge the weapon, but he and his colleague continued to pull Sharon’s arms away from her body and eventually overpowered her, with Sergeant Flint announcing, in a terrible travesty of the truth, that Sharon was under arrest for ‘breach of the peace’.
The two men now forced Sharon to lie on her front on the living room floor with her arms behind her body; then they prised the keys out of her hand and handcuffed her tightly with her hands behind her back. Sharon could immediately feel the handcuffs cutting into her wrists.
Sharon later recounted to me how these few minutes were the most frightening she had ever experienced in her life.
With Sharon now in handcuffs, PS Flint returned to the front door of the house, opened it and invited the bailiff in with words to the effect of “Come on in and help yourself to whatever”.
It seemed that as far as Sergeant Flint was concerned, both Sharon and her home were now in his possession and control and Sharon felt disgusted and degraded by the bailiff almost literally trampling all over her rights and privacy. She heard the bailiff go upstairs and then saw him come back downstairs, go into the kitchen and start opening drawers. She was in a state of utter shock.
The bailiff then returned announcing that there was ‘nothing worth taking’ and left the house.
Finally, after about 10 minutes the Officers released Sharon from the handcuffs. She had felt like a prisoner the whole time. She had cuts and bruises and weal marks on both of her wrists and her right wrist and hand had now begun to swell up.
The Officers and the bailiff then departed, without any attempted explanation for what had happened, leaving Sharon utterly confused and humiliated. She burst into tears and then began to feel so unwell that she was concerned, as she had a history of high blood pressure, that she might be suffering a stroke. Her sister drove her straight to see her GP, and whilst she was in the waiting room, Sharon’s sister had to force a ring off her right hand because her finger had become so swollen.
The Misconduct Merry-Go Round
The actions of PS Flint and his colleague had been so outrageous that in the aftermath Sharon was left wondering whether they were actually real Officers or rather agents of the bailiff company. She contacted Nottinghamshire Professional Standard’s Department (PSD) to make a complaint.
However, it took two months before Officers from PSD came to visit Sharon and take details of what had happened. She subsequently had to attend the Police Station in July 2017 to give a full statement and found recounting the whole incident very upsetting.
Sharon quite reasonably questioned why the Police were only treating what had occurred as a ‘disciplinary’ issue. From her point of view – if PS Flint and his colleague had not been wearing uniforms they would simply face arrest and criminal charges for what they had done.
The incident had shattered Sharon’s whole confidence in the Police. She felt that her home had been violated – that she had lost her ‘safe haven’ – because of what the Officers had done. She became extremely nervous whenever she heard an unexpected knock on the door.
In December 2017, some 8 months after the incident, Sharon finally received an Investigation Report from Nottinghamshire PSD. This report contained further traumatic details that Sharon had not previously been aware of – for example PS Flint describing Sharon as ‘a fucking loony’ to the bailiff.
Although the report upheld Sharon’s complaints in many respects, its conclusion was just that both Officers should attend a misconduct meeting and undergo ‘rehabilitation’. I.E. that they had not committed gross misconduct, such as to justify a sanction of dismissal. Sharon felt such an outcome to be totally inadequate – if she had invaded the Officers’ homes and assaulted them as they had done to her, she would fully expect to have been arrested and prosecuted. She did not believe that PS Flint should be allowed to continue as a front-line Officer, fearing that he would victimise other members of the public as he had done to her.
She also noted that Nottinghamshire Police offered no apology to her, nor seemed to feel any undue remorse over the event – as if it was ‘all in a day’s work’.
Accordingly, Sharon exercised her right of appeal to the Police Watchdog, the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC).
In May 2018 the IOPC produced a report which concluded that the disciplinary action proposed by Nottinghamshire Police was indeed inadequate and that PS Flint should face a misconduct hearing i.e a charge of gross misconduct which could result in his dismissal from the Force.
