The case of PC Rosalind Holt, who was dismissed without notice from Greater Manchester Police for gross misconduct for her violent assault upon my client, and her subsequent dishonest attempts to justify that assault, has recently hit the headlines.
A Misconduct Panel, led by Legally Qualified Chair Warren Spencer, found that PC Holt’s use of CS gas spray against my client was “excessive, not proportionate, legal or necessary”.
In finding that PC Holt was no longer of suitable character to be a Police Officer, the Panel criticised not only her aggression but also her honesty – describing the version of events that she presented to other Officers as “Untrue, exaggerated and embellished”.
The Panel found that PC Holt had discharged her anti-personnel spray in my client’s face at a dangerously close range of less than a metre, and with no attempt having been made at communication or instruction.
The five- day disciplinary Hearing concluded that PC Holt’s actions had breached the professional standards of honesty and integrity at a gross misconduct level, and she was dismissed for breaches of the professional standards in regard to use of force, honesty and integrity and discreditable conduct, with her name now being placed on the College of Policing Barred List.
My client Charles is a black man. In July 2020, PC Holt and other GMP Officers had been called to a disturbance at the Golden Lion Pub in Manchester and although my client was present, he had not been involved in the disorder and was not committing any criminal offences. My client and others were ordered to leave the pub and he complied with that instruction.
What then occurred at the pub was well documented by both CCTV and Police body camera footage.
The Panel heard that PC Holt had approached Charles from behind as he was on his way out of the pub, taken hold of him, and removed a wine glass that he was holding. Shortly afterwards, PC Holt then discharged her CS gas spray in Charles’ face, injuring him, and subsequently falsely claimed that Charles had tried to hit her (PC Holt) “with a glass bottle”.
None of this was true, but as a result of these false accusations, Charles was arrested for affray and taken into custody, whilst still suffering agony from the burning liquid spray which had been used against his face.
The footage viewed by the Panel demonstrated that when PC Holt sprayed my client, Charles simply had his arms down by his side, holding his phone. He was in no way attempting to assault PC Holt and she had already removed the glass he had been holding, without any resistance from him.
Nevertheless, shortly after deploying her spray, PC Holt could be heard on the footage informing her colleagues that Charles had tried to hit her with a glass bottle. When she was challenged about this statement during her cross examination at the Misconduct Hearing, PC Holt claimed that this completely false accusation of an extremely serious crime against my client was “just a mix up of words [not] meant to be in any way misleading”.
The footage demonstrated that PC Holt continued to ‘spray’ her outrageous lies around – or as she would put it, continued to ‘mix up her words’, alleging –
“[He’s] come out with a glass bottle, tried to smash it in me so he has been sprayed”.
When asked by another Officer if she was okay, PC Holt responded “Yeah, apart from a glass bottle in my face” which with the benefit of hindsight – and cross examination – she was prepared to accept was a ‘misuse of words’.
It is fair to say that Charles was affronted when – having not been involved in the earlier disturbance and knowing he had done nothing wrong – he was grabbed hold of without warning from behind by PC Holt and he protested about this and called the Officer a ‘midget’. Neither that comment nor anything else Charles did justified the brutal assault which PC Holt then perpetrated against him – nor the mendacity with which she then attempted to ‘frame’ him for a serious crime, causing him to be wrongfully arrested.
Under cross examination, PC Holt tried to claim that she did believe she had been threatened with a glass, despite the fact that in the Use of Force form which she completed after the incident she had indicated that no weapon had been involved. PC Holt stated that this was because she defined the word ‘weapon’ as only meaning a knife or something specifically designed to cause harm, a reply which the prosecuting barrister Mr Dos Santos correctly described as “A ridiculous answer for an Officer…nothing but an attempt to squirm out of [the truth]”.
The role of the GMP Officers called out to the pub that night had been to ‘de-escalate’ the situation, but PC Holt had in fact done the exact opposite – targeting Charles when he was doing nothing wrong (indeed was attempting to leave the pub), grabbing hold of him without warning, cornering him, spraying him in the face and then falsely alleging to her colleagues that he had tried to attack her with a glass, presumably in a guilty attempt to justify what she had done to him.
