Can We Trust a Copper to Catch a Copper?

This week’s blog post sees me once again turn the spotlight on one of the biggest and most perennial problems with the Police – how their raison d’etre of investigating and uncovering wrongdoing is so very often inverted into a coverup mission when the person accused of the wrongdoing is a fellow Officer. In other words –  whilst you can set a thief to catch a thief, when it comes to professional misconduct, don’t trust a copper to catch a copper.

I currently act on behalf of Scott Barratt who suffered a fractured nose after being kicked in the head by PC Alan Kirkwood of Lincolnshire Police in January 2023. This awful injury did not occur after a fight, or even an attempted flight, but after PC Kirkwood, wielding a taser gun, had ‘red- dotted’ my client with the weapon (i.e marked him with its targeting laser), ordered him to get down on his hands and knees – and then quite deliberately, once Scott was in this most submissive and vulnerable position, kicked him in the face with the words “Fucking bastard.”

My client had raised his hands on being confronted by the officer, backed away and then got down on the ground, exactly as instructed. He tried to explain that he was an innocent passerby (he had been out walking his dog with his partner), who had actually tried to stop the real suspect whom the Officer had been pursuing, but his explanation and his total compliance with the Officer’s instructions fell on deaf ears and only served to put him at the mercy of the Officer’s anger, as described above.

It subsequently transpired that PC Kirkwood had mistaken Scott for a suspected bicycle thief with whom the Officer had had a minor scuffle moments before; this could not have been further from the truth, given that my client, a man of impeccable character had actually tried to intervene to help the officer (by grabbing the suspect), but even had my client been the ‘real’ suspect that could not have justified the ‘vigilante justice’ which PC Kirkwood decided to dole out to him. The Officers actions were, in my opinion, pre-meditated, brutal and totally unbecoming of a man sworn to uphold the law.

All of the facts which I have narrated above were indisputably caught on PC Kirkwood’s own body camera (let us give thanks again for these electronic angels on Police Officer’s shoulders…), but a recent Complaint Investigation by Lincolnshire Police PSD (Professional Standards) has purported to conclude that the Officer, in effect, did nothing wrong. The PSD investigator praised the Officer’s use of force as “reasonable, proportionate and necessary” whilst the Deputy Chief Constable herself concluded that Kirkwood had “no case to answer” for any misconduct, let alone gross misconduct.

In this case, Lincolnshire PSD appear to have deliberately overlooked the very strong evidence of misconduct on the part of their Officer, and instead allowed him to hide behind a host of excuses – principle of which were the Officer’s suggestion that he was afraid of violence from my client, that his right arm (holding the taser) was already badly injured and that his ‘not full force’ kick to Scott’s face was a legitimate ‘distraction strike.’

Lies, Damned Lies and Distraction Strikes

What is a ‘distraction strike’?

Let me provide you with two alternative definitions-

1. A Police tactic involving delivering a blow to a non- compliant suspect’s body (not usually their face) in order to weaken physical resistance by surprising them, throwing them off balance and/ or causing temporary pain.

2. A euphemism employed by misbehaving Officers to disguise unlawful violence, by hiding excessive force behind the label given to the legitimate Police tactic described above; in other words, embedding a lie in a useful piece of Police ‘jargon.’ (See for example the case of my client ‘Robert’, reported here.)

Rather than ‘calling a spade a spade’, the second type of use of this phrase is, in effect, ‘calling a Sword a Spade’ and in my opinion is clearly what happened in this present case.

When interviewed in response to my client’s complaint, PC Kirkwood explained that he had slipped and fallen (whilst pursuing the original suspect), banging his right arm in the process and suffering injury thereby. The Officer claimed that when he was confronting my client, he could not be confident that he was going to be able to use his taser if threatened, nor be able to restrain my client because his arm was going numb and he was starting to lose function in his fingers. Notably, however, this alleged degree of incapacity/ vulnerability on the part of PC Kirkwood was not borne out by the video footage which showed that –

• After the kick, PC Kirkwood pulled Scott to his feet and marched him to the police car, with his taser still raised and firmly held in his right hand;
• Immediately afterwards, PC Kirkwood raced after a group of youths, grabbed one of them and used his right hand to apply the handcuffs to this person;
• PC Kirkwood then ran over to assist other officers struggling with another male;
• The  footage also showed PC Kirkwood using his radio with his right hand.
• At no point did the Officer activate his ‘emergency’ button to request assistance.

