Author: iaingould

What duty of care is owed to the close family members of a Police informant?  At least one major Police Force in this country apparently thinks it should be “none” – even when it is the Police themselves who have exposed the identity of that informant to a dangerous drugs gang, by an act of gross stupidity. 

This week’s blog is a follow-up to last week’s story of “David”, the Police informant whose details were contained within a document which the Police ‘left behind’ after searching an address linked to the OCG (Organised Crime Group) nominal whom David had given them information about.

The consequences of this Police negligence naturally did not stop with David.  At the time when he supplied the information David was living at his mother’s house (as also was David’s younger brother).

Indeed, David’s mother, whom I will identify for the purposes of this blog as “Alison”, had not only known her son was going to supply information about criminal activities to the Police, she had actively encouraged him to do so and had accompanied him to the Police Station for moral support when he went to disclose the information to Detectives.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Alison found the Police Officer’s attitude towards her son’s future safety and wellbeing lackadaisical, with the Detective Constable who had conducted the interview somewhat sarcastically offering to “look up and down the road” for them when they left the Police Station – but what she certainly didn’t expect was for the Police to deliberately take her son’s details to the criminal’s address and then leave them behind.

By the time the Police data breach occurred, David was himself in prison, but Alison was still living with David’s brother at the family address and understandably became extremely concerned for her own personal safety. A Summary of Threat and Risk in regard to the Organised Crime Group identified their members as having been involved in “possession and storing firearms” and “the shooting of two males.”  The gang was involved in the bulk supply of Class A drugs in the area.  They were clearly extremely dangerous individuals who were unlikely to take being crossed lightly.

As David’s mother, and still living in the address which they had until recently shared together, Alison knew that whether she was deliberately targeted, or was ‘collateral damage’,  she could very literally end up in the firing line if these dangerous criminals came looking for revenge. 

Alison’s mental health deteriorated badly, and she was not at all reassured when she turned to the Police for help. Despite the fact that it was Police negligence which had dropped the family into this dire situation, the local officers did not seem particularly interested in protecting Alison and her sons.  A Crime Prevention Officer attended at Alison’s home and provided some cursory recommendations about fitting window locks, an external light and a CCTV camera. When the Crime Prevention Officer returned on the subsequent occasion to install the CCTV at Alison’s house, she noted that he had brought with him two uniformed officers for his own protection – but there was no suggestion that she was to receive any protection or assistance from the Police over and above the fairly routine security gadgets which were being fitted to her home.  There was certainly no suggestion that the Police would assist Alison in moving address. It seemed that they were only interested in doing the bare minimum.

When I presented a claim to the Police on behalf of Alison and her younger son, this was met with defensive hostility. The Police had agreed to compensate David – after leaving the document with his details in it at the gang members address – but now sought to argue that they did not owe any duty of care or confidence to Alison or David’s brother, as they were not referred to in that document.

Referring to the Court of Appeal decision in An Informer v A Chief Constable (which I discussed in my previous blog) the Police argued that whilst there was a duty to ensure a “safety and wellbeing” of informers – whether authorised ‘Covert Human Intelligence Sources’ (CHIS) or informal ‘ad hoc’ informers like David – there was no basis for extending that duty of care to family member of an informer.

The Police brazenly sought to argue that nothing in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 200 (RIPA) or the CHIS Code of Practice required a public authority to take into account the safety and welfare of the family of informers – at least not unless the Police gave the informer overt assurances that they would protect his family as well.

Therefore, unlike David’s case, which settled without the need to issue Court proceedings – it was necessary for me to commence action in the Civil Courts on behalf of Alison and the Police fought the case tooth and nail almost all the way to trial.

In the case of An Informer a duty was found to be owed to both the informer and members of his family and the CHIS Code of Practice does require a public authority (i.e. the Police) to “take into account…..  the foreseeable consequences to others of [an informants] tasking.”

It was clear to me that the Police did owe Alison a duty of care, given her presence at the Police Station when David provided the information, and hence the officer’s direct knowledge of her and also the clear and present danger flowing from the fact that she lived in David’s home address as a close relative and could very foreseeably become a target for reprisal, whether inadvertently as a resident at that address or deliberately because of her relationship with David.

