Author: iaingould

The ‘clang factor’ is the phrase which is often used when legal professionals are trying to describe the disturbing impact of the beginning of a period of false imprisonment upon a person – an onomatopoeic invocation of the sound of a cell door slamming shut upon your liberty.  In the leading case of Thompson & Hsu v the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis [1997] the Court of Appeal enshrined the principle that compensation for a period of false imprisonment should be assessed with each passing hour on a reducing scale; in other words the compensation awarded for the first hour of your loss of liberty will be greater than the amount awarded for your second hour of detention, and that in turn will be greater than the amount awarded for the third hour (and so forth).  Applying this reducing scale, the Judges in Thompson found that for a straightforward case of false imprisonment the appropriate sum of compensation for 1 hour of detention would be approximately £1,300 (updated for inflation and subsequent Court rulings), but that rather than this being a flat rate leading to compensation for 24 hours false imprisonment of over £30,000 the reducing scale matrix would mean that the average compensation for an entire day of false imprisonment will only be around £8,000 (updated). 

The reasoning behind this approach is that it is the initial shock of the wrongful deprivation of your liberty which most upsets and disturbs you (the quotation from the guidance in Thompson is as follows “The Plaintiff is entitled to have a higher rate of compensation for the initial shock of being arrested”)  and that as each hour goes by thereafter the shock (or clang) factor is diminishing and you are coming more to terms with what has happened to you i.e. this infringement of your civil liberty has become less ‘painful’, blunted by the mundanity and monotony of incarceration.

There is a certain logic to this form of approach in the assessment of damages for false imprisonment, but I know from long experience talking to people from all walks of life who have suffered unlawful arrests that the ‘clang’ of the cell door is often only the beginning and not the high point of their anguish; often the reverberations of that noise echo for a long time after a person’s release, in the corridors of their mind, leading to long term mental health issues.

Or, to put it another way, handcuffs can be quickly removed, but mental chains last longer. 

The question this poses, given the way that the Court of Appeal guidance on the assessment of damages is structured, is whether it is possible to get a fair compensation award for the long term effects of false imprisonment – and the answer, as I will explain below, is that it is – with the help of expert psychological/psychiatric evidence.

Wrongful arrest and imprisonment has been described as “An extraordinarily stressful psychological trauma” that can cause “serious psychological impairment” (Robert I Simon MD Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, Volume 21, number 4, 1993)

“Being unexpectedly wrenched from ones normal, expectable existence and plunged into the sheer terror of imprisonment without apparent reason is a highly traumatic experience.  This extreme, abrupt discontinuity in a person’s life experience is capable of producing psychiatric disorders…”  

(Simon)

Although I am not a psychiatrist, the thousands of cases of wrongful arrest which I have handled over the course of my career have left me very familiar with the mental scars which can be caused by such events and which frequently include the following –

• Flashbacks and nightmares; the rewind and replay button that you can’t control.

• The previously innocuous sound of a knock on the door becoming something which now causes a person a chilling stab of fear, if not a full blown panic attack, for the ‘go to’ assumption in the mind of a person injured in this way, is no longer that the visitor is probably a courier come to drop off an Amazon parcel, but rather the Police come to take them away. 

• A lingering sense of guilt and shame, of having become socially ‘dirty’ and diminished in people’s eyes by this experience of being made a suspected criminal, irrespective of the fact that you know yourself to be entirely innocent.

• A loss of the sense of security that most of us take for granted in our lives caused by the loss of control resulting from arrest, incarceration and accusation.  This can lead to long term anxiety conditions.  And all of this is exacerbated if the wrongful arrest has occurred in a person’s home – turning what should be safest of safe spaces for them into the arena of their trauma, the ordinary surroundings of their home a daily reminder of what occurred. 

• Unwanted personality change – in the form of feelings of paranoia, becoming ‘hypervigilant’ and anger management issues, including shortness of temper/irritability. 

• Being made to feel ‘guilty until proven innocent’, in a reverse on normal expectations of societal fair play.

• Feelings of isolation/social withdrawal.

• Strain on relationships.

• Loss of faith in the law and in particular loss of trust in the Police, who have turned from being a protective to a persecuting force in the person’s life.

• Anger towards authority and a feeling of being betrayed by ‘the system’. 

• Long term depression often also sets in, flowing from the helplessness and sense of injustice which people experience during those tormenting, powerless hours of fear and frustration in a cell. 

• In addition, physical symptoms can flow from this psychological harm – including raised blood pressure, sweating, headaches, dizziness and nausea.

Going beyond a hampering of day to day activities and an impairment of enjoyment in life, very serious consequences flowing directly from these symptoms can include self harm, suicidal thoughts and long term absence from work, potentially causing significant financial loss and career disruption.

As Dr Robert Simon cogently observes (in the article which I have already quoted), comparing the impact of imprisonment upon hostages on the one hand and wrongfully arrested persons on the other –

“Hostages are not stigmatised because they are viewed as being unjustly imprisoned by antisocial individuals operating outside of the criminal justice system. The false arrest of a person by duly empowered authorities entrusted with protecting the public reduces and uncomfortable psychological dissonance. Thus, the person who is falsely arrested may continue to be viewed with suspicion despite his or her proven innocence”.

Any wrongful arrest is also, in effect, a wrongful accusation of criminal behaviour – even if the arrest process does not actually culminate in a criminal charge, let alone a conviction.  This in itself is a deeply destabilising experience for people whether or not they have previously experienced arrest for any reason. 

As another academic paper puts it –

“It is not unreasonable to assume there is an extra layer of resentment, frustration, confusion, anger and dissonance involved when the individual knows they were wrongfully accused”

(Samantha Kay Brooks and Neil Greenberg, Med Sci Law 2021 Jan: 61 (1): 44-54)

My casework has also demonstrated to me that there is a very significant difference between the experience of being arrested in a scenario in which you can come to terms with the fact that the Police were legitimately investigating a third party’s accusation against you (i.e. any malice originated from that third party) as opposed to being arrested because of malice or incompetence on behalf of the Police or the Court system i.e. where the agents of justice are themselves the bad actors and originators of the crisis.

By way of an illustration of this, I turn to a case which I have recently settled, on behalf of a client whom I will identify as Sajid. 

Sajid was originally arrested in January 2023 following an accusation that he had been involved in a ‘road rage’ incident, and was thereafter detained for some four and a half hours before being released on bail. 

In December 2023, the same Police Force arrested Sajid again – but this time entirely unlawfully. Sajid was informed that he was under arrest for failing to attend a Court hearing, about which he knew nothing.

He was kept in Police Custody overnight before being transferred to the Court in handcuffs, where he was further detained in the Court cells. When his case was eventually heard later that afternoon, it was established that the Court Summons had been sent to an incorrect address as a result of a Police error.  My client had indeed known nothing about the missed Court hearing for which he had been arrested.

In support of Sajid’s claim, I arranged for him to be examined by a Consultant Clinical Psychologist who assessed the impact which this wrongful arrest had had upon him and determined that he had developed a condition of Specific Phobia and depression as a result of the incident. 

Sajid’s mental health difficulties following the incident included the following–

• Struggling to fall asleep because he was thinking a great deal about what had happened.

• Loss of weight due to a loss of appetite presumed to be relating from stress.

• Anxiety about the Police – articulated in the phrase “They will come to get me”.

• Feelings of paranoia about the Police – that they were now “Out to get me”.    These feelings of fear and paranoia were manifesting themselves in Sajid’s day to day life in such ways as him not walking his dog as often as he used to, for fear that his dog – who is not of a dangerous breed – would nonetheless be labelled as dangerous by the Police, who might then use this as another excuse to arrest him. 

• Irritability and withdrawal from others and a lack of self-care, which lead to him developing an oral infection.

When I presented Sajid’s case to the lawyers acting for the Police Force they sought to argue that my client would have experienced a similar range of symptoms in any event, owing to his earlier arrest in January 2023.

I was able to cogently argue that this suggestion was incorrect.  There is a world of difference between experiencing a lawful arrest (i.e. one in which the Police are acting upon an ostensibly reasonable third party allegation) and then experiencing an unlawful arrest as a result of an apparently inexplicable Police error.  My client’s psychological symptoms thereafter were intrinsically tied into the shock, confusion and sense of vulnerability, persecution and paranoia which would be generated in most of us by an arrest on demonstrably false premises.  Such an arrest causes a sense of instability and distortion, opening a Kafkaesque trap door beneath a person’s confidence in the fairness of the system, which a lawful arrest does not do.

Thankfully, the type of expert medical evidence which I was able to obtain in Sajid’s case not only helps to define the full extent of the psychological impact of a wrongful arrest – allowing appropriate levels of compensation to be sought over and above that laid down for loss of liberty counted only by the hours of the Custody clock (as per the Thompson guidelines), it also provides a treatment plan, in that the expert will assess how much and what form of therapy is likely to benefit the victim of a wrongful arrest best, such as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) or, in certain cases, the provision of appropriate antidepressant medication. The cost of such treatment on a private basis can then also be built into a negotiated settlement package. In this way, the expert solicitor and the medical expert, can help the victim of false imprisonment, no matter how long its duration, to access the treatment they need to overcome the psychological harm inflicted.

Because it is often only with the closure of a successful claim, that a person can fully escape the closing of that cell door upon them.

My client’s name has been changed

Imagine being on your own at night in a side street, cornered by a gang who force you to the ground, break your arm, take and rifle through your wallet, mock and threaten you – and then order you to leave their ‘turf’ on pain of further violence.  A harrowing scenario; but this is exactly what happened to my client Isaac at the hands of Officers from West Midlands Police.

In the early hours of 21 September 2019, Isaac, a black British man, was in Birmingham City Centre. Isaac had been out socialising and he intended to travel to his mother’s address in order to sleep there.

At or around 02:00, Isaac was on Cumberland Street, close to Brindley Place, when he was approached by a police officer, now known to Isaac as PC Hurrell.

PC Hurrell asked Isaac to stop. Isaac complied with PC Hurrell’s instruction and stopped. Isaac asked PC Hurrell what the problem was.

Without any warning, PC Hurrell took hold of Isaac’s forearms and gripped them tightly.

Isaac was shocked and surprised at PC Hurrell’s unnecessary use of force and he defensively pulled away and out of PC Hurrell’s grip.

At this stage, Isaac noticed that PC Hurrell was wearing a camera on his body. Isaac was therefore under the impression that PC Hurrell was filming their interaction from the outset. This gave him some reassurance, although he was taken aback at the officer’s aggressive attitude.

