Cambridgeshire Police to pay £12,500 to private medic after wrongful arrest.

Cambridgeshire Police will pay £12,500 in compensation to Brian Norkett, a registered private medic, after wrongfully arresting him for impersonating a police officer while assisting at a roadside collision. Officers ignored his lawful role and detained him despite no criminal conduct.

My client Brian Norkett is a director of a private ambulance company, AMS UK.  What follows is the story of how Cambridgeshire Police – in effect – attempted to criminalise him for stopping to help at the scene of a road traffic collision, and how my team and I were able to help him to win both vindication and compensation. Brian was principally represented by my excellent colleague Aidan Walley (you can read about some of Aidan’s other cases here and here).   

In January 2023, Brian was driving a company owned rapid response vehicle, which was marked with a white and green battenburg pattern and equipped with emergency blue lights.  Furthermore, he was attired in a ‘high vis’ jacket with green battenburg patterning around the waist and arms and the word ‘Medic’ visible on the front and rear. 

At approximately 4pm, Brian was returning home from a job in the vicinity of Peterborough when he noticed that several vehicles were blocking a lane on the slip road, as two cars had collided. Brian also noticed that several pedestrians were out in the carriageway and he was concerned for their safety as it was dark, and they were not wearing high vis clothing.

Accordingly, as he had done many times before, Brian activated his blue lights and stopped behind the other vehicles. He got out and spoke to the other drivers, and on finding that the Police had not yet been called, he called the Police himself, identified himself to the operator and explained that he was a medic and that his car was illuminated with blue lights. The operator told Brian to continue as he was. Brian helpfully placed cones to block the lane and assessed the drivers and passengers from the collision vehicles – thankfully, none required medical treatment.

Shortly thereafter a Police car arrived, containing two Officers of Cambridgeshire Constabulary – PC Whybray and PC Plume. PC Plume spoke to the other drivers, whilst PC Whybray approached Brian and asked “Is it private?” indicating Brian’s vehicle. Brian confirmed that it was indeed a private ambulance, not NHS. 

PC Whybray then told Brian to leave.  Brian began to move towards his vehicle to do so, but then PC Whybray approached him again and demanded his details under the Road Traffic Act, without specifying upon which section he was relying. In the circumstances, Brian was aware that he was not obliged to give the Officer his details as he had not:

• been involved in the collision
• witnessed it. 

He therefore declined to do so and got back into his vehicle, intending to leave.  

Before Brian could start the engine, however, PC Whybray grabbed hold of his hand, squeezing it tightly. Brian was holding his vehicle keys in this hand, and the Officer’s actions caused one of the keys to press into Brian’s flesh. Understandably, Brian swore out in pain.  PC Whybray then immediately arrested him for an alleged breach of Section 5 of the Public Order Act.

Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, under the heading “Harassment, Alarm or Distress” provides as follows –

A person is guilty of an offence if he—

(a) uses threatening or abusive words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour, or

(b) displays any writing, sign or other visible representation which is threatening or abusive,

within the hearing or sight of a person likely to be caused harassment, alarm or distress thereby.

Regrettably, Harassment, Alarm and Distress are the Three Horsemen of Wrongful Arrest in modern day Britain, and the Fourth is Police Authoritarianism.

Brian was understandably in a state of shock. He was a man of entirely good character, with no previous experience of arrest or Police custody. Now, however, having stopped like a Good Samaritan at the scene of a road side crash to offer his assistance, and having done nothing more than refuse a Police Officer’s unlawful demand for his personal details, Brian found himself being handcuffed. He was tipped over the precipice from shock into disbelief when PC Whybray informed him that he was now also under arrest for Impersonating a Police Officer.

Section 90 of the Police Act 1996, under the heading “Impersonation Etc” provides as follows-

(1) Any person who with intent to deceive impersonates a member of a police force or special constable, or makes any statement or does any act calculated falsely to suggest that he is such a member or constable, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding six months or to a fine not exceeding level 5 on the standard scale, or to both.