Sadly, the PSD investigator let these significant inconsistencies in the Officer’s evidence pass without adverse comment – in a way one would certainly not expect the Police to do, if the interviewee had been a member of the public accused of an offence – and instead limply accepted the Officer’s account of his arm pain and numbness as a ‘crucial’ factor in his decision making.

The PSD investigator also went on to opine, on the basis of no specific evidence whatsoever, that “suspects are often initially compliant but then quickly change to non-compliant”. This type of pleading on the part of the ‘accused’ Officer is sadly not uncommon, as an investigator in his enthusiasm for Police fraternity, forgets that he is supposed to be objective/ impartial and instead becomes an advocate for the accused, employing some ‘creative thinking’ to help bolster his brother Officer’s case.

PC Kirkwood was reported to have later commented that my client might “have an axe to grind” against him; if he does, it is only the axe which the Officer planted in Scott’s back in the first place.

Turning back to the Officer’s employment of the ‘distraction strike’ doctrine as a justification for his kicking my client in the head – this was happily seized upon by the Complaint Investigator whose description of the strike as “reasonable, proportionate and necessary” I have already quoted above. This failing was compounded by the ultimate decision maker, DCC Debenham who declared that an Officer is “entitled to deliver a pre-emptive strike if he considered it necessary to do so.” This is simply wrong in law, as it reduces test of reasonable force to a subjective one (based on the officer’s own claimed motivations) and omits the requirement for all uses of force to be considered objectively as well.

Once again, I consider this reasoning to be a biased, shallow, defective and in the interests of Police self-service. Let us look at a detailed explanation of the ‘theory’ behind a ‘distraction strike’ as defined by a Police Personal Safety Trainer, and see if PC Kirkwood’s justification stands up next to it/ bears proper analysis.

A distraction strike is delivered in order to –

“Weaken the subject’s resistance by changing their thought process, assist in balance displacement or induce temporary pain and motor disfunction. The intention is that after the distraction strike…the officer has a small window of opportunity to disengage from the subject and apply some kind of control technique or even withdraw to a safer distance to deploy any other piece of protective equipment such as a baton or PAVA or taser.”

In this case-

1. There was no ‘resistance’ from my client – quite the opposite.
2. There was no need for ‘balance displacement’ – my client was already on the ground.
3. There was no need for the officer to create an ‘opportunity to disengage’ – my client had already been backing away from PC Kirkwood, before obeying the officer’s instruction to put himself on the ground.
4. There was absolutely no need for PC Kirkwood to ‘withdraw’ in order to ‘deploy his taser’ – he was already doing so.

In summary, there is no justification for a ‘distraction strike’ if the subject, here my client, was not in fact doing anything that he needed to be distracted from (unless the Officer wanted to distract Scott from his obedience to the Officer’s commands, perhaps?). Indeed, had the Officer waited but seconds more – shielded from any surprise attack by his distance, his elevation and the taser gun in his hands – then Scott would have been fully on the floor with both of his hands behind his back. It is hard to imagine a subject more compliant to an officer’s commands than my client, nor a greater power imbalance between a submissive individual on his hands and knees and a standing officer armed with a taser weapon.

In terms of adding insult to injury this complaint decision – which I am now actively appealing to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) on behalf of my client – was another, metaphorical but still very painful ‘kick in the face’ – not only for Scott but frankly for all of us. Abuse of power needs to be curbed by the Police taking robust action against rogue Officers – not bending over backwards to find ways to exonerate and excuse them. When the Policing profession fails to police itself, it is failing in its primary duty to society.

I will probably never fail to be amazed by the amount of times that Professional Standards investigators will actively harm the public good and besmirch the reputation of the Police by absolving Officers of misconduct and major breaches of the Code of Ethics on the basis of such bureaucratic double-speak as that second type of ‘distraction strike’ and by reaching decisions which are wilfully perverse in the face of the evidence, hoping, it seems to demoralise and drive away complainants.

Thankfully, neither Scott nor I are demoralised in this case – indeed, we are all the more determined to hold the Officer to proper account, and trust that the IOPC will do its duty in this regard; an act which in the long term can help restore the reputation and legitimacy of the Policing profession, as well as delivering justice to my client.