Other officers now joined PC Hurrell – PCs Mervyn, Ingram and Davies. They were also all wearing cameras.

One of the officers, believed to be PC Mervyn, took hold of Isaac’s left arm, while another officer, believed to be PC Ingram, took hold of his right arm. Isaac was compliant both verbally and physically, and did not resist being held by the officers.

Only at this point did PC Hurrell state that the officers wanted to search Isaac. However, PC Hurrell provided no further information to Isaac about what the search was about and nor did any of the other officers.

Isaac asked the officers why he was being detained and what was going on. Still no justification for any search or detention, nor indeed any further information at all, was provided to Isaac by any of the officers.

Instead, the officer who was holding Isaac’s left arm, believed to be PC Mervyn, kicked Isaac’s legs, causing him to trip to the ground, in a face-down/prone position.

When Isaac was on the ground, the officers held him there, and forced his arms together behind his back.

Whilst this was happening, Isaac felt the officer on his left arm, believed to be PC Mervyn, bend it in an unnatural way, by pressing down on the upper part of the arm and simultaneously pulling up on the lower part of the same arm. Isaac was caused to experience real fear for his life at this point, in view of the level of force being used against him by multiple officers.

Isaac heard a crunching sound from his left elbow, accompanied by immediate, severe pain, which caused him to cry out. The officers nevertheless continued handcuffing Isaac, disregarding his distress.

Contrary to Isaac’s initial impression, and as he later discovered, it was only at this point that any of the four Officers activated their body-worn video cameras.

Once the officers had applied handcuffs to Isaac’s wrists, they lifted him back up and onto his feet.

Isaac continued to exclaim and complain about the pain to his arm. One of the officers, believed to be PC Ingram, said, “We’ll sort your arm out in a second.”

Rather than offer any first aid – or even just verbal sympathy – however, PC Hurrell now concentrated on belatedly complying with the GOWISELY rules for street stop and searches, informing Isaac that it was the officer’s intention to search him under Section 23 of the Misuse of Drugs Act.

The officers then commenced a search of Isaac’s person, which included placing their hands in Isaac’s pockets removing his property from them, patting Isaac down and holding him tightly by his injured left arm.

During the search, and in response to Isaac’s cries of pain, one of the officers, believed to be PC Mervyn, said, mockingly, “You’ll win a BAFTA for this.”

PC Mervyn also told Isaac to “Shut up” in relation to his complaints about his arm.

Isaac asked the officers to  allow him to straighten his arm in order to alleviate the pain he was in, but this perfectly reasonable request was refused and they kept him in cuffs until the search was done.

Throughout the course of the search, Isaac continued to complain about the pain to his arm and what had been done to him, which he said had not been needed. Isaac stated that he had been engaging with the officers, that what had been done to him was “Harsh”. He knew he was innocent and would have had no reason to resist the officers.

Their search was, of course, entirely negative.

Following the search, however, even as they released Isaac from his temporary imprisonment in the handcuffs, PC Ingram informed him that he was going to be dispersed from the area. The officer stated that she had authority from their inspector to ‘disperse’ anyone from the area that she believed “could cause anti-social behaviour”. The officer informed Isaac that he had 15 minutes to leave the city centre.

Another officer, believed to again be PC Mervyn, threatened Isaac that he was now in danger of being “locked up” for “breach of a dispersal order”. Isaac said that he did not know what the officer’s problem was and informed the officers that he perceived the treatment he had received from them was motivated by his race i.e. because he was black.

In Isaac’s own words –

“It hurts, mate it hurts like a fucker and I don’t know why you would do that. It’s inhumane, man. If I was being a cunt, I could understand, but I am trying not to be ‘cos I know these things happen, but you – imagine if I was a cunt, he could have killed me. If he worked in America, jeez, I’d be shot to death.”

PC Ingram then handed Isaac the “dispersal notice” and the officers left the scene, leaving Isaac with a short time to get out of the city center or face arrest simply for the ‘crime’ of being there.

Section 35 of the Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime & Policing Act 2014 provides as follows-

Directions excluding a person from an area

(1)If the conditions in subsections (2) and (3) are met and an authorisation is in force under section 34, a constable in uniform may direct a person who is in a public place in the locality specified in the authorisation—

(a)to leave the locality (or part of the locality), and

(b)not to return to the locality (or part of the locality) for the period specified in the direction (“the exclusion period”).

(2)The first condition is that the constable has reasonable grounds to suspect that the behaviour of the person in the locality has contributed or is likely to contribute to—

(a)members of the public in the locality being harassed, alarmed or distressed, or

(b)the occurrence in the locality of crime or disorder.

(3)The second condition is that the constable considers that giving a direction to the person is necessary for the purpose of removing or reducing the likelihood of the events mentioned in subsection (2)(a) or (b).

It is worth pausing here to note that although Isaac was considerably less bothered about this ‘insult’ added to his injury, as he had been on his way out of the city centre when the Police had stopped him anyway – I think that this ‘dispersal notice’ was as an unlawful a use of Police powers as was the rest of the incident. The Officer who was issuing it could not define or describe any anti-social behaviour from Isaac, and instead relied upon her imagination, telling him – “You’ve got no reasonable excuse to be up here, so I believe you are either going to commit an offence or give us a bit of grief later on, so therefore…” In other words, the officer had turned the power to disperse someone suspected of harmful behaviour into the dispersal of someone for failing to have a ‘reason’ for being in the city centre – a public space, of course. Thankfully, we do not live in a country in which Police Officers are the arbiters of who gets to come into public spaces and who does not, provided they are law-abiding – but this night PC Ingham and her colleagues behaved as if they did, and already having had his arm broken by them, Isaac was in no position to argue with them.

Furthermore, despite what had been said about the officers “sorting [Isaac’s] arm out in a second”, at no time during the interaction with the officers did any of them provide Isaac with any first aid, nor did they offer to obtain or offer to assist him to obtain medical attention.

Isaac travelled to his mother’s home and attempted to go to sleep there. However, due to the pain Isaac was still experiencing to his left arm, early the following morning he attended Birmingham City Hospital A&E. Following an X-ray, Isaac was found to have a fracture to his left elbow and was discharged with a sling/collar and cuff and analgesia.

On 25 September 2019, Isaac made a police complaint by telephone, which was subsequently recorded.

Thereafter, Isaac attended hospital follow-up and physiotherapy  for his fractured elbow which rendered him unfit for work as a joiner/carpenter for several months. The psychological impact which he received from this incident, was even more long- lasting.

Playing the Blue Card?

On 7 April 2020, West Midland Police’s Professional Standards Department (“PSD”) completed an investigation report in relation to Isaac’s complaint, although he was not notified of the outcome until 8 June.

As a result of the complaint report, Isaac discovered that none of the officers had made contemporaneous notes of the force used on him on 21 September 2019, nor had any of the officers completed a Use of Force form, and this despite the fact that they had pinned him chest down on the ground, putting him at risk of potentially fatal positional asphyxia, handcuffed him and he had undoubtedly brought his broken arm to their attention.

These are hardly matters to be taken lightly amongst an Officer’s record- keeping responsibilities, but the only written, contemporaneous documentation completed by the officers were PC Hurrell’s brief notes relating to having stopped and searched Isaac and the stop and search record, neither of which referred to him having been injured by the officers. The complaint had instead placed great reliance on ‘long after the event’ accounts provided by the four Officers between March and April 2020 (i.e some 6 months later).

Isaac also discovered that the part of the incident during which he had sustained the injury to his left elbow had not been recorded on any officers body-worn video camera.

The investigation report determined that Isaac’s complaint was “not upheld” and that there had been no criminal offences identified and no breaches that would warrant misconduct proceedings. Merely a number of “learning points” were identified for the officers relating to activating body-worn video cameras and contemporaneous record-keeping.

On 11 June 2020, Isaac appealed to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (“IOPC”).

Sadly, the IOPC decided not to uphold Isaac’s appeal, again in reliance on the accounts of the officers provided in March and April 2020.

This is a perfect example of all that is imperfect with the Police Complaint system –

• An investigation which took over 8 months to conclude (and only after Isaac had to complain about the length of the complaint process itself).

• Police Officers given the ‘benefit of the doubt’ in the absence of objective video recording or contemporaneous written records, despite the fact that they were responsible for the non-existence of these recordings.

• The IOPC taking the ‘path of least resistance’ and rubber-stamping the complaint outcome report, despite its flaws.

During the incident, when Isaac was protesting about what the officers had done to his arm, there was some debate about whether he was ‘playing the black card’, with the officers insisting that he would have been treated in exactly the same way had he been white. I think the truth of the matter is that those officers, subsequently and undoubtedly, benefited from being able to ‘play the Blue card’ – that unofficial but very real ‘get out of jail free’ card for officers which renders the majority of the Police-investigating-Police complaints process a pointless charade.

Calling their Bluff

Thankfully, I am not dismayed by the ‘blue card’ and I am more than happy to call the bluff of Police forces on behalf of my clients who deserve so much better than the white-washing of their legitimate complaints and the denial of their meritorious claims.

I brought Court proceedings on behalf of Isaac, and after a hard- fought battle of almost 2 years duration – during which the Chief Constable continued to dispute liability and assert that his officers had done no wrong – I secured for Isaac, shortly before trial, a settlement from West Midlands Police of £27,500 damages plus his legal costs.

So, in the end, it turned out that PC Mervyn was very wrong: Isaac did not win a BAFTA.

He won justice.

My client’s name has been changed.

Often in today’s data- rich world, human errors can lead to ‘mistaken identity’ arrests – arrests which demonstrate that the vast volume of modern information can prove to be a hinderance to law enforcement – unless it is applied with some good old-fashioned common sense…

In autumn 2019 my client Xavier, a professional musician, had been working on a video shoot in Spain.  He flew back from Malaga to Stanstead Airport in the UK, accompanied by his girlfriend, his manager, and several other people who had been on the video shoot.

Unfortunately, on the plane’s touchdown at Stanstead Airport, my client’s life was turned upside down. Several Officers of Essex Police boarded the plane and shouted Xavier’s name. When Xavier stood up and identified himself, the Officers told him he was under arrest, handcuffed and escorted him from the plane. Xavier was devastated and deeply humiliated – feeling the eyes upon him of not only all the strangers on that plane but his girlfriend, manager and work colleagues. Xavier could only imagine that they were thinking the worst.