The misconduct hearing was fixed to take place in late 2018. During this time Sharon was suffering from significant ongoing depression and anxiety caused by the incident and the news of the misconduct hearing was very welcome to her and gave her reason to feel more confident that justice would – eventually – be done and that those institutions which govern Police conduct were treating her complaints seriously.
Unfortunately, Sharon then suffered a period of hospitalisation following what should have been a routine operation, and the misconduct hearing had to be adjourned to January 2019.
Before giving evidence at the hearing, Sharon was for the first time allowed to watch the bailiff’s body camera footage of the incident. This demonstrated that everything had pretty much occurred as Sharon had recalled in her statement to the Police. She noted how rudely PS Flint had spoken to her auntie and was shocked at how PS Flint dismissed her assertion that he had no authority to assist the bailiff in accessing her home/seizing her possessions. Furthermore, it was clear from the footage that nothing the bailiff had said to the Police Officers had suggested that her son and cousin had gone into her home rather than walking off to the local shops, further undermining any basis PS Flint might have had for wanting to enter her home. When the video footage got to the part in which she went into the house with the Officers and they began to attack her, Sharon found she simply couldn’t watch anymore. It was simply too distressing.
Sharon subsequently gave evidence for around two hours at the hearing, although it was an ordeal that felt a lot longer to her. Sergeant Flint’s advocate accused Sharon of lying – first saying that she had not in fact unlocked the front door and then accusing her of kicking the Officers when they tried to grab hold of her. It was a very unpleasant experience and Sharon felt like she was the one who was on trial. Nevertheless, she saw it through.
The misconduct case was covered by a local newspaper who published a headline reading “Policeman in fear of violence from woman after being called to house by bailiff”. This twisting of the true facts was, in effect, a succinct summary of Sergeant Flint’s ‘defence’.
After the conclusion of the hearing, Sharon received a call from the Complaint Investigator who told her that the outcome was that Sergeant Flint had been sacked.
She then commenced psychotherapy to try to address the ongoing mental injury which these events had inflicted upon her.
However, in July 2019, Sharon learned that PS Flint had launched an appeal to the Police Appeals Tribunal and in September her worst fears came true when she was informed that his appeal was successful, Sergeant Flint had – at least temporarily – been reinstated and Sharon now faced the ordeal of having to relive the whole incident again at a new misconduct hearing, completely derailing her attempts to obtain psychological closure on this horrible episode.
The second misconduct hearing took place in November 2019 and once again Sharon steeled herself and bravely gave evidence, being subjected to several hours of extensive cross-examination which felt even worse than the first time. Sharon was made to feel as if she was the wrongdoer and the lawyer acting for Sergeant Flint sought to argue that her son and cousin could have climbed through several back gardens in order to sneak into her house. Sergeant Flint seemed utterly unrepentant for his actions.
At the end of this long ordeal it seemed that justice had finally been done and Sharon’s courage and perseverance had been awarded – Sergeant Flint was sacked (again) and Sharon was told that his name would be placed on a register such that he could never serve as a Police Officer again.
Although this was a very welcome result, the hugely extended process of the complaint investigation and two misconduct hearings had played havoc with Sharon’s mental health such that she remained frightened to open her front door. She experienced panic reactions to unexpected noises and the sight of Police cars in her street. Each time she had had to relive these shocking events at the misconduct hearings she felt that her home was being violated and that she was being assaulted all over again by an utterly unrepentant Police Officer.
Unbelievably, Sharon’s ordeal was still not over as she was now informed that Sergeant Flint had once again appealed. The Misconduct Merry-Go Round would continue, and no-one, it seemed was able to remove PS Flint from his high horse.
In June 2020 Sharon was informed that PS Flint’s second appeal to the Police Appeal Tribunal had been successful and that at this time, instead of there being a third hearing to determine his fate, the Tribunal had imposed a sanction of a ‘Final Written Warning’. PS Flint was therefore now back in uniform and able to resume his career. Sharon was devastated and immediately feared repercussions from the Officer and his colleagues.
