I have blogged before about the Police misuse of Mental Health Act powers and the distressing approach taken by all too many officers, which is that mental health issues are to be treated as if they are some sort of crime in and of themselves.
I have likewise previously highlighted the unedifying habit of the Metropolitan Police which is seemingly to encourage its officers to exercise a non-existent power of “detention” short of arrest, in the cynical knowledge that most people will assume that they need to ‘stay put’ simply because a Police Officer is telling them to do so.
Sadly, both of these Police vices came together in the Met’s grossly abusive treatment of my client Jervon a black Caribbean man who is vulnerable by reason of several mental health issues and was, to all intents and purposes, criminalised by the Met Police solely because of that vulnerability.
One afternoon in April 2019 Jervon made a routine visit to his local Building Society and was minding his own business in the queue, listening to music through his headphones, when he was startled by someone tapping him on the shoulder.
Jervon turned and saw that a woman had made physical contact with him; she apologised, stating that she thought Jervon was someone else.
Jervon acknowledged the apology but pointed out to the woman that her actions, in laying herhand on him, actually constituted an assault. The woman took offence at this.
The Building Society Manager then intervened and asked Jervon if he wanted him to call the Police, to which Jervon indicated that he did. Jervon’s mental health issues were now causing him distress, in light of the woman’s unwanted physical contact with him, but at no point was Jervon himself aggressive or threatening to anyone present in the Building Society, and nor did anyone allege otherwise.
The Manager took Jervon to a partitioned area at the side of the room, offered him a glass of water and directed another member of staff to call the Police, so as to give reassurance to Jervon.
However, a second female member of the public now began to make comments about Jervon. Jervon told the woman to mind her own business. A man, believed to be this woman’s son, then entered the building society and stood next to her and began to stare at Jervon, before removing his belt and wrapping it around his fist in a clearly intimidatory manner.
Jervon felt threatened and told the man that he would defend himself if the man hit him. The Branch Manager then ushered the second woman and the man out of the building.
Unbeknownst to Jervon at this time, the first woman who had touched him had called the Police – primarily because Jervon had suggested her actions were an assault and she wanted to explain what had happened. Several minutes later six Metropolitan Police Officers arrived at the Building Society.
These officers spoke to some of the people at the scene, including the woman who had first touched Jervon. This woman told the officers that Jervon had not done anything wrong and that she believed he was a vulnerable person.
None of the witnesses spoken to by the officers suggested that they wanted Jervon arrested or prosecuted for any offence, which was quite correct because he had of course committed no offence whatsoever.
PC Little and PC Hillier then approached Jervon where he was sitting down, still in the partitioned area, and clearly not posing a threat to anyone or anything.
Seeing the officers approach, Jervon took out his Driving Licence from his wallet (so as to identify himself) and showed this to the officers. The officers indicated that it was not required. Jervon queried if he was under arrest and PC Little said that he was not. Jervon then said that he did not want to talk to the officers unless he was under arrest and referred to wanting a solicitor.
Jervon began to perceive that the officers were behaving in a hostile manner towards him, with PC Little commenting that his behaviour was “silly” and therefore Jervon took out his mobile phone and began recording the interaction for his own protection.
This was a sensible move and in my opinion was entirely within the range of reasonable behaviour by any person confronted by Police Officers who has a mobile phone to hand.
The officers seemed unhappy that Jervon was not talking to them, despite also acknowledging that he was not under any obligation to talk to them.
As Jervon, now standing up, continued to video record the officers, PC Doyle approached and, despite the absence of any power to lawfully detain Jervon, told him “At the moment you’re detained, while we investigate…”.
As I have alluded to above, “You are detained” is the stock phrase which Metropolitan Police Officers, in particular, use when they know that they haven’t got sufficient grounds to justify an arrest (or stop- search) and yet still want to assert power/control over an individual, often while they satisfy their curiosity as to what he has been up to or simply because they are unhappy that he is not ‘engaging’ with them. In reality, the Police simply do not have a stand alone power of detention short of arrest in such circumstances but the Met’s unwritten playbook clearly includes this as a tactic for their officers to use against unsuspecting members of the public.
Jervon, (who did not fully appreciate this, and nor should he have) – asked what the ‘charge’ against him was. PC Doyle asserted “A Public Order offence at the moment … Public Order Section 4.”
Section 4(1) of the Public Order Act provides as follows-
A person is guilty of an offence if he—
(a)uses towards another person threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or
(b)distributes or displays to another person any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting,
with intent to cause that person to believe that immediate unlawful violence will be used against him or another by any person, or to provoke the immediate use of unlawful violence by that person or another, or whereby that person is likely to believe that such violence will be used or it is likely that such violence will be provoked.