No reason had been given to Xavier by the Officers for his arrest (which I will pause to observe was, in itself, a breach of Section 28 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act sufficient to have rendered the arrest unlawful) and this continued throughout his journey from the airport into Police Custody.

It was only when Xavier arrived at the Police Station that he was informed that he was under arrest in respect of warrants issued for a failure to attend the Magistrates Court and in respect of breaching previous Court Orders and a Community Order. The person identified in these warrants, however, was not Xavier but another individual with a completely different first name and surname, whom I will refer to for the purposes of this blog as Gabriel.  Xavier was not familiar with this person and had no idea as to why he had apparently been mistaken for him.

This was despite the fact that Xavier was, of course, in possession of the best form of identity verification possible i.e. his passport, as he had been engaged in international travel. 

Having been arrested on a Saturday night, Xavier was then kept in Custody until Monday morning when he was transported in handcuffs to Bromley Magistrates Court where he spent a miserable 8 hours or so, before being released after the Duty Solicitor who had attended upon him persuaded the Court that Xavier was not the ‘wanted man’ Gabriel – the Solicitor had seen a photographic image of Gabriel (who was clearly not Xavier) and furthermore was able to point out the difference in their dates of birth.

When I presented a claim for wrongful arrest on behalf of Xavier to Essex Police, their lawyers initially disputed liability stating that the warrants for the arrest of Gabriel had been legitimately issued by the Magistrates Court and then circulated on the Police National Computer system (PNC) by the Metropolitan Police, and furthermore that Xavier’s name was linked to Gabriel’s profile on the PNC as an ‘alias’ of the wanted man. It was said that this ‘alias’ information had been added to the PNC by Cambridgeshire Police in 2016 following a previous arrest of Gabriel. 

In the circumstances, it was necessary for me to present letters of claim on behalf of Xavier to Cambridgeshire Police and the Metropolitan Police, both of whom maintained that they had no responsibility for linking Xavier’s PNC record to Gabriel’s PNC record.  They pointed the finger of blame back at Essex Police.

In the meantime, I had obtained expert evidence from a psychologist to assess the anxiety, depression and trauma which Xavier had suffered as a result of his very public and humiliating arrest and I commenced Court proceedings on behalf of Xavier in order to protect his position to bring a claim for breach of the Human Rights Act.

After thoroughly investigating the involvement of the multiple Police Forces referred to above, the Magistrates Court and the UK Border Force (a non- Police, Law Enforcement Command within the Home Office) I was able to establish that there was no legitimate basis for Essex Police to have believed that my client was the wanted man Gabriel, that they therefore had no power to arrest him under the warrant, and hence they were liable for his wrongful arrest. 

In October 2021 settlement terms were reached with Essex Police whereby they agreed to pay Xavier £17,500 damages for deprivation of liberty and the psychological trauma of the arrest, plus his legal costs. 

That, however, was not the end of this story.  

PNC Profiling Problems

One of the virtues that I pride myself in is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to investigating/fighting my client’s cases.

I considered the evidence which had been uncovered during my successful pursuit of Essex Police for damages relating to Xavier’s unlawful arrest at Stanstead Airport in 2019, as related above.

Although Essex Police were ultimately unable to avoid carrying the can for that arrest, I was intrigued by the suggestion that Cambridgeshire Police had potentially sown the seeds of future trouble for Xavier by recording his name as an ‘alias’ of the career criminal Gabriel. 

In discussing past events with Xavier, I had discovered that my client had been arrested by the Metropolitan Police in the Spring of 2016.  At the time, he had not done anything about this, but I now encouraged him to pursue the matter further, suspecting that this arrest was a result of incorrect links on the Police National Computer system between him and Gabriel.

The documentation which I had seen indicated that Cambridgeshire Police Officers had entered Xavier’s name onto Gabriel’s PNC record as an ‘alias’, in around mid-February 2016, and had then gone on to place a ‘wanted/missing’ marker on Xavier’s PNC profile in mid-March 2016, indicating that Xavier  (not Gabriel) was wanted for arrest for intent to supply Class A drugs in Cambridgeshire. Basically, whoever had done this was treating Xavier and Gabriel as if they were the same person –  with two different PNC records – when clearly they were not. ‘Aliases’ are one of the oldest tricks in the criminal’s book, and it is baffling, and concerning, that Police Officers could so easily fall into the trap of ‘contaminating’ an innocent person’s profile with the crimes of a separate individual like this.

As a result of this mistake, on 15 March 2016, whilst parked in his motor car in the area of Croydon, Xavier was arrested by two Metropolitan Police Officers who, having run an ID check on him (after asking to see his licence), were informed over their radios that Xavier was “Wanted for conspiracy to sell Class A drugs”. Accordingly, he was arrested, handcuffed and taken into Custody at Croydon Police Station.

Xavier was subsequently released on Police bail and told to report to Cambridge Police Station in April 2016. When he did so, Xavier was informed that no further action was to be taken against him – notwithstanding this, however, we now know that Cambridgeshire Police then doubled down on the mistaken misidentification of Xavier and Gabriel by adding Xavier’s date of birth to Gabriel’s PNC profile. 

Then, in June 2016, an event which was significant in all of our lives took place; the Brexit Referendum and the UK’s vote to leave the European Union – but which was all the more significant for Xavier as he was a Dutch National living in the UK.  He therefore subsequently had to apply for Leave to Remain under the EU Settlement Scheme.

In December 2019 the Home Office wrote to Xavier, informing him that his application for Leave to Remain could not be progressed due to “ongoing criminal investigations”.  We now know that this related not to anything that Xavier was suspected to have done, but to the erroneous ‘ghost in the machine’ connection between Xavier and Gabriel’s PNC profiles, which appeared to have originated with Cambridgeshire Police’s mistaken data entry of March 2016 (posting Gabriel’s wanted marker on Xavier’s profile) – kickstarting the series of arrests that I describe above, and which apparently suggested to the Home Office that Xavier should be considered a Persona Non Grata.

I am pleased to confirm that in October 2020 the Metropolitan Police directed Cambridgeshire Police to expunge Xavier’s name and date of birth from Gabriel’s PNC record.

But very real damage had already been done as a result of this ‘virtual’ mistake.

Although this error originating with Cambridgeshire Police – treating Xavier’s real identity as if it were just a mask or alias of the career criminal Gabriel – did not result in any more actual arrests after those of March 2016 and November 2019, it continued to indirectly affect Xavier’s life in numerous ways.  He became wary of the Police and felt like he was constantly ‘looking over his shoulder’.  He got into the habit of carrying his passport and official Court documentation around with him in order to be able to explain this misidentification if another incident occurred and in particular felt scared of international travel knowing that the airport/border was the place where this type of electronic mistaken identity was most likely to affect him.

On behalf of Xavier, I pursued Court proceedings against Cambridgeshire Police for breaches of the Data Protection Act and have recently recovered £35,000 damages for him, plus legal costs.

This makes a grand total of £52,500 damages which I have won for my client against the two Police Forces who through their errors of their own making – which could have been easily avoided with a bit of human brain power, rather than a rote-response to PNC data – had so badly affected his life over a period of 8 years.

Let this be a lesson to them: With Great Data Resources Comes Great Data Responsibility!

Names have been changed for the purposes of this blog (…but not confused).

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.

Update

Rob Warner at Crimebodge has produced a video about Liam’s case. Watch it here: 

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 –

1. Uses threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour, or disorderly behaviour or
2. 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.  

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.

This is a continuation of the story of my client Zac, a black man battered and subjected to an unlawful strip search by the Metropolitan Police, which I began last week. 

Trials and tribulations  

Zac was originally represented by another firm of solicitors who advised him, in 2014, to issue Court proceedings (so as to protect his position – as his injury claims would be subject to the three-year limitation period) but thereafter to stay the proceedings pending the outcome of the complaint process.  Unbeknownst to all involved at the time, that complaint process still had almost another four years to run.

Dissatisfied with the representation he had received to that point, Zac instructed me to act on his behalf from February 2017.  I submitted a detailed letter of claim on Zac’s behalf to the Metropolitan Police but they initially ‘ducked’ out of responding to it by hiding behind the ongoing complaint process.

The Met finally responded to my letter of claim in March 2018, denying liability for Zac’s claims in their entirety. 

In response I drafted the appropriate statements of case and Court proceedings were served upon the Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis in May 2018.

Initially, the Met strenuously defended these legal proceedings, submitting a Defence in June 2018 and statements from the three key Officers in support of that Defence. 

Having experienced Police brutality on the day of the incident Zac, now had to undergo a ‘character assassination’ in the pleadings of the Defence, in which his honesty was attacked and he was portrayed as aggressive and hostile.

Each time the Police denied and disputed his complaint or claim, Zac understandably felt that he was being re-traumatised.  It played on his mind not only that PC Waddington and PC Munich had simply stood back and watched as he was placed in a chokehold and taken to the ground – but that they had also, ever since then, stood by their colleague and, to Zac’s mind, tried to conceal the truth.  He was haunted by thoughts that had he died that day as a result of the pressure applied to his neck and chest, there would have been no independent evidence, and his family would have been “fed lies” about what had really happened. 

Zac felt that his mental wounds from the incident had never been allowed to heal because of the Police ‘System’ fighting him tooth and nail through every step of the complaint and claim process. 

As a result, what Zac was most focused on was the Police accepting fault and properly admitting liability – proving to the world their Officer’s wrongdoing in violently attacking, detaining and then strip searching him. This was so much more important to him than anything else, that he declined a significant offer of monetary compensation that was made by the Met on a ‘without prejudice’ basis (i.e a financial settlement without an admission of liability) in October 2018.

The determination of myself and my client was seemingly rewarded when, in late September 2019, the Met Police finally admitted liability for Zac’s claim in the following terms, leaving the case to proceed to Trial on the issue of assessment of damages –

“The Commissioner admits that the Claimant’s searches, both at the scene and at the Police Station and detention for those purposes, were unlawful.  As a consequence, it is admitted that Police actions at the time would be found to be unlawful.”

In due course, however, the Met’s admission would prove to have more of the character of a tactical manoeuvre about it, than of contrition born of an honest acceptance of the justice of Zac’s case. 

It became increasingly clear that the Police had accepted liability only because of what they would argue was a ‘technicality’ – PC Bullock’s failure to comply with the procedures prescribed by Code A of PACE when conducting the stop and search – rather than any admission as to the fundamental truth of Zac’s case on the issues of PC Bullock’s motivation for conducting the search and the totally disproportionate nature of the force that he used.