(2) Any person who, not being a constable, wears any article of police uniform in circumstances where it gives him an appearance so nearly resembling that of a member of a police force as to be calculated to deceive shall be guilty of an offence…

(3) Any person who, not being a member of a police force or special constable, has in his possession any article of police uniform shall, unless he proves that he obtained possession of that article lawfully and has possession of it for a lawful purpose, be guilty of an offence…

(4) In this section—

(a) “article of police uniform” means any article of uniform or any distinctive badge or mark or document of identification usually issued to members of police forces or special constables, or anything having the appearance of such an article, badge, mark or document.

Brian was taken under arrest to Peterborough Police Station.  He was produced before the Custody Sergeant and the circumstances of his arrest were recorded in the Custody Record as follows –

“It is alleged that following attendance at an RTC [road traffic collision] they have found the detainee using a vehicle with emergency lights at the scene. When challenged in regards to this the detainee refused to provide details, has sworn at officers and then resisted arrest”.

After several miserable hours in a cell, Brian was taken for interview under caution, during which interview it was incorrectly alleged that he had attempted to drive away after being told that he was under arrest.

Shortly thereafter, Brian was ‘refused charge’ and released from custody.  Sanity, it seemed, had finally prevailed – but of course Brian should never have been arrested in regard to any of these offences in the first place.

Following Brian’s release, he found out that after his arrest an Officer had called Brian’s wife to come and collect the company vehicle from the scene.  On her arrival, however, Brian’s wife also encountered PC Whybray, who refused to release the car to her and threatened to arrest her as well. My client’s wife later had to call 101 and was told that the vehicle had been taken to a Police compound and Brian had to travel there the following day to collect it – but found that the dashcam had been removed.  

Yet Another Complaint ‘Blue Wash’?

Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) statutory guidance stresses the importance of handling complaints with a ‘customer focused’ approach, with the complaint handler providing satisfactory detail to the complainant as to the rationale for their decision making. Regrettably, the general ethos of Police Professional Standard Department complaint handlers (PSD) is the opposite – they adopt a colleague-focused approach with the apparent purpose of advocating for the officer, belittling and criticising the complainant, and finding reasons to dismiss the complaint.

Cambridgeshire PSDs initial response to my client’s complaint was both negative and obtuse – employing circular logic to justify PC Whybray’s actions and failing to properly explain the ‘rationale’ of the complaint handler’s decision. They stated that Brian’s complaint was “not upheld”, although PC Whybray required ‘learning’ by means of Reflective Practice, for unspecified reasons. That opaque phrase – “Reflective Practice” –  is as meaningless as it sounds; perhaps an attempt by PSD to make it look as though they are doing something, when in fact they are doing nothing at all. In my opinion, it just signifies an empty box-ticking exercise on an annual appraisal sheet.

My team therefore assisted Brian in successfully appealing the outcome of this decision to the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (OPCC) for Cambridgeshire. The OPCC are the junior partners of the IOPC when it comes to reviewing internal Police complaint reports, delegated to deal with those complaints considered to be below the top levels of severity. The OPCC concluded that the complaint handling to date had been neither reasonable nor proportionate and recommended that the matter be fully reinvestigated by PSD.

This did indeed result in a new complaint report being produced – but sadly not a new outcome. The PSD did not open the doors of its closed mind when readdressing the complaint and the ‘rationale’ for the decision-making it now provided was as full of pro-Police bias as I have wearily come to expect.

Whereas the OPCC had been critical on multiple grounds of PC Whybray’s arrest of Brian for an alleged Section 5 Public Order Act offence, Cambridgeshire PSD rejected all these concerns.  The OPCC pointed out that this alleged offence – which was simply based on Brian using the ‘F- word’ when PC Whybray had attempted to take his keys – had occurred when Brian was sitting in his vehicle, with no members of the public in earshot, and they expressed scepticism that either of the two officers present could legitimately claim to have been ”harassed, alarmed or distressed” by the use of this fairly innocuous and commonplace swear word, with the OPCC correctly observing “that police officers in the course of their duties regularly experience far worse language and behaviour without resorting to arrest…….”.  This is of course quite correct, and I have written before about how merely using a swear word is not a criminal offence. Indeed, this point was brought into stark contrast in the present case: body worn video footage later caught PC Whybray’s colleague PC Plume using exactly the same ‘obscenity’ i.e. the F- word, but on that occasion PC Whybray was not triggered to arrest his colleague.

