Cashback: Police Forced To Pay Up For Sainsbury’s Store Brutality

Police resources are rightly acknowledged to be strained on that stressful ‘thin blue line’ between society’s law and order. But what also needs to be highlighted is the contribution which the ‘thin red line’ in many Officers’ heads play in turning peaceful situations into wholly avoidable confrontations, which not only, immediately, eat up Police time and resources, but cause lasting harm to members of the public.

My client Liam is a self-employed curtain wall fixer, whose job takes him up and down the country. In February 2020 he was working on a construction site in Birmingham.

One evening, at ‘half time’ in a football match which Liam was watching in the pub, he popped into a local Sainsburys store in order to get some cash by way of ‘cash back’, buying some chewing gum to facilitate this process, a total transaction which cost him £50.64.

The next morning, Liam established that two £50.64 transactions had been charged by Sainsburys to his bank account rather than just one. Puzzled, he called his bank to check the situation and they confirmed that this was correct. The bank representative who Liam spoke to encouraged him to return to the store to obtain a refund on the second (clearly inaccurate) transaction and issued him with two authorisation codes to identify the two separate transactions and help facilitate his refund request.

Accordingly, during a break from work, Liam called into the Sainsburys store to obtain his refund. He explained the issue to the store manager whose response was obstructive/ suspicious rather than being helpful. All the manager said he would do was check the CCTV in relation to Liam’s original visit to the store.

My client encouraged him to do just that, to which the manager complained about Liam’s ‘attitude’. Liam – who was conscious of the fact that he was due back in work – complained that the manager was wasting his time, to which the manager said that Liam was wasting his time. Increasingly annoyed, Liam protested that he had effectively been “robbed” of £50 by the Sainsburys’ staff, at which the manager, in a response not likely to win any customer service performance awards, responded “Fuck off, just get out” and ordered Liam to leave the store.

Liam was flabbergasted at the manager’s attitude and refused to leave until he had received a full refund. In response, the Sainsburys’ manager called the Police to report “an offensive customer in the store”.

Liam was not perturbed by this, and waited for the Police to attend, expecting that once they had heard the full story, they would assist him in resolving the dispute. It was all a storm in a teacup as far as he was concerned.

Shortly afterwards, four uniformed Officers of West Midlands Police (WMP) arrived at the store.

Liam was approached by PC Mulvale and explained to him exactly what had happened, and what the bank had said.

PC Mulvale was immediately dismissive and asserted “No bank can authorise a shop to give you your money back” and was uninterested in Liam’s explanation that he had authorisation codes from his bank.

As the Officer continued to lecture Liam that “A bank does not have the authority to tell a shop…” Liam said “Listen mate, he should just give me it!”

Liam’s frustrated, but actually perfectly reasonable comment, did not go down well with the Officer. It is sad to say that many Police Officers consider it to be tantamount to a criminal offence for a member of the public to interrupt their ego whilst talking, and PC Mulvale now raised his voice menacingly, telling Liam “Interrupt me again and you won’t have an excuse to talk to me again, do you understand?”

Liam was surprised by the Officer’s aggressive reaction and responded “Listen mate, I know my rights”.

Once again, experience shows that even a relative passive and perfectly reasonable comment like that, is a potentially dangerous thing to say around an Officer with an inflamed ego: PC Mulvale now lunged forward, grabbed Liam’s right arm and began to push him out of the store saying “Right, your right is to leave the shop under Breach of the Peace”.

Several of the other Officers now also laid hands on Liam and variously attempted to push/pull him out of the store. When Liam attempted to pull free of the Officer’s grasp, PC Mulvale said “Now you’re under arrest for breach of the peace” and told Liam to put his hands out so that he could handcuff him. When Liam refused, PC Mulvale took out his PAVA incapacitant and sprayed Liam directly in the face with it. My client simply couldn’t believe what was happening to him.

Liam, whose eyes were now beginning to burn from the spray, told the Officer that he was “a muppet”, as the assault upon him continued. PC Mulvale now handcuffed Liam’s right wrist, and attempted to take him to the ground with a leg sweep, whilst another of the Officer’s colleagues, PC Hollies, punched Liam twice in the left side of his head.

PC Mulvale then delivered a ‘knee strike’ to Liam’s groin, whereupon he and his colleagues overpowered a totally perplexed Liam and took him to the floor.

Liam was restrained and handcuffed on the floor and now accused of “Resisting arrest”.