In due course, with Judgment entered for my client, but these fundamental issues still in dispute between the parties, the case went to Trial at Central London County Court in January 2020.  Even now the manoeuvring and ‘game playing’ of the Metropolitan Police had not ended; on the second day of the Trial, during his cross examination of Zac, the Police barrister made an ‘apology’ to Zac on behalf of the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, which was limited to PC Bullock’s failure to properly introduce himself and identify his Police Station before commencing the search, and which ‘apology’ was then used in further questions put to Zac by the barrister to seek to persuade him, in open Court in front of the Jury, to drop his claim for exemplary (i.e. punitive) damages against the Police on the basis that his claim would deprive the Met of money essential for carrying out their Policing functions.

In my opinion, this was a shameless and underhanded trick.  The apology, sprung upon my client unannounced like an act from a ‘showpiece theatre’ performance, was entirely disingenuous.  It was not intended to reflect genuine remorse on the part of the Police, nor to make my client feel better – it was used as a weapon by which Zac could then be attacked in front of the Jury and made to look like a ‘money grabber’ if he then didn’t agree the Defendant’s suggestion that he drop part of his claim – and all of this was done whilst he was in the witness box, giving evidence under oath and unable to directly communicate with or take advice from me, as his solicitor.

In my opinion, it was a discreditable stunt by the Met’s legal team – but they didn’t stop there.

At the end of the second day of the Trial, following almost two hours of cross examination of Zac, the Police Barrister made an application to introduce into evidence a Custody Record relating to a separate arrest which they had not previously disclosed.

This was, plainly and simply, a pre-meditated ambush of my client, in an attempt to discredit him in front of the Jury.  It was in direct contravention of one of the most basic tenets of our Civil Court system, which is that each party must share with the other all of the documentary evidence upon which they intend to rely well in advance of the Trial, in the interest of allowing the other time to fairly consider and respond to the same, and furthermore in the interest of avoiding the time delay and costs incurred in going to Trial, by adopting what is called the ‘cards on the table’ approach.

The hypocrisy of the Police approach to Zac’s case at Trial almost beggared belief.  They used an ‘apology’ as a back door way to attack Zac for (in effect) being a drain on public funds – when, in reality, the Police could have saved vast amounts of public money, Officers’ time, Zac’s time and the Court’s time by addressing his original 2012 complaint in a fair and contrite manner, over seven years previously.

Further adding salt to Zac’s wounds, it had been put to him by the Police barrister during cross examination that he was ‘irrational’ for believing that PC Bullock’s behaviour towards him was in any way motivated by racism – notwithstanding the absence of any good reason for the Officer to have stopped and searched him that day.

Indeed, the conduct of the Police legal team, and especially the barrister up to this point, was such that one member of the Jury was provoked to pass a note to the Judge querying whether the conduct of the Police barrister in his cross examination of Zac was, in itself, ‘potentially discriminatory’.

The contents of that note led the Police barrister to apply for the Jury to be discharged on the basis (he argued) that at least one of them was now prejudiced against him, and thereby the Jury could not be relied upon to provide an impartial decision on the facts.  The Trial Judge, His Honour Judge Freeland QC approved this Application by the Defence and, effectively, declared a ‘mistrial’.

My client was therefore, once again, called upon to muster all his reserves of stoicism in the face of injustice and delay.  After waiting over five years for the complaint process to resolve, and then going through a further two years of litigation to Trial, that Trial had now collapsed as a result of game playing by the Police lawyers, which further aggravated his suffering.  What is more, shortly afterwards the first wave of the Covid pandemic hit our shores, sweeping away ‘social gatherings’ including Jury trials, and yet further prolonging Zac’s wait for justice.

The Defence mounted by the Met continued to deny the full extent of his injuries and belittle the seriousness of the force used upon him by PC Bullock – especially in terms of the chokehold.

A further statement was served on behalf of PC Bullock.  Apology and admission or not, the Met continued to muster its battle lines in the face of Zac’s claim. 

The Met’s conduct of its Defence, combined with the continued threat of Covid conjured up a ‘perfect storm’ of ongoing delay.  Re-Trials listed to commence in March 2021 and then December 2021 were each in turn adjourned, and by November 2021 it was being projected that it would not be possible for the Trial to finally be heard until the Autumn of 2022, such was the systemic backlog of Jury trials across the country at that point.

It was in this context that, when the Met finally tabled an offer of £30,000 damages, plus legal costs – almost twice as much as their previous highest offer of settlement – Zac decided to take it.   Matters were brought to a successful conclusion on the basis of a settlement order which I negotiated on Zac’s behalf in July 2022.

Thus did Zac’s long and winding battle for justice against the Met, after almost ten years, end in a notable victory.

In order to achieve this, Zac demonstrated great determination and perseverance – and a willingness to endure conduct by the Police and their lawyers which was not merely delaying and demoralising but which in itself added further scars to the wounds already inflicted; but in the end, all the more worth it for the sense of satisfaction and empowerment that he achieved.

Most paths to justice do not last anywhere near as long as Zac’s did, but this case is a salutary reminder of some of the demons which still haunt the Police and by extension, the victims of their misconduct; arrogance, hostility, pride, and prejudice.

Postscript

Although the Met may have ridiculed Zac’s suggestion that he was the victim of racial profiling in this incident – i.e an aggressive targeting for a search based not on reasonable grounds, but on the colour of his skin – I consider that the facts can be allowed to speak for themselves in terms of what has been described as the ‘institutional racism’ of the Policing profession. And I can call as a further witness to this, Zac himself who was the subject of a second baseless ‘drugs search’ and assault by yet more Metropolitan Officers, in very different circumstances in 2020 – whilst this first case was still ongoing – and as a result of which he won further damages of £7,500. You can read my blog post about that later case here. https://iaingould.co.uk/2023/11/13/you-smell-cannabis-i-smell-a-rat/

You can also read the Guardian Newspaper’s coverage of the settlement of Zac’s first case by clicking on the link.

In this week’s blog, I am presenting another case ‘from the archives’ because it highlights issues of Police misconduct which remain as relevant today as they were 10 years ago – specifically issues of ‘racial profiling’ in the exercise of Police Stop and Search powers and the resistance of the Police to Policing themselves when it comes to misconduct allegations. 

A pasty and a patsy?

“PC Bullock had excellent detection rates as he would do a lot of stop and searches.  He would frequent areas where people were known to smoke marijuana and would obtain a number of positive searches in that way.  However, I would not describe his worth ethic as being good.  He would go out at lunchtime to get a sandwich, get his sanctions and detections for the day and then he would think he wouldn’t have to do anything else for the rest of the day. 

I remember that that day, PC Bullock had gone out for his sandwich, so I knew he would bring back a Stop and Search record form, as he always conducted a stop and search when he went to get his lunch…”

PS Balchin, Chiswick Police Station.

These were the words of PC Bullock’s Sergeant as quoted in the Complaint Investigation Report subsequently completed by the IPCC (Independent Police Complaint Commission – the forerunner of the current Independent Office for Police Conduct) in relation to the Stop and Search of my client Zac on 27 December 2012 (“that day…” to which the Sergeant refers in her statement).

Zac is a black man who was born in Somalia and came to the UK when he was 6 years old.  On the day in question, he was not doing anything out of the ordinary – simply taking his dog for an afternoon walk on Chiswick Common.  As it was a mild day, he was wearing only a shirt and a pair of jeans and he was carrying with him nothing more illicit than a ‘Greg’s Bakery’ plastic bag, containing a sandwich and a bottle of soft drink. 

Zac let his dog off the lead, so it could stretch its legs whilst he ate his sandwich.

It was whilst doing this that Zac became the target of one of PC Bullock’s ‘2 for 1’ lunchtime deals, as described in the above quotation from his Sergeant – i.e. collecting a sandwich and a Stop/Search form for himself (or, we might say a ‘pasty and a patsy’).

PC Bullock approached Zac and demanded to know what he was doing in the area.  When Zac replied that he was having his sandwich whilst his dog exercised, the Officer announced “Okay, for that smart answer, I am going to search you”.  It was at this point that Zac noticed that although PC Bullock was in ‘plain clothes’, and had not identified himself to Zac as a Police Officer, he appeared to be holding a Police warrant card in one of his hands. 

As matters continued to unfold, and in contravention of the GOWISELY procedure laid down by Code A of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) – which governs Police stop/searches upon members of the public – PC Bullock did not formally identify himself, provide his name or Police Station or explain the grounds for his search and the legal powers under which it was purportedly being carried out. 

When Zac questioned what he had done to justify being searched, PC Bullock replied “In my eyes you look suspicious – I believe that you’re concealing something”.

PC Bullock’s response made no sense to my client, who could see no reason for the Officer’s proposed search of him – other than that he was a young black man in an affluent area.

Zac then heard PC Bullock requesting “Further assistance” via his personal radio and questioned the Officer as to why he was doing this – pointing out that at no point had he refused a search.

Although Zac was unhappy as to why the Officer had targeted him, he kept these thoughts to himself and peaceably surrendered to the Officer’s search.  PC Bullock proceeded to pat him down and search his pockets – as he did so, removing Zac’s bank card and pocketing it himself.

Despite the search having proved negative, PC Bullock kept hold of Zac’s arm and now informed him that he could not leave and would have to await the arrival of other officers. 

Soon afterwards, two more plain-clothed Metropolitan Police Officers arrived – a male (PC Munich) and a female (PC Waddington). 

Armed with these ‘reinforcements’, PC Bullock now informed Zac that he was going to be taken away for a strip search.  Zac was utterly shocked and questioned how this could possibly be necessary – his concern all the greater because his dog was off the lead, wandering around the park.

When Zac protested to PC Munich about what was happening, with words to the effect of “Why do I have to be strip searched?  I have done nothing wrong.  I was just walking my dog”, he was suddenly grabbed from behind by PC Bullock in a ‘chokehold’ manoeuvre, which left him gasping for breath and struggling for balance.  Zac was taken to the ground, landing heavily on his chest under the body weight of PC Bullock.

Despite the distress that Zac was in, PC Bullock maintained the chokehold and made goading remarks including “Look at you now” and “You’re nothing”. 

In an effort to relieve the potentially deadly pressure which PC Bullock was applying to his neck, Zac frantically tapped on the ground – the wrestler’s gesture of ‘submission’.  Only then did PC Bullock loosen his grip, although he continued to taunt Zac with the words “You’re not such a tough guy after all”.

