This week’s blog concerns an incident in which the Police overstepped the boundaries of their powers quite literally – by trespassing in a man’s house before assaulting and unlawfully arresting him.
My client Richard, who was at the time of this incident aged in his 60s, lives in Humberside with his wife and family. He suffers from a number of adverse health conditions including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Angina, and Diabetes.
One afternoon, on a day in November 2020, several officers of Humberside Police knocked on Richard’s front door, which was answered by one of Richard’s adult sons.
Without being invited inside, one of the officers entered Richard’s home and dragged his son out into the front garden.
Richard had been asleep but was awoken by the noise of this commotion and he came downstairs – in his pyjamas – to the shock of seeing his son being violently arrested by the officers.
Richard moved towards his front door and said to the officers “What do you think you’re doing?”
Four Police Officers were present in total (three male and one female) and one of the male officers now stepped into Richard’s house (again without any invitation) and raised his arm against the door frame, blocking the exit. This, it seemed, was to be the officer’s only response to Richard’s legitimate question.
Richard protested “Excuse me!” and tried to get past him, but the officer prevented Richard from exiting his home by grabbing Richard by his throat and arm and shouting “Get back in there”.
As Richard protested “Get off, get out of my house” another officer now intervened, pushing Richard backwards whilst a further officer announced, “You’re coming for assault Police as well”.
Richard was now dragged out of his house and forced to sit down on the pathway outside.
By reason of the force used upon him, Richard was breathless and conscious of his blood pressure increasing, and he immediately and repeatedly advised the officers that he needed his medication.
Instead, the officers instructed Richard to put his arms behind his back, and when he refused to do so, they forced his head forwards whilst seeking to manoeuvre his arms behind his back.
At this point, a female officer sprayed Richard in his face with her PAVA spray at point-blank range.
The effects of the spray naturally made Richard’s eyes begin to sting and significantly aggravated his breathing difficulties.
Richard was eventually permitted to get to his feet, but the officers then forced him against a side wall and again continued to apply force to his head and to his arms (in a continued attempt to handcuff him to the rear), ignoring Richard’s requests for medication and his (correct) assertion that he had done nothing wrong.
Finally, the officers succeeded in handcuffing Richard to the front, although during this process Richard’s pyjama bottoms had fallen, exposing his buttocks in view of the street, which was extremely embarrassing for him.
More officers now attended the scene of the incident, and one of the original officers stated that Richard had “come flying out to assault” them and, furthermore, that Richard had deliberately punched one of the officers.
This was a gross exaggeration of events, apparently made in an attempt to justify the officers’ assault upon Richard because the opposite was in fact true; rather than Richard coming out of his house to attack the officers, it was they who had gone into his house, attacked and dragged him outside.
After hearing what was being said Richard immediately stated that he wished to make a complaint about the officer who was speaking these untruths.
Remaining under arrest, Richard was then ‘frog marched’ down the street to a nearby police van, his buttocks still exposed. Richard’s complaint of chest pains and further requests for his medication were again ignored.
Richard was then transported to a local Police Station where he was detained in a cell until an examination by a Police Medical Examiner determined that he required urgent medical treatment, and he was transported to hospital by ambulance.
Humiliatingly, Richard was ‘escorted’ by Police Officers throughout most of his time in A&E, whilst he was examined and underwent various tests, and it was not until late that night that the officers finally left the hospital and after Richard’s tests were completed, he was able to be discharged and returned home.
Sadly, this was not the end of Richard’s ordeal. In December 2020 he received notification of prosecution for the alleged offence of assaulting two of the Police Officers who had come to arrest his son, in the execution of their duty.
Richard duly attended Court, pleaded not guilty and had to wait a further ten months with these serious charges hanging over his head, until, in October 2021 he was found not guilty at trial. The only silver lining to this process was that Richard did not himself have to give evidence at the trial – after the Court had heard the evidence of the two Police Officers who alleged Richard had assaulted them, it was determined that in fact there was no case for Richard to answer.
However, just because Richard had successfully cleared that first hurdle in the criminal court, did not necessarily mean that he would succeed in a claim for compensation against Humberside Police. The question which the criminal court was addressing was whether it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that Richard had committed a criminal offence; a finding that he had not did not equate to a finding that the Police had themselves behaved unlawfully, and the burden was now on Richard to prove this in the civil court, unless Humberside Police admitted liability – which they did not.
Richard was referred to me by his criminal defence solicitor, who was aware of my expertise in claims against the Police. I carefully reviewed the evidence, including the Police body worn camera footage and concluded that Richard had meritorious claims for damages for trespass, wrongful arrest and assault and battery.
The Police Officers had wrongfully entered Richard’s home without lawful justification, thereby becoming trespassers on his property.
This had begun when the female officer first stepped inside Richard’s home, without permission, to purportedly arrest Richard’s son for the alleged offence of common assault – this being a ‘summary only’ offence (i.e. a minor offence triable only in the Magistrates’ Court) which did not confer a legal power of entry to Richard’s property upon the Police in the absence of any consent from the homeowner/occupiers.
Thereafter one of the male officers had also stepped into Richards’ home, without permission to unlawfully block his exit and had assaulted Richard there, by first grabbing Richard’s throat.
By forcibly blocking Richard from leaving his own home, the officer was committing an act of false imprisonment upon Richard, and Richard’s subsequent arrest was unlawful as it was he who was the victim of an assault by the officers present, not vice versa.
Richard was very roughly treated by the officers present – especially in view of his age and health conditions – but it is unfortunately common in my experience for this type of ‘Police mob’ assault upon a single individual to unfold in this way. After one officer has started to use force against a person, then rather than assessing the situation objectively, or seeking to de-escalate the conflict, many officers will simply ‘pile in’ upon the first officer’s victim, including ‘spray painting’ the victim with PAVA.
I advised Richard that to the extent that he had resisted the officers’ attempts to handcuff him thereafter, he was, in my opinion, entitled to do so, as there would have been no lawful basis for the officers’ entry into his home or their purported arrest of him. Richard’s use of force in response was, in my opinion, reasonable self-defence.
Thereafter I obtained expert medical evidence in support of Richard’s claim for physical and psychological injury and issued Court proceedings to hold the Chief Constable of Humberside to account for his officers’ gross abuse of their powers.
The officers had behaved in a disrespectful and demeaning way to Richard throughout the incident, had shown only a callous disregard in response to his repeated pleas for medication, and Richard had further been subjected to a criminal prosecution which, in my opinion, lacked any credible basis and had been designed as a ‘smokescreen’ to hide the officers own unlawful actions.
The Custody Record had inaccurately asserted that Richard “charged towards the arresting officers”. Such exaggeration is another hallmark of these type of cases in which, once officers have gone ‘over the top’, they will resort to flamboyant and exaggerated language in an attempt to paint their victim as the aggressor.
As I have said before, an Englishman’s home is his castle and in the circumstances of this incident Richard should have been inviolate whilst he stood within the threshold of his home, his lawful property which the statutory and common law of England respects as a place of safety and security for the private citizen.
The officers in this case sought to trample over those rights, but thanks to Richard’s determination and my expertise in such matters they have now been held to account, and I am pleased to confirm that after we rejected an initial derisory offer of £4,000, Richard’s case has recently been concluded for payment of damages in the sum of £17,500 plus his legal costs.
As ever, it is my pleasure to keep fighting the good fight on behalf of all of those who have had their rights unlawfully infringed by Police abuse of power.
(My client’s name has been changed.)
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