As will be clear from my narrative of events above, Jervon could not reasonably be suspected of having committed a public order offence towards anyone; if anything, he had been the victim of such an offence (from the second women’s son).
When Jervon then asked if he was actually under arrest PC Doyle repeatedly reiterated that Jervon was “detained”, as if this were some lawful alternative to arrest. In reality, it is a trick or a bluff – an Officer relying on the pseudo-authority of his uniform and Police ‘persona’ to try and make someone obey him, when he lacks the legal authority to do so.
Only now did PC Doyle ask the other officers present if there was “enough for a section 4 Public Order”. None of them appeared to provide a verbal response and certainly none of them stated anything approaching grounds for such an arrest.
PC Doyle then pushed Jervon backwards, apparently in order to try to force him to sit down. Jervon asked why PC Doyle was touching him and again asked if he was under arrest. PC Doyle repeated his mantra that Jervon was ‘detained’ and instructed him to sit down.
PC Doyle then asked the other officers “136?” – which was presumably a reference to Section 136 of the Mental Health Act 1983. PC Little replied “Happy with that”. In my opinion, the officer, having put the cart before the horse i.e detention without a lawful reason to detain, was now casting about to try and find such a reason. It was a perverse inversion of the way the Police are supposed to operate.
Section 136 (1) of the Mental Health Act provides-
If a person appears to a constable to be suffering from mental disorder and to be in immediate need of care or control, the constable may, if he thinks it necessary to do so in the interests of that person or for the protection of other persons—
(a)remove the person to a place of safety within the meaning of section 135, or
(b)if the person is already at a place of safety within the meaning of that section, keep the person at that place or remove the person to another place of safety.
Once again, I trust it will be clear from the description above, that Jervon was not in the grip of any ‘mental disorder’ requiring ‘immediate control’ and the only danger to him in these circumstances was the officers themselves.
Feeling confused and threatened, and having previously been told by PC Doyle that he would only get a solicitor if he went to Custody, Jervon now said that he would cooperate if under arrest and PC Doyle – despite apparently having ruled out any basis for arresting Jervon (because of course, none existed) and having, just moments before, being apparently contemplating the use of Mental Health Act powers – now told Jervon that he was indeed under arrest. Notably however, he did not provide any grounds for this alleged ‘arrest’.
Instead, PC Doyle now again asked his colleagues if they had enough for a “136” and PC Little, despite having earlier said that she was “happy” with this approach now admitted “I don’t know, because he won’t talk to us.”
Jervon was now asking the officers for their badge numbers, and while he was doing so PC Doyle apparently noticed the driving licence which Jervon had earlier produced and which he had placed on a table.
Without having any lawful power to do so – Jervon not being under arrest or being subject to any stop and search powers – PC Doyle reached down and picked up Jervon’s driving licence and then referred to my client by his first name, having evidently read it off the licence.
When Jervon noticed what PC Doyle was doing, he asserted that the driving licence was his and told PC Doyle that he was stealing.
Jervon again asked if he was under arrest and tried to ask for his driving licence back, but PC Doyle kept hold of it and refused to return it.
Jervon therefore tried to take his driving licence from PC Doyle, but the officer pushed him and tried to prevent him from taking it.
A struggle then ensued and the officers took Jervon to the ground and handcuffed him. PC Doyle then radioed for a van stating “One male arrested, assault police, public order”.
In fact, none of the officers had received any information suggesting that Jervon had had at any point committed a Public Order offence and Jervon had not been legitimately told that he was under arrest at any point, and nor had any grounds for any arrest been given.
Jervon’s actions in attempting to recover his driving licence from PC Doyle had been entirely lawful given that he was not under arrest at the time, and therefore the officer was committing an act of trespass to Jervon’s property. The Police would then escalate that situation by committing trespass to Jervon’s person, in the manner described above.
Despite Jervon not resisting, the officers continued to restrain him in a prone position on the floor of the Building Society, with his hands handcuffed behind his back.
PC Doyle then used his radio again stating “There’s a male been arrested for assault police, punching out at officers…….”
This time, PC Doyle did not mention the alleged arrest of Jervon for a ‘Public Order’ offence nor did he give any details of his own conduct which had led up to Jervon’s arrest.
The officers then lifted Jervon into a sitting position, whilst the Branch Manager explained to PC Doyle how the incident had started when a woman had touched Jervon and that other customers had then become involved “for no bloody reason” and that “the son’s taken his belt off” which had ‘wound’ Jervon up.
Whilst Jervon remained detained by the officers he became extremely distressed, and began to shake and cry out in pain. He told the officers they were hurting his arm, referring to the handcuffs.
Jervon was eventually lifted up by the officers and escorted to a waiting Police van outside.