This outburst of violence from PC Bullock towards Zac had simply been watched without comment by PC Munich and PC Waddington, neither of whom made any attempt to stop or restrain their colleague (which is sadly, the default mode of Police Officers when one of their colleagues is ‘going over the top’).

Indeed, the only action that either of this pair of Officers took at this stage was to ‘warn off’ another member of the public, who came over to ask if Zac was okay and questioned what the Officer was doing to him.  This man was threatened with arrest if he did not move away, which seemed to scare him off.

Zac was in discomfort to his face, throat, neck, back, ribs and left shoulder and then suffered further pain to his shoulder as PC Bullock handcuffed his hands behind his back, before pulling him to his feet. 

Zac now believes that he was on the floor in the chokehold for only approximately 90 seconds – but this terrifying experience felt like it lasted a lot longer whilst it was happening.

Unfortunately, his ordeal was far from over.  Once Zac was on his feet, PC Bullock attempted to escort him towards some nearby bushes saying words to the effect of “I am going to teach you a lesson”.  Zac was extremely concerned for his personal safety, but PC Munich at last intervened and told PC Bullock “He’s had enough.  You’ve gone too far”. 

Zac remained the Officers’ prisoner however, and was taken to an unmarked Police car nearby – the Officers did at least allow Zac to call his dog over, who was then taken with them in the boot of the car. 

A Naked Abuse of Power

Zac was driven to Chiswick Police Station and taken into a side room by the two male Officers, PC Bullock and PC Munich.  His handcuffs were removed – but he was then ordered by PC Bullock to remove his clothing, an instruction with which Zac unwillingly complied, fearing that he would be once again attacked if he refused.

Zac was then required to, humiliatingly, squat, turn around and bend over whilst the Officers ‘inspected’ him, before he was allowed to put his clothing back on – and PC Bullock finally returned Zac’s bank card to him.  Nothing, of course, had been found on him.

My client was now issued with a Stop/Search form and told that he could leave, with PC Bullock firing what he probably thought was a last parting shot at him – “You can always try your luck and report me.”

Outraged by what had occurred, Zac, having been ushered out of the back door of the Police Station (collecting his dog along the way) immediately re-entered the Station through the front door in order to file a complaint.

Shortly after he had left the Station, Zac then received a phone call from a female Officer,  now known to be PC Bullock’s Supervising Sergeant,  PS Balchin – the Officer with whose quotation I opened this account.  Zac gave her a full account of what had occurred, and she told him that she would investigate and report back to him.  This was notwithstanding her total lack of impartiality in this matter for unbeknownst to Zac, PS Balchin was the officer who had, apparently quite casually, authorised PC Bullock’s strip search of him.

The next day, it was necessary for Zac to attend A&E in order to have his injuries checked out.  He had multiple cuts and bruises across his body, including pain and discomfort in his chest, left shoulder, neck and upper back.  X-rays were taken.  It was found that Zac had suffered a dislocation to his left shoulder, although fortunately all of his physical injuries resolved within about 8 weeks.

The incident also had an unsurprising and significant impact on Zac’s mental health.  He became depressed and withdrawn, afraid to leave his house in case he experienced a similar event, and when he did go out, he was anxious whenever he heard or saw a Police Officer or car, the sound of a Police siren being enough to trigger a panic attack.  His sleep was disturbed by regular nightmares about being strangled.   Psychologically, Zac felt that these events left him feeling a ‘shadow’ of his former self, for a long time afterwards.

Zac had ‘done the right thing’ by promptly bringing a complaint to the attention of PC Bullock’s superiors – but little did he know at the time, his attempt to secure justice for what had been done to him through the Police Complaint process would drag on for over five years before coming to a bitterly disappointing conclusion.

The Whitewash Watchdog?

Historically, one of the most common forms of institutional corruption in this country has been Police ‘laundering’ of Officers reputations; the lengths to which Professional Standards investigators are apparently prepared to go in order to dismiss legitimate complaints and exonerate their colleagues, even in the face of strong evidence of misconduct. 

This is a system with an inbuilt resentment of complaints and strong inclination to always give the ‘benefit of the doubt’ to the accused officer, which can wear down the will of even the most determined complainant.

Three times during the five years following this December 2012 incident, the Metropolitan Police produced Complaint Reports – the first by the female Sergeant who was PC Bullock’s direct supervisor, PS Balchin – all of which either completely exonerated PC Bullock, or, at best, found him guilty of minor procedural misconduct in the exercise of his powers (essentially, failing to properly provide his details to Zac).  No criticism was made in these reports of any of the substantive issues of misconduct from Zac’s point of view i.e. the Officer’s either random or racially prejudiced targeting of him and grossly excessive uses of force (which if perpetrated by a member of the public, would no doubt have been treated as criminal violence) or the degrading misuse of strip- search powers.

Zac quite rightly felt that each of these reports was nothing more than a ‘whitewash’.  I agree with him; I have seen enough of such reports in my time and they are, to be frank, the main product of the Police Complaint system, at least it has existed up to the present day – after all ‘laundries’ tend to produce crisp, white sheets.

Each time Zac appealed these internal investigations, the IPCC upheld his appeal, but each time the repetition of the process was essentially fruitless – other than that, at the third time of asking it was accepted by the Met that PS Bullock had lacked the necessary authorisation for the strip search.  Once again, however, any criticism of PC Bullock was confined to procedural errors rather than the real issues with which Zac was concerned. 

Zac was conscious that the IPCC was frequently referred to by the media as the ‘Police Watchdog’ (just as its successor body the IOPC is today). Again, he was to learn through bitter experience something which I and other Police Misconduct lawyers have been saying for a long time – that in both of its incarnations, this Watchdog often behaves more like a ‘lapdog’, timid and unwilling to show any real bite in response to pro-police bias in the Complaints system.  It has to be said that one appeals to them “more in IOPC than expectation”…

Finally, however, even the IPCC’s patience with the Police seemed to be exhausted and after Zac appealed the third iteration of the Complaint Investigation Report, they (the IPCC) finally took over conduct of the investigation themselves and went on to produce a report in May 2017 which concluded that PC Bullock did have a case to answer for misconduct. 

However, in January 2018, PC Bullock appeared at a Misconduct Meeting chaired by Inspector Edwards of the Metropolitan Police, at which all of the allegations against the Officer were dismissed. 

Zac – who had been allowed to attend the Misconduct Meeting, but only as a silent observer and not to give any evidence or speak for himself – was devastated.  He was left feeling that the Complaint system was designed only to offer an illusion of accountability to the public, disguising its true purpose of protecting Police Officers and that the IPCC, despite all its pious words, was toothless and useless.

Nevertheless, despite all these emotional ‘knockdowns’, Zac still retained faith that there was justice to be found somewhere in the system, and ultimately turned to me for assistance in bringing a civil claim against the Metropolitan Police for false imprisonment and assault and battery. 

Find out what happened when Zac’s case went to Court, when I continue his story in next week’s blog post.

I have written on numerous previous occasions about the many unfortunate incidents of wrongful arrest which occur at Airports; but in this high season of holiday travel I thought it was also appropriate to shine the spotlight on a recent case of mine which involved a wrongful arrest at the second busiest nexus for international travel – our Sea Ports.

My client Gerry travelled from Belfast to the UK via the Port of Birkenhead on Merseyside.  On disembarking from the boat at Birkenhead at approximately 7am, Gerry was handcuffed and arrested by the Port of Liverpool Police for an alleged offence of theft.

The Port of Liverpool Police are a small, non- Home Office Police Force, not dissimilar to Mersey Tunnels Police, with a geographically limited jurisdiction. They have responsibility for dock estates and port areas on Merseyside and are governed by the Mersey Docks & Harbour (Police) Order 1975.

Gerry was then conveyed to Wirral Custody Suite where the circumstances of his arrest were entered in the Custody Record as follows –

THEFT – AO [Arresting Officer] IS PRTS [Port of Liverpool] POLICE OFFICER AND RECIEVES INFO DP [Detained Person] IS WANTED AND ON A STENNA LINE FERRY FROM BELFAST TO TWELVE QUAYS, BIRKENHEAD. AO DETAINS DP AT THE PORT, PNC CHECK RECEALS DP WANTED BY ESSEX POLICE SUS THEFT X 5 FROM 16/6/23 WHERE HE ALLEGEDLY HAS STOLEN NUMEROUS ITEMS TO THE VALUE OF £4,000 FROM NUMEROUS COMMERCIAL PREMISES.

Gerry was searched, had his photograph, DNA and fingerprints taken and was incarcerated in a cell all day, until, at approximately 6.40pm that evening Officers from Essex Police arrived and Gerry was transferred into their Custody and conveyed to Grays Police Station in Essex. 

There, after a long journey across the country, Gerry spent an uncomfortable night in the cell before being taken for interview, where it finally became clear to the Police that they had the right name – but the wrong man. 

The person whom the Police were actually after was a serial shoplifter who had also recently committed a ‘dine and dash’ offence at a restaurant.  As soon as the details of these offences were explained to Gerry in interview, he asserted his total innocence telling the interviewing Officer “I’m guessing you’ve loads of CCTV and we can fast forward this if you just get it up, shot of the CCTV and you look at me, I was not at any of those places.  I really wasn’t”.

Once a selection of the CCTV clips of the suspect in various locations had been played, Gerry was able to turn the tables on his interviewer by posing the simple question –  “Does that dude look like me?” – to which the answer was a resounding ‘no’.

Gerry further commented “If you look at my face and then you look at him – you tell me why I was here for the last 27 hours.  …if I don’t laugh I’ll be more angry”.

Following Gerry’s interview, the Police evidential review confirmed that the suspect in the CCTV footage and Gerry were of distinctly different builds, with different colour hair and that even if Gerry’s name matched that of the suspect, his date of birth did not. 

Shortly thereafter, Gerry was ‘refused charge’ and released from Custody. He had, in total, been deprived of his liberty for a period of approximately 30 hours.

Gerry had passed through the Custody of no less than three different Police Forces – firstly arrested by the Port of Liverpool Police Officer, who had then transported him to a Merseyside Police Station (the Port Police lacking any such facilities themselves) and thereafter being handed over to Essex Police for the continuation of his un-magical mystery tour…

As has happened all too often before, it ultimately transpired that Gerry’s details on the Police National Computer System had become confused with the details of another person by the same name – a mistake for which Essex Police accepted liability in this case.  As ever, the most common location where such ‘human errors’ cause the wrongful arrest of innocent individuals are the termini of international travel – our air and sea ports.