How did the PSD get their officer out of this one?  Well, firstly their complaint handler had to admit that “PC Whybray does not appear to be harassed, alarmed or distressed by [Brian’s] comment” but then made the following pivot –

“It is worth noting that the camera footage shows that a member of the public involved in the RTC is in close proximity, likely heard Mr Norkett’s comments and was likely to have been alarmed to  hear Mr Norkett speak to a police officer in this way……[whereas] PC Plume’s use of profanity was used in a one-to-one conversation with a colleague and there were no members of the public present that it could have caused harassment, alarm or distress to.”

The reasoning employed here by Cambridgeshire PSD is indicative of a blatant double standard – in effect, police officers are allowed to swear, members of the public are not, and swearing at a police officer is deemed to be some kind of secular blasphemy ‘likely’ to be shocking to all right- thinking members of the public. Note also the way that the complaint handler, lacking any evidence to support his assertions, not only claims that a member of the public probably overheard Brian’s swear word – but also purports to get inside the head of that member of the public and conclude that they were probably “harassed, alarmed or distressed.”  Here is the problem with requiring PSD to explain its rationale – you are forced to have to contemplate such manipulative and mendacious so-called ‘reasoning’ at this particular specimen.

In regards to the demand for my client’s personal details – which began before even the officers’ accounts allege that he was under suspicion of having committed any criminal offence – the PSD report purported to justify this by reference to Section 164 of the Road Traffic Act, which provides police constables with the power to require the production of a driving licence, and in certain cases, dates of birth from any of the following persons – 

1. A person driving a motor vehicle on a road.
2. A person whom a constable has reasonable cause to believe to have been the driver of a motor vehicle at a time when an accident occurred owing to his presence on a road.
3. A person whom a constable has reasonable cause to believe to have committed an offence in relation to the use of a motor vehicle on the road.

Of course, the point here is that my client was not driving his vehicle when the interactions with PC Whybray occurred. He had already parked and exited his vehicle before the officer arrived at the scene.  He was challenged for his details before he had returned to his car.  He was therefore to all intents and purposes a pedestrian and not liable to have to provide his details under this section of the Road Traffic Act.

In regard to the arrest under S.90 Police Act – my client’s car was fully insured to utilise blue lights and he himself had blue light advance driving qualifications. His jacket was clearly labelled ‘Medic’ and it was in that role that he was at the scene. The Police might with more justification arrest all of those horse riders or motorcycle drivers who wear bibs printed with the world “Polite” in such a font that from a distance it looks like the word “Police”… However, the blatantly abusive act of arresting Brian for ‘impersonating a police officer’ was simply breezily skipped over by PSD, who purported to hide behind their ‘finding’ that Brian’s arrest for the Public Order Offence of using a ‘naughty word’ to such a Very Important Person as a police constable, was justified.

As I have said throughout, I do not believe that Cambridgeshire PSD were objectively examining the legitimacy of PC Whybray’s actions; rather they were looking for reasons to excuse his actions, and to reject Brian’s complaint, which is exactly what they did.

Lights Out: Suing Cambridgeshire Constabulary

Matters did not have to rest there, however. Ably advised by my colleague Aidan, Brian was determined to hold Cambridgeshire Police to account.  As the OPCC had observed “the removal of a person’s liberty should be a matter of serious consideration and only used when necessary.”

That is exactly the point here; a personality clash may have flared up between Brian and PC Whybray, but obstruction of an officer’s ego is emphatically not a ground for arrest – even though it is, in reality, the motivation for so very many.

We submitted a detailed letter of claim on behalf of Brian, which taught the Police the seriousness – and illegality – of their actions: in response they admitted liability for false imprisonment, assault and battery and trespass to goods against my client.

Ultimately, the Police agreed to pay Brian £12,500 damages, plus his legal costs, and off the back of this settlement Aidan was also able to assist Brian in making a successful application to ACRO (Criminal Records Office) to have his arrest data expunged from the Police National Computer system.

It should never have come to this. Brian was doing his best, as a medical professional, to assist the emergency services and help the public – and instead was treated like a criminal. He will now think twice before ever stopping to assist in such scenarios again; the Police have lost a valuable ally.

Who, in the ethical sense, was really ‘impersonating’ an Officer here, we may ask – Brian or PC Whybray?

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