Evidently having got Liam where he wanted him, PC Mulvale then resumed his lecture, saying to my client “If only you shut your mouth we could have talked about it. I’m not here to be called a fucking muppet by you, do you understand?”

Liam was then brought to his feet and marched outside. He was bundled into the cage section in the rear of a Police van, and whilst he was waiting for the van to move off, overheard one of the female Officers saying to her colleagues “That was a bit over the top wasn’t it?”

Liam couldn’t quite believe what had happened to him. He was of course already late in terms of his return to work and was being taken away into Custody in significant pain and discomfort – all apparently because he had had the temerity to request a £50 refund from Sainsburys.

Liam was taken to a Police Station where he was searched, had his belongings taken away from him and was locked in a cell. He was subsequently seen by a Force Medical Examiner. Liam’s eyes were red and watery from the PAVA, he had angry red marks on his wrists from the handcuffs and a ‘ringing’ and muffled hearing, in his left ear (the side of his head where PC Hollies had struck him).

Shortly after Liam’s arrest, PC Mulvale and his colleague PC Hollies made statements regarding the incident in which they falsely asserted, that Liam’s behaviour was aggressive and that he had said “I am not fucking going anywhere”, “I am not going to be fucking arrested” and “Your PAVA is shit”.

You may also be interested to note in passing that PC Hollies described the punches that he threw as “distraction strikes”, a Police term of art often employed by Officers seeking to ‘distract’ Courts and complaint investigators from the truth… a subject which I addressed at length in this recent blog post.

Liam was brought out of his cell to be interviewed and was told that he was currently under arrest for assaulting an Officer, resisting arrest and breach of the peace. He gave a full and truthful account of what had occurred, and denied acting unlawfully. He was then accused of hitting and spitting at PC Mulvale and possibly fracturing the Officer’s wrist. My client was indignant and protested that PC Mulvale should be ‘done for perjury’.

Liam had fully expected camera footage of the incident, from Sainsbury’s or from Officers’ body worn cameras, to be available at the time of his interview – but despite the fact that his interview did not take place until 12 hours after his arrest, no such footage was shown to him. Liam was disturbed by this, as he knew that such footage would have proven that he had done nothing wrong and that the Officers’ accusations against him were false. He therefore insisted that the Police take steps to secure the footage.

Eventually, after 13 hours in Custody, Liam was released “Under investigation”. He then had to take a taxi back to his hotel, losing further good money after bad.

The next morning, Liam awoke to find spots of blood and a yellow discharge from his left ear on his pillow. On his return home to Liverpool several days later (after he had completed the work he was contracted for in Birmingham) Liam attended a walk-in centre where he was advised that he might have suffered a perforated left ear drum. Fortunately, this painful condition resolved relatively quickly.

A few days later, he did at least hear some good news: the Officer who had interviewed him, called Liam and told him that no further action was going to be taken against him. The question which Liam could now legitimately pose was; but was any action going to be taken against the Officers who had assaulted and wrongfully arrested him?

How I helped Liam Prove his Case

Investigating this case on behalf of Liam, I established that whilst he was in Custody, a West Midlands Police Sergeant had attended the Sainsbury’s store and used her body camera to record the CCTV footage of the incident, from the shop’s monitor screen. However, this CCTV footage did not contain any audio.

What did have full audio and video of the incident (and its build up) was the Sainsbury’s staff’s own body worn camera footage, which was separately obtained by West Midlands Police, and reviewed by the main officer investigating the criminal charges against Liam, and his supervising Sergeant.

But, following their decision to ‘drop’ these charges, that body camera footage was immediately destroyed in contravention of a Force policy which required such material of “evidential value” to be retained for at least 6 months.

However, well aware of the difficulties which the Police experience when it comes to preserving video footage which contradicts or incriminates their Officers, I had taken steps when first instructed by Liam to independently contact Sainsbury’s Data Protection Office and to obtain/ preserve their staff’s body camera footage before it was lost forever.

In August 2020, Liam lodged a complaint to West Midlands Police about the incident, but the subsequent investigation dragged on for such a length of time that he was actually obliged to make a second complaint about the time-delay of the first.

The Cartoonish Bias of the Police Complaint System

Finally, in November 2021 (i.e. almost 18 months after the incident) West Midland Police’s Professional Standards Department (PSD) completed their outcome report – although to add further insult to injury, Liam was not notified of its findings until late January 2022.