I am pleased to confirm that Gerry’s case has now been settled, not only for a payment of a five- figure sum of damages, plus legal costs, but also a formal apology for the distress and inconvenience caused to him.

My client’s name has been changed.

In September 2023, my client Edward was staying at a friend’s house in Grimsby.  One evening he went out socialising in Grimsby Town, met a woman and the two of them returned to Edward’s friend’s house in the early hours of the morning, only to discover officers of Humberside Police in attendance.

The officers told Edward that they were looking for his brother, Liam.  Indeed, they had just conducted a search of the house looking for Liam – but he was not there.  My client, who had not seen Liam recently, but who knew the Police were after him commented playfully (perhaps a little ‘cheekily’)  “Enjoy lads…you know what, it’s a game of hide and seek innit”.

Thinking nothing further of this, Edward then went into his friend’s house.  The Police officers present now had a discussion between themselves, however, and decided on the basis of my client’s comment that he might in fact know the location of Liam – and that because he wasn’t volunteering this information to the officers, despite knowing that his brother was wanted, then he was thereby himself committing the criminal offence of ‘assisting an offender’.

This is an offence contrary to Section 4(1) of the Criminal Law Act 1967 which, under the heading ‘Penalties for assisting offenders’ provides as follows –

Where a person has committed a relevant offence, any other person who, knowing or believing him to be guilty of the offence or of some other relevant offence, does without lawful authority or reasonable excuse any act with intent to impede his apprehensional prosecution shall be guilty of an offence.

PC Healey now knocked on the door of the house, asked Edward to step outside “for a chat” and once he did so, the officer arrested my client “On suspicion of assisting an offender”. 

Shocked and confused, Edward truthfully asserted that all he knew was that Liam had told him that he was staying with his current girlfriend – but he (Edward) did not know this girl’s address.

All Edward knew – in his own words to the officers – was that his brother was at “Some bird’s” but the officers, unphased, proceeded with his arrest.

Edward was handcuffed, searched and locked in a caged section of a nearby Police van, despite his continued protests that he was being arrested for no reason other than being Liam’s brother.

He was particularly distressed because he had been arrested in front of the girl he had met that night and his other friends in the house, and he now also feared he was not going to be able to attend work in the morning, risking his employment at a job he had only recently started.  He protested that his brother’s misdemeanours were nothing to do with him.

As is very common in such situations, Edward was not only experiencing the emotional distress and disorientation of a wrongful arrest, he was also suffering significant pain and discomfort from the tight and uncomfortable handcuffs with which he had been ‘manacled’.

Edward was then driven to a nearby custody centre where he was processed and incarcerated in a cell.

According to the Custody Record, the circumstances of Edward’s arrest were as follows –

“Officer had been conducting arrest attempts for a wanted male, suspect has disclosed to officers he has recently seen the wanted male but would not assist officers.”

After around five long and unpleasant hours in the cell Edward was brought out – and then released with no further action.

By now however, it was too late for him to go into work and he lost a day’s wages as a result, although fortunately he kept his job – albeit, by the skin of his teeth (as he later told me).

After receiving Edward’s instructions I considered this to be a shocking abuse of Police power and pursued a claim for damages for Edward’s wrongful arrest from the Chief Constable of Humberside Police.

Following investigation, the Police admitted full liability but made an offer of settlement of only £1,700. 

I obtained disclosure of all the Police evidence relating to this case – including, crucially, the body camera footage of the arresting officer and his colleagues, which now revealed that, unbeknownst to Edward, the officers had also carried out a search of his bedroom.  I advised Edward that this revelation gave rise to an additional claim for Breach of Privacy under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

When Humberside Police continued to fail to make any satisfactory offer of compensation, I commenced court proceedings on behalf of Edward.

A Defence was filed in which the Police stated that the officers at the scene had initially believed that Edward had said that he did know the whereabouts of his brother, and was choosing not to give the address to the officers – but that on review of the body camera footage they now accepted that was not what Edward had said and accordingly the officers had ‘misheard’ my client.

However, the fact of the matter here is that even if Edward had known the precise address where his brother was staying at the time, he was under no obligation to volunteer that information to the Police and nor would his refusing to tell them in response to direct questioning have constituted a criminal offence.  The wording of Section 4 of the Criminal Law Act, quoted above, is quite clear – the ‘assistance’ of an offender must be a positive act intended to impede the suspect’s apprehension; this law was never intended to criminalise a failure to disclose information to the Police in such circumstances.  It is an offence that is designed to sanction those who assist offenders not those who don’t assist the Police, yet, even on their own interpretation of what Edward had done that night, it was that latter (non- existent) offence for which PC Healey and his colleagues were actually arresting Edward, not the actual offence.

This was actually reflected in the Police Incident Log the day after Edward’s arrest, in the following entry made by the arresting officer’s supervisor.

The S [suspect] was detained for assisting an offender…I asked the officer what evidence was there that the S did some positive act to assist the S.  The arresting officer could not give me any evidence.  I have watched the BWV [body worn video] the S actually states to officers “I don’t know where my brother is” officers can be heard discussing there is no evidence for arrest because they were told to.  In the officer’s statement, the S states that his brother is playing hide and seek.  At no point does he state he is helping his brother and I have been provided no evidence to understand why he is IC [in Custody].

As the Police supervisor correctly and succinctly concludes – “There may be a moral duty to tell Police, but this is not a criminal offence”. 

That is of course quite correct – if the law were otherwise it would effectively criminalise all family members and friends of a criminal suspect who did not, in the parlance of the street, turn themselves into ‘grasses’.

Personally, I am very grateful that we live in a country in which brothers, mothers, friends, and neighbours are not required by law to inform on one another – questions of morality/ethics being quite another matter, but quite rightly one which rests in the individual’s free conscience. You can read my previous blogs on this subject, covering unlawful arrests for “obstruction through silence” here and here.

I am pleased to confirm that the claim has now been recently settled for a payment of £5,000 damages, plus Edward’s legal costs.

The name of my client and his brother has been changed.

This week’s blog post concerns another case of mistaken identity leading to a wrongful arrest – mistakes which could easily have been avoided by the Police, and hence which left them liable to compensate my client.

Late one evening in January 2024, multiple officers from Merseyside Police attended at the home of my client Andy and advised him that he was under arrest for an assault that had occurred over 4 weeks earlier in Liverpool City Centre.

Andy honestly denied any knowledge of the incident, and explained that on the alleged date/ time he had been sick and in bed.

The Officers now produced 3 blurry images of the suspect, apparently taken from CCTV footage.  On looking at them, Andy correctly asserted that he bore little resemblance to the person depicted.  The Officers replied that the images of the suspect had been “circulated on Social Media” (it is understood that they were also published in local newspapers) and that in response several people had identified Andy as the suspect.

Officers now began to search Andy’s house for items of clothing, said to be connected with the crime. Andy resided here with his partner and young children, and, indeed, it was his daughter’s birthday the next day. It was deeply distressing for all of them for the family home to be ‘invaded’ in this way, and especially for Andy’s children to see their father being taken into Police custody. One of the most poignant things about this was that Andy had been putting up decorations to delight his daughter the next morning – rudely awoken by the stomping of the officers, her birthday surprise was ruined and replaced with a nightmarish scene.

Andy was transported to Birkenhead Custody Unit, where the circumstances of his arrest were entered in the Custody Record as follows-

“Section 20 assault – DP [Detained Person] punched a male in the jaw causing it to break.  He has been identified following CCTV media release and by a witness.”

The arrest necessity reasons were specified as to “allow the prompt and effective investigation” of the offence and to “prevent person causing physical injury.”

On arrival, Andy was processed and placed in a cell, where he spent a dark and depressing night notwithstanding the fact that he knew himself to be innocent. Waking up in Police custody wasn’t the way he was meant to be celebrating his daughter’s birthday.

The next morning, Andy was taken for interview.  During the interview,  the CCTV footage was played, whereupon the interviewing Officer, looking from the footage to Andy and back, immediately confirmed: “That’s not you”.

Andy was returned to his cell for a short period of time, before being brought before the Custody Sergeant and released. It was quite apparent that he was not the man in the photographs.

As well as the impact which this had on his family life, Andy, who is self- employed, also missed out on a day’s work and hence wages.

Following receipt of instructions from Andy, I carefully considered the evidence, assessed the impact which this incident had had upon his mental health, and a detailed letter of claim was prepared and presented to Merseyside Police, seeking damages for wrongful arrest.

Following investigation, Merseyside Police denied liability. They asserted that Andy had been reasonably identified as the suspect after the images had been circulated in the media, and calls had been made to “Crimestoppers” naming Andy on the basis of these images.

Notwithstanding the Police’s denial of liability, I still considered that Andy had good prospects of success. It was true that he had been named, apparently by way of honest mistakes made by members of the public who had seen the images in the media – but it was also true that the Police were in possession of an image which, when compared to Andy ‘in the flesh’ made it instantly obvious that he wasn’t the “wanted man.”

This could all have been cleared up so much more quickly – and quite probably without any need for Andy to come in to Police custody at all. Remember that all summary arrests (i.e arrests based on ‘in-house’ Police decision making, rather than the authority of a Court warrant) must be based not just on a “reasonable suspicion” that the person has committed an offence, but also a real “necessity” that requires the person be arrested, rather than the investigation being conducted in another manner. Arrest is supposed to be a tool of investigation or public protection, to be used only when essential, not an end to itself, or a form of ‘interim punishment’ for a suspected offence.

The necessity criteria are set out in Section 24 (5) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and you can read one of my previous blogs on this subject here.

In this case, the alleged assault had occurred over a month earlier, and evidence of it had been captured on CCTV. Even if Andy had been the “wanted man” it would arguably have been unnecessary to arrest him, rather than invite him to attend a Police ‘voluntary interview’. There was certainly no need to arrest the suspect to ‘prevent injury’ and the length of time which had gone by hardly meets the definition of ‘prompt.’

The Police evidently had a similar mindset, conscious of the risks they would face in taking their liability denial before the civil courts, and I was shortly afterwards able to bring Andy’s claim to a successful conclusion, with the Chief Constable agreeing to pay him £8,000 damages plus his legal costs.

The power of arrest – taking away a man’s liberty – taking him away from his home and family – must not be used carelessly or disproportionately: for now, at least, it seems, Merseyside Police have got the picture.

My client’s name has been changed.

