One evening in March 2022, my client Edward was driving through London in an ordinary and law-abiding manner, when he was pulled over by a Metropolitan Police Carrier displaying its blue lights.
What was the reason that Police were ‘interested’ in my client’s vehicle? One of the Officers in the 7- man squad who stopped my client’s car, PC Williams, subsequently made a statement in which he said that his attention was drawn to Philip’s vehicle “because it had 2 occupants and the driver and passenger appeared to be giving us a good long look before driving off”.
This, in other words, is another variant of the woefully ropy “You were giving us evils” justification which two City of London Police Officers relied upon to unlawfully stop and search my client Allen Norman, whose story I blogged about recently and whose case was recently featured by Rob Warner on his always excellent Crimebodge YouTube channel.
The initial difference between these two incidents, however, was that Edward was in control of a motor car when Police attention fastened on to him, whereas Allen was not. Therefore, the Police did initially have a legal power to require Edward to stop (and thereafter provide his driving licence) in accordance with Section 163 and 164 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, a power which can be exercised ‘at random’.
However, it quickly became clear that the Police Officers involved wanted to indulge their ‘Spidey- Sense’ (all apparently based on an initial hunch of ‘we don’t like the look of you/the way you are looking at us’) far beyond the limits of the Road Traffic Act.
Stop & Search Excuses
After Edward had exited his car, he was immediately told by PC Marenco that he was going to be detained for the purposes of searches for “stolen property” under Section 1 of the Police & Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and for “drug dealing” under Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.
Both of those search powers, however, require the Officers exercising them to have ‘reasonable grounds for suspicion’ i.e that they will find stolen articles or controlled drugs on the person – they cannot be speculative searches, performed at random or on the officer’s whim. They require objective grounds for suspicion – at least in theory. Officers ‘on the beat’ frequently exceed their powers in scenarios like this.
Edward was handcuffed, despite his totally compliant demeanour, and whilst he had his person searched, other officers went through his car and, indeed, called in a police dog trained to sniff out “drugs and weapons.” When he innocuously asked the assembled officers to get on with things, mildly commenting “Just go through the process” an officer immediately snapped at him “You don’t tell us what’s happening – we tell you what’s going to happen”, betraying the power-play dynamic that clearly governed the officers’ mindsets.
Various vague reasons were given by the Police at the scene and in their subsequent written accounts to attempt to justify Edward’s detention and search, as follows-
- That he was driving in an area of “robberies, gang violence and drug dealing” (i.e London, or any other major urban conurbation – an excuse so laughable it has an exact parallel in a classic joke in The Simpsons in which two corrupt cops arrest a man who has just told them he is from New York City “I heard some guy got killed in New York and they never solved the case. But you wouldn’t know anything about that, now would you Steve?”)
- “Intel showed [Edward’s] car was registered in Hertfordshire.” (And therefore had no legitimate business being in London?)
- “Possession of multiple phones” (i.e two – Edward’s work phone and his personal phone)
- “There was a slight smell of alcohol [on Edward]”
Edward did voluntarily admit to the Officers that he had had a single beer approximately an hour earlier. The Officers then performed both a drugs swab, which was negative, and a breathalyser test which demonstrated the truth of what Edward had said, i.e. he was within the legal alcohol limit. Throughout this process, Edward remained polite and cooperative with the increasingly onerous instructions he was given.
The ‘Field Impairment Test’
Despite Edward having passed the breathalyser test, the Officers then insisted that my client perform ‘Field Impairment Tests’ so-called ‘psycho-physical’ tasks designed to further probe his sobriety. This procedure is as laid down in the Code of Practice for Preliminary Impairment Tests, issued under S.6B(2) of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
- The first test was “pupillary examination”, an assessment of the size of the subject’s pupils – Edward’s left and right pupils were measured as 8.5mm wide, which was stated to be higher than the average of 6mm.
- The second test was the “modified Romberg balance test” – an indicator of a person’s internal clock and ability to balance. For this, Edward was instructed “Stand up straight with your heels together and arms by your sides…maintain that position while I give you the remaining instructions….when I tell you, tilt your head back slightly and close your eyes. When you think that 30 seconds have passed bring your head forward and say stop”. …After 27.48 seconds Edward brought his eyes forward and said stop. The supervising officer went on to record this as evidence of a “delayed body clock”, despite the fact that the normal range for this test is between 25-35 seconds for a person not under influence of any drug.
- The third test was the “Walk and Turn test” which is an exercise that assess whether a person is able to divide attention between walking, balancing and processing instructions. Edward was instructed to take 9 heel to toe steps along a line made by paving flags, before turning around and taking another 9 heel to toe steps back in the opposite direction, all the time looking at his feet and counting each step out loud. Edward perfectly performed the correct formation of steps and balance, but was criticised for not counting the steps out loud.
- The fourth test is the “One Leg Stand test”, in which Edward was instructed toraise his right foot 6-8 inches off the ground, keeping his leg straight and toe pointing forward, and his arms by his side, and looking at his raised foot whilst counting out loud…1001, 1002, 1003 and so on, until told to stop; with the same test then repeated with his left foot raised instead. I have reviewed the body camera footage of this test, and am personally satisfied that Edward performed it in the correct manner, but the Officer supervising the test nevertheless claimed that at one stage Edward “appeared unbalanced.”