Unsurprisingly, because this was a complaint against the Police, it was, in this first instance, dismissed by the Police. I have written before at length about the intrinsic dysfunctionality of having the Police investigate themselves in this regard and the almost cartoonishly biased culture of most PSD departments.

What seems to matter most in these PSD investigations is not the distinct details which make up the subject matter of each complaint, but rather the uniform fact that the subject of each of these complaints are by definition other Officers and colleagues of the investigators.

Like a smiling assassin, the courteous covering letter which introduced the report reassured Liam that “[We] are grateful for you taking your time to share your concerns, which are important to West Midlands Police. Complaints against the Police enable the Force to identify when we have got it wrong and allow us to try and make it right…”. The letter went on to promise a “fair, open and thorough investigation.”

Sadly, what such politeness means in translation is this – “Let us pay-lip service to helping you, whilst we find excuses to help the Officers.”

The Complaint Report went on to deem Liam “Aggressive, abusive and threatening”, and to assert/ conclude that all of the Police Officers had acted “in good faith”, that their decision to arrest Liam was “justified” and all their uses of force were “necessary and reasonable” against a ‘violent’ individual.

As is ever the case with such investigations, wherever there was doubt, the complaint handler gave the benefit of it to his colleagues rather than the civilian. It was established that neither PC Mulvale nor PC Hollies had activated their own Body Worn Cameras at any point, despite this being a mandatory requirement of WMP policy whenever there is a use of force by Officers, but this was censured only as a “learning and development” requirement i.e not even a ‘slap on the wrist’ just a bullet- point for their next appraisal form.

Of the four Officers present only one had activated his Body Camera, and this only towards the end of the incident, capturing a mere 1 ½ minutes of largely inconclusive footage which was, nevertheless, twisted and interpreted by the Complaint investigator in favour of the Officers wherever possible.

What the “thorough” Complaint Investigation had not bothered to request, however, was a further copy of the Sainsbury’s staff body camera footage – which, whilst the Police had deleted their own copy, still existed because of my early efforts on Liam’s behalf to get Sainsbury’s to share/ preserve it.

As with many people who have never experienced the negativity of the Police Complaint process before, Liam was left feeling frustrated and demoralised and could only conclude that the ‘investigation’ was nothing more than a cover up.

Accordingly, with my advice and assistance, in February 2022, Liam lodged an appeal against the complaint outcome to the Police Watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

The process then dragged on for over another year, until on 31 March 2023 the IOPC finally rode in on their white charger, declaring that the original West Midlands Police Complaint Investigation was “not reasonable and proportionate” and that a reinvestigation of Liam’s complaint was required.

Getting A Real Refund

Whilst this was the right outcome, it was deeply disappointing that it took the IOPC as long as it did to reach this conclusion, and of course the underlying problem is that a fair and proper Complaint Investigation in the first place by WMP themselves would never have reached the conclusion it did. The footage which I had helped my client to preserve, from the Sainsburys’ staff’s body cameras, proved the truth of his account and the falsehoods which had been told by the Officers in an apparent attempt to frame him and excuse themselves.

Despite the passage of time – we are now fast approaching 18 months since the IOPC decision – Liam still awaits the outcome of WMP’s “reinvestigation”, one which they are no doubt conducting with gritted teeth. Liam is not holding his breath, and understandably has been left with no faith in the Police Complaint system as a whole. He does not think that West Midlands Police have any real intention of holding PC Mulvale and his colleagues to account. I cannot say that I disagree with him.

However, the truth of Liam’s account of what occurred has been verified in very real terms, by West Midland Police’s response to the civil Court proceedings which I instituted on behalf of Liam, and which I have been able to push through on his behalf proactively and independently of the sclerotic complaints system.

Having secured an admission from the Chief Constable that Liam was wrongfully arrested and assaulted by his Officers, I am very pleased to confirm that WMP have now agreed to pay my client damages of £22,500, plus his legal costs; a settlement figure almost four times greater than their initial offer of £6,000- a final “refund” which reflects my client’s claim for aggravated damages, further inflated by the Police’s infuriating and ultimately self-defeating handling of his legitimate complaint.

Once again, the conclusion we are left with at the end of this case, is that the Police are ultimately far happier to put public money where their own mouth should be. As satisfying as it is for Liam to receive the compensation to which he is entitled, he continues to be denied the apology and the condemnation of the bullying Officers PC Mulvale and PC Hollies, which I believe the Chief Constable of West Midlands Police owes to him.