Although the right outcome was achieved in the end – the dismissal of Holt from the Police Force – my client was still left with a sense of incomplete justice and of having been excluded from the complaint investigation process – a process which specifically centred around outrages committed against his person and liberty.
The reason for this was that when the complaint investigation – which had dragged on for well over a year – was concluded in October 2021, GMP’s Professional Standards department advised Charles that whilst it considered PC Holt had a case to answer for Honesty and Integrity and Discreditable Conduct (and should face a Misconduct Hearing) there was no case to answer for her in regards to either excessive force or discrimination. My client did not agree with these findings – feeling both that he had been targeted because he was a black man, and that PC Holt should also face disciplinary charges over her gas-spray attack upon him – and so requested a copy of Professional Standard’s Investigation Report so that he could appeal the same. It will be appreciated that a meaningful appeal against any report is difficult if you have not in fact been given a copy of the report, and thus are left completely in the dark as to the evidential findings and reasonings behind its conclusions. Nevertheless, in a Kafkaesque turn of events, which made Charles feel like an unwanted ‘outsider’ to the whole process, GMP stated that although he could appeal the report’s conclusions, he would not be given a copy of it until after the conclusion of the misconduct hearing – by which point, of course, any appeal would have no meaning.
I assisted Charles in now getting the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) to review his case, on the grounds that he could obviously not make a meaningful or informed appeal without a copy of the very document which was being appealed. Despite the IOPC agreeing with this, and recommending that GMP either release the report or at least sufficient excerpts from it to allow Charles to understand their decision- making, GMP continued to refuse to do so and it was necessary for me to raise a further appeal to the IOPC. At the end of a tortuous process, the right outcome was belatedly achieved when the IOPC directed that the Misconduct Hearing must consider PC Holt’s Use of Force and the issue of Discrimination, as well as her Honesty and Conduct.
However, Charles was still not provided with the actual complaint Investigation Report and nor was he provided with any of the video footage of the incident, and he therefore had to give evidence at the Misconduct Hearing relying only on his own memory, obviously hampered by the attrition of time (over three years from the original incident), whereas PC Holt had both immediately after the incident and in the run up to the Hearing been able to go over the footage on a “frame by frame” basis, to best prepare her case.
GMP’s Barrister, Mr Dos Santos, made an impassioned speech to the Panel stressing how members of the public would be “Absolutely appalled” about the actions of PC Holt, if the video footage was played to them and that Holt’s “unforgivable” actions, especially coupled with her continued unrepentant stance three years after the event, suggesting she had learned nothing from her mistakes, deserved the strongest penalty available, i.e. dismissal. Mr Dos Santos said that any other outcome would risk undermining public trust and confidence in the Police.
Whilst I endorse all of that, there is another aspect to public trust and confidence in the Police – and particularly the Police disciplinary and misconduct process – and that is the extent to which the Police still fail to adopt open, communicative and collaborative approaches to complaint investigations with the victim in each case. To me it is “appalling” that for three years after the incident, Charles was kept in the dark about the available evidence and the decision-making process – to such an extent that not only was he refused by the Police permission to view any of the video evidence he wasn’t even given a copy of the Complaint Investigation Report. I consider this to be a quite outrageous state of affairs which significantly undermined Charles’ confidence in the Police and made him feel throughout the whole complaint process like, frankly, a second class citizen.
If the Police really do want to raise levels of public trust and confidence in themselves, then they must significantly reduce the levels of secrecy and what I might call automatic obstructionism in their complaint handling. The institution of Policing remains very inwards focused in its attitudes and approaches, even at a public Misconduct Hearing. Throughout the process leading up to the hearing Charles – the actual victim of PC Holt’s misconduct and the person whose complaint was the catalyst for exposing PC Holt’s misconduct – was largely ignored by the Police, passive-aggressively denied access to material and treated as little more than another name on the roster of witnesses.
I call upon the Police to reflect on that.
In the meantime, I will now take action to deliver to Charles a complete sense of justice being done, in the form of substantial damages and a holistic apology from Greater Manchester Police for the egregious actions of their Officer.
The name of my client has been changed.
Update
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