In this week’s blog I am presenting a case report ‘from the archives’, as although it goes back to events that occurred a decade ago, I think it is a timely reminder of an age- old problem that also remains a very modern threat: the utterly shameless and, indeed, deeply sinister, exploitation of ‘opportunity’ and abuse of power by predatory Police Officers – in this case, an officer who was apparently willing to step over a man’s grave in an attempt to get a grieving widow into bed with him.

As demonstrated here, these types of officers will use a variety of methods to attempt to ‘snare’ their victims, including grooming by flattery and attempting to overawe and impress with their ‘power’, as well as exploiting their access to sensitive personal data about the person and access to Police computer systems. It is hard to imagine a more despicable breach of trust, one which deliberately or recklessly widens wounds caused by crime or tragedy, in the process of emotional exploitation, and continued vigilance against such predatory officers is absolutely required.

In the Summer of 2014, my client Collette’s husband tragically killed himself, widowing her and depriving their young son of a father.

In the aftermath of these events, PC Smith of Collette’s local Police Force, was allocated to act as Collette’s Family Liaison Officer (FLO).

PC Smith attended at Collette’s home where he met with my client and various family members, and thereafter began to communicate with Collette by way of phone and text, as well as visiting her home again on a number of occasions. 

These communications were initially entirely professional, concerning the return of Collette’s late husband’s body, as well as the funeral arrangements.

Despicably, PC Smith then attempted to use the tragedy for his own sexual gratification.  Just a few weeks after having first met her, PC Smith again visited Collette’s home address and as he was leaving, the Officer removed his body armour vest and hugged Collette – a hug to which she did not consent. 

Thereafter, each further time that he visited Collette, ostensibly for Policing duties, PC Smith would give Collette a hug and a kiss on the cheek – actions which she had not encouraged and to which she likewise did not consent. 

In a further disturbing escalation of events, later that month PC Smith attended at my client’s house and took her for a drive in his Police vehicle, purportedly to help her overcome an anxiety about driving which she had developed following her husband’s death.

The drive lasted for approximately 45 minutes.  During the drive, whilst on a dual carriageway, PC Smith drove at approximately 100mph for 6 minutes with Police sirens blaring and blue lights flashing, for no Policing purpose. Collette believed that PC Smith was ‘showing off’ to her and was deeply traumatised and upset, believing that the Officer had deliberately put her life at risk in doing this.

Unfortunately, my client could not escape from PC Smith’ attentions, as he remained her designated Family Liaison Officer and therefore had legitimate excuses to continue contacting her, including taking a statement about events leading up to her husband’s tragic death.

As is often the case in incidents of grooming/exploitation by Police Officers, PC Smith then started to use his own personal mobile phone to contact Collette as well as his official work phone.

The manner in which he communicated with Collette now became more personal in content and nature and started to include messages which were not merely ‘friendly’ but overtly ‘flirty’ and included the following –

• “…how’s my star pupil this morning?…”

• “….I’m looking forward to seeing your smiley face :)…”

• “…remember when I first saw you in make-up and commented, you went rosy red with a big smile…”

• In response to a message from Collette that she could handle unwanted admirers, PC Smith replied “I’ll watch myself then ;)”.

• “…looking forward to seeing tomoz trouble is my time flies with you, I could spend hours chatting…. ;)”

Yet further, PC Smith attempted to ‘friend’ Collette on Facebook. 

The level of communications from PC Smith were now as high as 30 messages a day, leading Collette to feel increasingly alarmed and ‘suffocated’ by him.

PC Smith continued to attempt to insinuate himself into Collette’s life and his behaviour became increasingly like that of a stalker – but in this case, a stalker in Police uniform. 

On one occasion, PC Smith drove Collette and her young son to a local fishing spot and when it began to rain and PC Smith and Collette sheltered under an umbrella, he attempted to kiss Collette, from which she pulled away.

Whilst most stalkers do not have access to the Police’s Automatic Number Plate Recognition system (ANPR), allowing them to track the location of individual motor vehicles, PC Smith did and apparently exploited it in his pursuit of Collette.

On another occasion, Collette was driving along the motorway with her son when she became aware of a marked Police vehicle following her which then overtook her, activating its lights and forcing her to pull over onto the hard shoulder. 

The Officer behind the wheel of the ‘emergency’ vehicle was none other than PC Smith himself, who then approached Collette with the almost unbelievable comment “Good morning, I just wanted to say hello”.

PC Smith directed Collette to follow him to the next services for a coffee, which Collette did as she felt she had no alternative, although she was feeling deeply shocked and embarrassed.

Such is the power differential between Police Officers and members of the public – particularly those made vulnerable by crime or bereavement – which predatory Officers, such as PC Smith, show no hesitation in seeking to exploit.

PC Smith then repeated his outrageous behaviour on a further occasion when Collette was travelling on the motorway.  A marked Police vehicle appeared in front of her illuminating a ‘Follow me’ sign. Understandably, Collette felt obliged to do so, whilst also feeling scared and intimidated.

She followed the Police vehicle to a nearby McDonalds Restaurant and, inevitably, discovered that once more PC Smith was behind the wheel of that vehicle.

PC Smith suggested that Collette had been speeding, but my client strongly believed that this was no more than an excuse for him to stop her for a ‘chat’.  PC Smith purchased food for himself and a drink for Collette and the friend with whom she had been travelling in the car and even ignored initial radio request for assistance, telling his HQ that he was on his ‘tea break’.

Further disturbing incidents occurred over the weeks that followed. The first was when Collette was attending a local Festival with friends and family. Whilst there, Collette received a text message from PC Smith saying that she looked nice and describing the clothes she was wearing, specifically a stripy scarf. My client could not see PC Smith but realised that he must be present in the crowd, observing her.  She felt scared and left early.

The second such incident, happened a few weeks later, when Collette attended a Vintage Car show, only to be unexpectedly approached by PC Smith who was also ‘coincidentally’ attending.

This is the way in which a stalker can render the ordinary world into a frightening trap, leaving the person who is his target with no safe refuge, constantly fearing that he is going to appear, and therefore unable to ever fully relax. The stalker, insidiously, becomes a lurking lodger in the person’s home, there in her fears even when she can’t see him, and each time she goes out or hears a knock on the door it is in apprehension of his return. Pleasure drains from the world as a result; and how much more terrible that this be inflicted on a recently widowed woman, and by a person deliberately, almost methodically, exploiting powers and privileges of a Police Officer.

Matters finally came to a head in the Autumn of 2014, when PC Smith messaged Collette whilst he was away on holiday with his wife. His message stated that his hotel and room views were nice, and it was signed off with no fewer than 22 ‘x’ symbols, to indicate ‘kisses’. Collette was now even more frightened by PC Smith’s behaviour – he seemed to believe that he was in a romantic/ sexual relationship with her.

Accordingly, Collette reported PC Smith’s conduct to a Police Sergeant who had been a friend of her late husband.  The Sergeant agreed that PC  Smith’s conduct was wholly unprofessional and inappropriate, and that he would report matters to their Professional Standards Department (PSD).

Such was Collette’s fear of PC Smith that she now felt compelled to move house and as PSD began their investigation into the rogue officer’s conduct, they arranged for extra security measures to Collette’s home (including a padlock on the side gate and alarms on every window) as well as placing a ‘marker’ on her home address to ensure priority response in the event of any incident.

Within a few days, PC Smith was issued with a Police Information Notice (PIN) for harassment of Collette, and shortly afterwards was suspended from duty.

Subsequently, misconduct proceedings were brought against PC Smith, and he was dismissed from the Police service.

That was far from the end of the matter for Collette, of course. She was left with considerable mental anxiety by reason of the Officer’s predatory behaviour towards her. She found herself feeling nervous around men in the workplace, particularly those in a position of authority over her. Even a welcomed hug could bring back flashbacks of PC Smith pressing himself upon her. Merely seeing the Police on a TV screen was uncomfortable for her, and if she heard emergency sirens ‘in the real world’ she would become heightened and find herself trying to figure out if they were from an ambulance or a Police car. She feared being  ‘followed’. Collette came to feel that PC Smith had prevented her from properly grieving and coming to terms with her husband’s death – precisely the opposite of what his role as her Family Liaison Officer was supposed to achieve.

I brought civil proceedings on behalf of Collette, against the Force, and secured their admission of liability for PC Smith’s acts of harassment against my client, including his abuse of Police data systems in order to facilitate that abuse. I was able to arrange psychotherapy for Collette to try to help her better cope with the impact of what the disgraced Officer had done to her, and ultimately a financial settlement of £30,000 plus legal costs.

All names have been changed.

As we approach again the time of the year at which more people take flights abroad than any other, I thought it was worthwhile revisiting, by reference to one of my recent cases, the issue of wrongful arrests at the airport, and what can be done about them.

In March 2019 my client Jamie travelled to Gatwick airport, intending to fly to Vietnam. 

However, as he attempted to board his flight, he was stopped by Officers of Surrey Police who informed him that he had been circulated as ‘wanted’ for an offence of criminal damage, on the Police National Computer (PNC).  Jamie’s protests that he knew nothing about this were ignored and instead of his holiday to Asia, he was dragged off into the nightmarish ‘long haul’ of Police Custody.

After several hours in the custody of Surrey Police, Jamie was informed that he was to be transferred into the hands of the Metropolitan Police, as it was they who had circulated his ‘wanted’ notice on the PNC. 

In the early hours of the following day, therefore, Jamie was brought to Bethnal Green Police Station in London where he was searched, processed and placed into a cell; and there he spent the night, in an understandably miserable condition. 

Jamie was entirely innocent of the offence for which he had been arrested.  At 10.49am the following morning, his Custody Record was updated with the following entry –

Disposal

Criminal damage to property valued under £5000 – Disposal at 10:43 04/03/2019 – No Further Action NFA – Detective Constable has established that DP [DETAINED PERSON]  is not responsible for the criminal damage, it was his cousin [NAME REDACTED – BUT ENTIRELY DIFFERENT TO MY CLIENTS]  (Photo shown to victim who confirmed this) , DP created this problem by giving his cousin’s details … when he was last arrested, this led to him being arrested on this occasion. NFA authorised by Detective Sergeant …

A subsequent entry made a few minutes later on the Custody Record stated “Police Sergeant has checked PNC…DP no longer shown as wanted on PNC for this matter”.

Jamie was then released from Custody, feeling relieved but also aggrieved.  Having missed his original flight, he then had to make alternative arrangements; fortunately, he was able to travel to Vietnam without further incident the following day, albeit at considerably increased expense.