Whilst Jervon was being searched prior to being placed into the van, he again asked what he had been arrested for. PC Hawton seemed unsure but eventually said “Assault on Police”. PC Hawton said that Jervon was accused of assaulting PC Doyle and that at the moment that was the only thing he was arrested for.
Jervon was then locked into the rear of the van and a short while later was spoken to by PC Hillier who now asserted that he was under arrest “For assaulting Police and section 4 Public Order…” but failed to provide any information about what Jervon was said to have done amounting to either an Assault on a Police officer or a Public Order offence.
Jervon was then driven to a local Police Station and taken into custody. Rather than being given the normal booking in procedure in person at the custody desk – in front of a Custody Sergeant – Jervon was taken from the van and placed straight into a cell. Once again, the officers were riding roughshod over Jervon’s rights and perhaps they thought they could get away with it because of his perceived mental health difficulties.
In the meantime, in Jervon’s absence, the circumstances of his arrest were recorded on the Custody Record as follows –
“Police called to the location to a male being disruptive and abusive. Upon arrival the PD was spoken to during which he has punched one officer.”
There was no mention in the Custody Record of the account given by the woman who had touched Jervon in the first place, nor that of the Branch Manager, as to what had actually occurred in the Building Society. There was also no mention made of the officers’s own conduct, and in particular PC Doyle’s conduct in confiscating and refusing to return Jervon’s driving licence, which had directly led up to his arrest.
While in the cell, due to the shock and distress he was experiencing at the treatment he had received, Jervon experienced thoughts of self-harm, to such a degree that he tied items of clothing around his neck. Multiple officers entered the cell, forcibly restrained Jervon upon the ground and stripped him of all of his clothing leaving him naked in the cell.
Jervon suffered neck pain, back pain and bruises to his knees by means of his rough handling by the officers and was left feeling utterly degraded. His requests for anxiety medication to alleviate his ongoing mental distress were denied. It will be noted that all of this was in the context of the Police having chosen to ‘skip’ the proper booking in procedure for Jervon, thereby denying him the protections for detained persons which are laid down by PACE (the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984) and which are supposed to include a thorough risk assessment before a person is placed alone in a cell. This disregard for PACE in Custody mirrored the disregard for the proper laws of arrest which Jervon had suffered in the Building Society. In my opinion the officers involved in this incident were disgracefully treating a mentally vulnerable individual like a second-class citizen, denied the full respect and protection of the law.
Jervon was detained overnight at the station and interviewed the following morning in the presence of an Appropriate Adult.
Several hours later a charging decision made by the Metropolitan Police themselves rather than the Crown Prosecution Service led to Jervon being charged with a Section 4 Public Order Act offence against the Manager of the Building Society (despite there having been no altercation between them) and an Assault on an Emergency Worker offence against PC Doyle.
Jervon was then further charged with a similar offence of Assault on an Emergency Worker in respect of PC Little.
Jervon remained in detention overnight (now his second night in custody) before being taken to Ealing Magistrates’ Court where he was refused bail and remanded into prison custody at HMP Wormwood Scrubs.
Jervon was to remain detained in the prison for almost three weeks, before finally being released when the Crown Prosecution Service, who were now involved, discontinued all of the charges against him stating that there was insufficient evidence to provide a realistic prospect of conviction.
Whilst in Police custody Jervon had made multiple complaints about his treatment which were in my opinion entirely justified but – unsurprisingly – when in December 2019 the Metropolitan Police’s Professional Standards Unit wrote to Jervon to confirm the outcome of his complaint, it was that none of these complaints were upheld.
My shorthand for understanding the likelihood of any member of the public having their complaint upheld by Professional Standards is to imagine that the Professional Standards Departments are all branches of the Police Officers’ Union, the Police Federation. Professional Standards investigators simply do not approach complaints in a fair and open mind; they seemed dedicated to finding reasons to dismiss complaints, not uphold them. Curious behaviour for a profession whose purpose is to uphold the law, and bring malefactors to account…
Fortunately, there are other ways to uphold the law – because we don’t just have criminal justice, we have civil justice as well.
When Jervon turned to me for help, I was proud to fight his corner and bring Court proceedings against the Metropolitan Police. As a vulnerable individual who has to cope with mental health issues, and who has a heightened sensitivity to unwanted physical contact from strangers, Jervon should have been treated by others – and especially by the Police – with compassion, but instead he was treated with contempt, which then turned into an attempted to criminalise him.
However, Jervon begins this New Year substantially better off than the last one, as I have just settled his claim against the Met for a five-figure sum of damages, but, more importantly, I have helped him to make his voice heard, to achieve accountability from those in power and a sense of justice being done; because despite the way the Police treated him, he is, like all of us, a first-class citizen.
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