- The fifth and final test was the “Finger to Nose test” which is a test of depth, perception and balance. Edward was instructed to tilt his head back and close his eyes…and then follow the officer’s called instructions to lift each of his hands in a designated sequence and touch the tip of his nose with the tip of the appropriate index finger. Once again, the supervising officer would claim that, despite Edward following the vast majority of the instructions with no difficulty, minor anomalies in performance were detected.
The supervising Officer then alleged that Edward’s “dilated pupils, inability to follow instructions and delayed body clock” were evidence of a person “impaired through drugs” and PC Marenco promptly arrested my client on suspicion of driving under the influence of drugs, contrary to Section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
This entire process had taken over an hour, with the 7 Officers in the squad, and delegates from the dog section, apparently having nothing better to do than stand round watching each other exhaust all of their stop and search and road policing powers on an innocent motorist, until they finally found a flimsy excuse to arrest him. Good job there weren’t any “robberies, gang violence and drug dealing” matters that needed attending to in the Metropolis that night!
Edward was taken to Brixton Custody Suite where he was searched, his detention was authorised for the purposes of a medical assessment, and he was placed into a cell.
Thereafter, Edward was seen by a Custody Health Care Professional (a nurse) who noted the following –
“DP [Detained Person] consented for drug drive procedure. He is alert, conscious and orientated to time, place and person and breathing normally. His sober and clinical observations stable. He is calm, cooperative and polite”
Edward was released from Custody in the early hours of the morning, with no further action being taken against him, and then had to travel back to the location where his car had been abandoned, which, if you’ll recall was, in the words of the Police, a haven of “gang violence and drug dealing”. Fortunately, both he and the car survived unscathed.
In response to a letter of claim which I sent on behalf of Edward, alleging wrongful arrest and assault and battery, the Metropolitan Police initially, and without making any admission of liability, attempted to buy Edward’s claim off cheaply for the sum of £2,500 damages. In seeking a quick settlement in this manner, the Met were also seeking to withhold their documentary and video records of the incident.
I advised Edward to reject their offer and instead pressed the Met to confirm their liability position and provide disclosure of all relevant documents. I was able to obtain from them the Officers’ statements, written records and body camera videos.
With this material in my possession – which confirmed my belief in Edward’s strong prospects of success should the matter be pursued to Court – negotiations were resumed, and the claim was ultimately settled for damages in the sum of £7,000, plus legal costs.
A Litany of Abuse: Police Misuse of ‘Street Powers’
This is an incident which show-cases a litany of day-to-day, very typical and indeed almost casual Police abuses of power and demonstrates how Police Officers can seek to cloak abuse of power beneath a variety of legal excuses, including Section 163 of the Road Traffic Act. Merely having the ‘wrong look’ – absent any other factors – simply cannot be a justification for body search, car search, handcuffing and arrest but sadly this is what happened here, with the Officers involved using what was, in my opinion, one flimsy excuse after another to exert their power over an innocent man who could not reasonably have been suspected of any offence.
There was absolutely no basis for a reasonable suspicion that my client or his vehicle were in possession of/contained stolen goods – that appears to have been an entirely speculative ‘fishing expedition’ carried out by the Police on a whim, without any objective justification whatsoever. If possession of more than one mobile phone is tantamount to suspicion of drug- dealing then it would appear that the vast majority of the professional classes of this country are all closet Walter Whites or Tony Sopranos…
Finally, we had the outrageous decision of the Officers to ignore the negative results rendered by the carefully calibrated breathalyser machine and drug swabbing procedures and instead to overrule those objective measures with entirely subjective assessments of subtle details connected with a person’s ability to balance and count seconds – whilst in the stressful situation of a roadside Police interrogation – and/or millimetres of difference in pupil dilation, in what I can only describe as a combination between the handbook of the Ministry of Silly Walks and those ‘tests’ administered by 17th Century “Witchfinders” i.e. tests which the subject cannot pass because the interrogator has already decided that they are a Witch (albeit one, here, in charge of a Ford Focus rather than a broomstick).
The prejudicial nature of this ‘Field Impairment’ assessment is, in my opinion, amply demonstrated by the much more objective assessment carried out by the independent Health Care Professional upon Edward when he was in Custody a short time later. This naturally concluded that there was no evidence that Edward was under the influence of intoxicating substances/drugs.
Somewhere it seems, between the breathalyser machine test, the chemical drug swab and the qualified medical professional’s opinion the truth had become distorted by the frustration of Officers whose eagerness to detain my client/exert power over him had apparently increased with each blank card they drew from their deck – no stolen goods; no drugs on his possession; negative breathalyser and drugs test; but he had looked at them the wrong way, or looked ‘wrong’ to them, and so they were determined, one way or another, to ‘get him.’
This type of ego- driven, authoritarian policing causes harm to the person who is its target, harm to the reputation of the Police, is a massive waste of Police time and resources and should have no place on the streets of Britain.
My client’s name has been changed.
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