The reference to Jamie having previously given his cousin’s details as his own was a very old one – dating back to an incident almost twenty years earlier, in 2002. This fact alone could never have justified Jamie’s arrest; had elementary investigative steps been taken it would have been easy for the Police to establish that Jamie was not the same person as his cousin, prior to the draconian step of an ‘airport ambush’ arrest being carried out. Identity checks at airports are amongst the most stringent in the world; no one is able to board an international flight on the basis of an ‘alias’, unless we are straying into the realms of international espionage…

You Only Fly Twice

Sadly, this was not the end of the matter for my client.  A lot of people who have experienced an unlawful arrest at the hands of the Police develop a natural fear that it will happen again – in most cases, thankfully, that does not transpire; but when a ‘ghost in the system’ i.e. a mistaken identity or wrongful linking of an innocent person’s records with those of a criminal suspect /recurrent offender has occurred – then the same problem can return to haunt the innocent party again, usually as a result of negligent Police record keeping.

Conscious of this, Jamie did everything that was realistically possible to help both himself and the Police avoid the same trap on a future occasion when he was due to travel abroad – regretfully, all to no avail. Sometimes, common sense just can’t penetrate the sclerotic bureaucracy that surrounds and the school-boy sloppiness which permeates Policing practices, even in this electronic age.

In November 2021, two officers from the Met attended Jamie’s address, looking for his cousin. Jamie explained who he was, and that his cousin did not live here – and the officers accepted this and left. This further incident was weighing on Jamie’s mind, however, as the date of his next flight abroad approached, in January 2022. The day before his flight, therefore, Jamie attended Bethnal Green Police station, produced his driving licence to verify his identity and spoke to an officer who established that there had been a ‘wanted’ marker placed against Jamie’s name, which would have led to his being arrested at the departure gate the next day – but who assured him that this had now been removed from the PNC.

The following day, Jamie attended Heathrow airport with several members of his family where, lo and behold, he was intercepted by no fewer than four Metropolitan Officers and arrested – once again owing to the assumption that he was his cousin, despite Jamie having done all he could the previous day to correct that mistake (and having been reassured that it was corrected). Jamie was bitterly upset by reason of this, and all the more distressed and embarrassed because on this occasion, his arrest took place in front of his teenage son and young nephew and niece.

Jamie even managed to get his uncle on the phone – who confirmed to the officers that Jamie was not his son (the man they were actually looking for), but all to no avail.

Jamie was then transported back to Bethnal Green Police Station – where of course he had been only 24 hours previously, precisely to try and prevent this disaster occurring. On being produced before the custody desk, he made the same representations to the Sergeant, who stated that they and the arresting officers would “make enquiries”. Regardless of this, Jamie was processed, searched, obliged to provide his fingerprints and DNA, and then locked in a cell.

After some time, officers entered the Jamie’s cell and informed him that they had corroborated his account. My client was then released and transported back to Heathrow airport, but due to the arrest he had long- missed his flight. In all, the incident caused Jamie significant anxiety and psychological distress.

Having received instructions from Jamie to act on his behalf in relation to this matter, I advised him to pursue claims against the Metropolitan Police for both of these incidents, seeking separate damages for his wrongful arrest in 2019 and in 2022.

It was established that the first incident (in 2019) had occurred as a result of a Police Constable ‘confusing’ the two PNC profiles, not realising that my client and his cousin were not ‘the same person’, and then circulating an arrest request which used Jamie’s cousin’s name with Jamie’s PNC ID number. The Met accepted that the officer was at fault for not carrying out a “more thorough check” and would receive management intervention, known as “reflective practice” in order to “to learn from this incident”.

In regards to the second incident (2022), it transpired that following the Police attendance at Jamie’s home in November 2021, one of the Officers involved had committed exactly the same error as his colleague two years previously – circulating my client’s PNC ID rather than his cousins, and not conducting thorough- enough enquiries to ensure the details were correct. To compound matters, although the ‘wanted marker’ had been removed from Jamie’s PNC profile after his attendance at the station the day before his January 2022 flight, the officers who came to arrest him had not re-checked the PNC before doing so, and furthermore failed to conduct a new check at the scene, despite the urgent appeals that they do so from Jamie and his family.

In my opinion, it was particularly egregious that following the identification of the correct suspect and Jamie’s release from Custody in March 2019, the Metropolitan Police had failed to appropriately mark both Jamie’s and his cousin’s PNC profiles to ensure that a similar incident did not occur in the future – which of course it did in January 2022 – causing my client stress, disruption and loss of liberty and wasting the Police’s own time and resources.

Following an extended investigation period, the Met made an offer of £4,500 in total settlement of both claims brought by my client i.e. his arrest in March 2019 and his arrest in January 2022.

I considered this to be a significant undervaluation of one of those claims alone, let alone both and had no hesitation in advising Jamie to reject the same and to proceed with his claim. 

I was subsequently able to negotiate settlement of Jamie’s first claim for damages in the sum of £7,500and £11,000 in settlement of the second claim, i.e a total of £18,500 damages, plus legal costs.

That will pay for a lot of air miles; but I am sure my client will settle for this miscarriage of justice never happening to him again. Let us hope that the level of damages that has been achieved has caused the Met to “reflect” all the more deeply on how well their officers are trained in what should be routine tasks of research and identification, using the vast resources of the PNC, and given the very serious consequences of simple mistakes.

My client’s name has been changed.

In order for a Police Officer to affect a summary arrest in accordance with Section 24 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE), which is to say an arrest which is not backed by the issue of a Court warrant, the Officer must have a suspicion that the arrestee is guilty, that is both honest and reasonable.  Whilst the question of the Officers’ honesty is a subjective one, the question as to whether his belief in the suspect’s potential guilt is a reasonable one is objective i.e. the officer should be capable of justifying to a reasonable third party that his suspicion was one which was reasonably formed on the basis of available evidence. 

Because a summary arrest usually takes place very early in a criminal investigation (indeed, its primary purpose is to facilitate such an investigation)  the requirement for ‘reasonable suspicion’ does not mean that the Officer has to turn over every possible stone of evidence first; but it does mean that – absent an immediate emergency –  basic enquiries which could easily rule in/rule out a person’s potential involvement in the offence must not be neglected, otherwise the Officer’s honest belief may well also be an unreasonable one, rendering the arrest unlawful and the person’s subsequent detention a form of false imprisonment.

There is no criminal accusation which carries with it a greater stigma than an allegation of child sexual abuse, such, however, was the nightmare situation to which my client Peter Miller awoke one Summer’s night in 2023. Peter had previously worked for a company which specialises in providing ‘outdoor education’ activities. One night he was at home in bed with his partner when he heard knocking/ringing at the door of their house, and, after going downstairs and answering the door, discovered two Police Officers were present. 

Peter’s initial surprise at this midnight visit turned into shell-shock as one of the Officers informed him that he was under arrest for sexual assault. He was required to hand over his mobile phone and tablet, and then taken into Custody at the local Police Station.

The Custody Record records that the circumstances of arrest were –

“to protect a child or other vulnerable person from the person in question: to allow the prompt and effective investigation of the offence or of the conduct of the person in question…Detained Person has allegedly whilst working with children has grabbed three separate children by the genitalia.”

A hideous accusation like the one that Peter now faced can make even a person who knows themselves to be entirely innocent burn with shame and embarrassment as they are processed like a ‘perpetrator’ – searched, fingerprinted, photographed and obliged to provide a sample of their DNA – knowing that disgust is lurking behind every pair of eyes which looks upon him, even if it is disguised.

Peter spent the night in a cell, in the dark as to the substance of the accusations against him and, feeling as devasted and fearful as any of us would in that situation.

But he was not interviewed by the investigating Officers until the middle of the following afternoon, and during that process it became clear that the Officers were now concerned that they had the ‘wrong man’, although they nevertheless proceeded with the interview.  Even though Peter was wholly innocent, he found the subject matter of the questions put to him and the interrogation process highly uncomfortable and upsetting.

Thankfully, not long after the conclusion of his interview Peter was advised that he was to be released, and that no further action would be taken against him. 

But what had occurred to lead to this innocent man’s arrest on such heinous charges?

It transpired that approximately 12 hours prior to Peter’s arrest, a report had been made to the Police by a school, stating that a number of their pupils had made disclosures of sexual assault by an outdoor activities instructor whilst they were on a school trip. The suspect’s name was reported as ‘Pete, possible Pete Miller’.  Furthermore, the school provided the name of the Company whom the suspect worked for, which I shall refer to as “Company A”. 

The disclosures had apparently been made by the children during the previous evening, and it was confirmed that the children were now safe and the instructor was no longer present.

The investigating officer then made enquiries with Company A as to whether they knew a ‘Pete Miller’ and a Director of Company A confirmed that Peter Miller (my client) was indeed an instructor working for the Company. However, the investigating officer failed to make any further enquiry with the Director in order to establish whether Peter had been working the previous day on the school trip. The officer’s failure to ask this question was a glaring omission, which, in my opinion, thereafter rendered unreasonable his suspicion of my client as the offender – because if the officer had asked the Director of the Company that question he would have been informed that Peter had not been involved in the relevant school trip – and indeed, that Peter’s last work for Company A had been some two months previously.

It was only during the last few hours of my client’s detention in Custody, that the Police re-contacted the Director of Company A and established these facts, and furthermore that of the people from Company A who actually had worked on the school residential trip, one was a man whose first name was also “Peter”; this person’s full details were provided, and a subsequent arrest was made. 

In response to the letter of claim which I sent on my client’s behalf, the Police accepted that it is ‘regrettable’ that their ‘inexperienced’ officer failed to take the simple step, during his first conversation with the Director of Company A, to establish whether Peter Miller had in fact been working on the school trip the previous day, the answer to which would have inevitably established my client’s innocence, as well as allowing the Police to much more swiftly close the net on the real suspect.

The Police went on to assert that they were satisfied that Peter’s arrest was both honest and reasonable.  I would agree with the former, but for all the reasons set out above, strongly dispute the latter – and indeed it appears the Force itself acknowledges this, as they have recently agreed to pay my client compensation in the sum of £10,000, plus his legal costs. 

I trust that this settlement will allow my client to begin to put this deeply traumatic experience behind him and that, because of this robust legal challenge, the Police will ensure that lessons are learned to better protect victims and innocent members of the public in the future, particularly in regard to such serious offences.

My client’s name has been changed.