In the early hours of the morning, one day in the summer of 2023, my client Neil was at home, awaiting the arrival of a female friend.
On hearing the sound of a car crashing, he went outside to discover that his friend had hit a parked car; fortunately without injury to anybody.
Shortly thereafter, several Officers of Derbyshire Constabulary arrived at the scene in response to the road traffic collision, including PC Scales and PC Hougham-Slade.
PC Hougham-Slade seemed to assume that Neil had been in the car with his friend. Neil clarified that he wasn’t and then innocuously asked the Officer if he had a ‘light’ for Neil’s cigarette stating “I am dying for a fag mate. Got a fag behind me ear and can’t even get a light”.
PC Hougham-Slade asked what Neil had just said and his friend (correctly) clarified that Neil had said that he had a fag behind his ear but couldn’t get a light.
PC Hougham-Slade then – completely unnecessarily, and almost as if he was looking for a reason to pick an argument with my client – started to lecture Neil, telling him “Fag is also a derogatory term to homosexuals, so if you are going to start making comments like that…”.
Neil was taken aback at this bizarre intervention and as the Officer again warned him against “using that language”, notwithstanding that it was clear to all involved that Neil had been referring to a cigarette not a person, tempers rose.
Neil asked the Officer not to “Fucking start” on him and then when the Officer persisted in telling him to stop swearing, Neil did, perhaps a little ill-advisedly say the word ‘faggot’.
In response, PC Hougham-Slade immediately grabbed hold of Neil, and the other Officers, including PC Scales, ‘piled in’ as well. Neil was pushed and pulled, menaced with CS gas spray, and struck repeatedly in the face by PC Hougham- Slade. The Officers then forced Neil down across the bonnet of his friend’s car, and handcuffed him to the rear.
PC Hougham-Slade now told Neil that he was under arrest on suspicion of a Section 4A Public Order offence.
Section 4A (1) of the Public Order Act 1986 states as follows –
A person is guilty of an offence if, with intent to cause a person harassment, alarm or distress he –
- Uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour or
- Displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening, abusive or insulting.
Thereby causing that or another person harassment, alarm or distress.
It has long been held by the Courts that Police Officers on the front line of the thin blue line need to display reasonably thick skin when it comes to unpleasant but ‘everyday’ swear words used in their presence – especially when, in this case, they have provoked the offensive language by lecturing someone for using a ‘slur’ when in fact everyone involved knew that the word had been used with a totally different and harmless intent.
Unfortunately, once, as is often the case, the Officers had started to escalate the situation – “weaponizing” Section 4 so as to arrest Neil for disrespecting them, or at worse, committing mere and definitely non-criminal “rudeness” – they doubled down on their aggressive behaviour rather than diffusing tensions.
Continuing to protest about his treatment – but not physically resisting in any way – Neil was taken to a nearby Police van, where PC Scales shoved him in the back, double- handed and without any warning, propelling Neil into the ‘cage section’ of the vehicle. With his own hands handcuffed behind his back, and therefore unable to break his fall, Neil suffered injury to his legs and what is worse his head, which hit the inside door of the prisoner’s cage.
Still handcuffed to the rear, Neil was unable to get to his feet and sit down, and remained on the floor of the van in pain and discomfort during the ensuing journey to a local Police Station.
The Custody Record recorded the circumstances of the arrest as follows –
“Report of RTC [Road Traffic Collision] attended. DP [Detained Person] near the RTC (not involved) made a homophobic slur and warned by Police. Started swearing at Police and called Officer ‘a faggot’. Arrested for S4A (homophobic aggravated).”
Neil was processed and incarcerated in a cell, later that day brought out of his cell and interviewed and not released until almost 14 hours after his arrival at the Station.
Neil was released on Police bail but a few weeks later was advised that no further action would be taken against him.
Meanwhile, in attempting to disguise his own crime, PC Scales had told Neil that he himself had tripped and fallen, whilst telling his Police colleagues that Neil had simply fallen over. In the bad old days of Policing, when the only witnesses to abuse of power were tight- lipped colleagues, PC Scales might have gotten away with this; but the body camera that he had been wearing captured incontrovertible proof of the Officer’s violence.
Following his release, Neil was contacted by Derbyshire Constabulary’s Professional Standards Department who informed him that PC Scales was under investigation for assault.
Indeed, PC Scales was subsequently charged and in March 2024, after initially denying the offence, pleaded guilty to assaulting my client, receiving a conditional discharge and a fine.
He was also subsequently found guilty of gross misconduct, and would have been dismissed from the Police Force had he not already resigned by that point.
PC Scales has, quite rightly and like other Officers before him, paid the professional price for his abuse of power. Those whose job it is to uphold the law must, by definition, never be above it.
I presented a detailed civil claim for compensation on behalf of Neil to Derbyshire Constabulary and the Force admitted that not only was PC Scales’s gross act of violence unlawful, but so too was PC Hougham- Slade’s initial arrest of Neil, and the force used in handcuffing him in the first place.
The role of Police Officers is to police our streets – not our language, as if they are the teachers and everyone else children in their classroom.
Neil will now receive £15,000 damages, plus his legal costs. On this occasion, I am pleased to credit Derbyshire Constabulary for taking decisive action against PC Scales and likewise for not unnecessarily drawing out my client’s claim for fair compensation. More Police Forces should take a leaf out of their book, in this regard.
My client’s name has been changed.
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