The terrible rollercoaster ride that she was on in regards to the misconduct proceedings had still not come to an end, however. Nottinghamshire Police themselves challenged the leniency of the Police Appeal Tribunal’s decision via Judicial Review, leading to the High Court overturning the Tribunal’s decision and directing that a newly convened Appeal Tribunal must reconsider the appropriate sanction.
Finally, in October 2021, the new Police Appeal Tribunal reaffirmed the decision of the last one and after four years of considerable expense and heartache to all concerned, it was determined once and for all that PS Flint would remain as a Police Officer under a ‘Final Written Warning’.
Sharon found the whole complaint process completely bewildering. She did not feel like a victim; at best she was treated as a third party witness, and at worse subject to cross examination that made her feel like a criminal. It was her complaint, but she felt largely side-lined by the opaque processes of the investigation and excluded from its decision making. Sergeant Flint was sacked twice but the Police Appeals Tribunal reinstated him both times. Furthermore, at no stage did anyone in the institution of Nottinghamshire Police offer any apology to Sharon, notwithstanding the fact that by the end of the process the Force themselves apparently wanted to see the officer sacked…
Such were Sharon’s feelings of feeling side-lined and degraded at the end of this process, that she made active plans to sell her house and move permanently away from Nottingham, her lifelong home.
I have to say that Sharon’s ordeal with the Police Complaints process echoes my own long experience of this frequently biased and uncaring regime – Police Officers facing complaints have more lives, it seems, than a cat whilst their victims are made to feel at best like mice, and at worse like rats.
Getting Justice Done
Fortunately, the Police Complaint process is not the only mechanism through which justice can be secured for the victims of Police misconduct and I was very pleased to be able to take on Sharon’s case for her in the form of a civil compensation claim against the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire.
Whilst the Police quickly admitted liability for trespass, wrongful arrest and assault in principle, they continued to dispute the full extent of the force used against Sharon and also disputed her entitlement to aggravated or exemplary damages – notwithstanding their written acceptance that PS Flint’s actions were “high handed and oppressive.” Nottinghamshire Police admitted that Sergeant Flint had entered Sharon’s home without any lawful power to do so and that her arrest for ‘breach of the peace’ was equally unlawful – but their initial offer of settlement was a mere £3,350, which Sharon quite rightly rejected given the impact these events had had upon her life for such an extended period of time.
It proved necessary for me to institute Court proceedings against the Chief Constable, in response to which Nottinghamshire Police upped their offer to £15,000, which was again inadequate.
Drawing strength from her previous adversities, Sharon was fully prepared to go to Trial if necessary – notwithstanding her previous ordeals at the misconduct hearings – but shortly before the Trial was due to commence, in May 2022, Nottinghamshire Police backed down and agreed to pay Sharon damages in the sum of £40,000 for the misconduct of PS Flint and his colleague, as well as Sharon’s legal costs.
It may seem bizarre that the Police would contest Sharon’s legitimate claim and cause massive expense to be incurred by both parties in terms of legal costs before caving in shortly before Trial – in a matter in which the Police themselves had apparently felt Sergeant Flint should be sacked for his actions – but such unfortunately is the normal defensive mentality, bias and reactive conduct of Police Forces when they are sued – generally putting brawn before brain and often slow to do the right thing in terms of both justice and pragmatism.
The only sour taste left in the mouth at the end of this case is the ultimate failure of Nottinghamshire Police to ever apologise; Sharon even offered them an opportunity to settle her damages for a lower sum if accompanied by an apology, but it would appear that institutional pride prevented pen from being put to paper in this regard.
Although another way of looking at this is that Sharon received 40,000 apologies from the Police, in the only language they were prepared to speak – and that is the result of her bravery and perseverance, prepared to face court room cross-examination for a third time in order to secure justice. When PS Flint went long, Sharon went longer.
Iain Gould - Actions Against the Police Solicitor 
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