Furthermore the failure to keep safe the information David had provided, and the leaving of the document in the place and circumstances where it was left, in my view amounted to an infringement of both Alison’s and her younger son’s right to private and family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR).

All of these arguments I raised and maintained in the face of the Police position which was that the only duty of care and confidence that they owed in these particular circumstances was to David and that the human rights of his family had not been infringed by their actions.

I am pleased to report that ultimately the Police’s fine points and legal evasions could not, even on their own analysis, stand up to the moral force of my client’s argument and they have recently agreed to a healthy compensation package for Alison and David’s younger brother.

Alison had encouraged her son to do the right thing in very difficult circumstances and the whole family had had their lives put at risk as a result of Police negligence.

Thankfully, all members of the family have subsequently remained safe, although the psychological torments that they suffered after this act of gross carelessness on the part of the Police must not be underestimated and the message to the Police must be loud and clear: let this never happen again.

“Our democracy depends on people being able to trust the Police,” said former PM, and Home Secretary, Theresa May, during her recent interview on popular politics podcast “The Rest is Politics”. 

Breaches of the public’s trust by the Police take many forms – some absolutely deliberately abuses of power whilst others arise from callousness, recklessness, stupidity or some combination of the three.

This week’s blog post concerns a shocking example of the latter – not an intentional abuse of power by the Police, but a grossly negligent one which cast a dark shadow over the life of one of my clients. 

My client – (whom I shall identify by the pseudonym of ‘David’) – was what, in colloquial terms, is known as a ‘grass’ i.e a criminal who provided information to the Police about other criminals, in this case information about Organised Crime Group (OCG) nominals i.e. gang members, involved in class A drug supply in the region.

The Police subsequently attended at an address linked to the gang in order to execute a search warrant. During the search, Officers had with them a file containing a ‘subject profile’ which contained sensitive information provided by David.

Unfortunately, upon leaving the address the Officers realised that the ‘subject profile’ document was no longer in the file and had, in fact, been left behind at the premises. Whereas the object of Police searches is to locate evidence of crime, here the Officers had instead given the criminals evidence which potentially compromised David’s safety as an informant. ‘Bungling’ is a word scarcely commensurate with the risk this now created to David’s life and limb.

The Police reported the loss of the subject profile to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).  The Constabulary’s Head of Information Rights and Disclosure and the ICO determined that David had to be notified about what had occurred, as he now faced what in bureaucratic jargon is delicately described as a “high likelihood of detrimental impact”.

High Risk of Harm

At that time, David was a prisoner serving a sentence, but was soon to be released.  As prison walls are often no barrier to the reach of organised crime gangs, it was recognised that there could well be implications for David’s safety within the prison. In the circumstances, prison security staff were briefed via police liaison officers and David was notified of the data breach.

Following notification, David contacted his family, to warn them of the data breach and the significant risk arising both to himself and them.

Shortly afterwards, David was released from prison, but, shockingly, was placed in temporary accommodation which was not very far from the area where the Organised Crime Group were based. David felt very vulnerable staying in the area, and feared that the gang would locate and seriously injure, if not kill, him. Indeed, David felt so desperate at this time that he actually considered committing an offence and then immediately handing himself in so that he would be sent back to prison again.

In light of the data breach, David was of the view that he should be placed in the witness protection system, but he was told by the Police that this was not an option.  The Police were showing a very lackadaisical concern for David’s plight, notwithstanding that it was their gross error which had put him in this situation.  On his release from prison David had initially been told that the Police would assist with his short and long term housing requirement but it now became clear that this was not the case.  Feeling abandoned by the Police, David began self-harming and his family had to intervene to arrange medical treatment.

With no permanent accommodation being made available for him, David was housed in cheap hotels for several nights, during which time he became increasingly paranoid that he was being followed.  Indeed, his mental health condition deteriorated to such an extent that he was detained by the Police under the Mental Health Act and ‘sectioned’ in mental health hospitals for a period of time.

It was only following his discharge from mental health care that David was finally able to secure relocation to permanent accommodation in an entirely different area of the country.  Nevertheless, he naturally continued to be fearful of reprisals and remained hypervigilant and wary. 

Duty of Care

Even with all my long experience of cases of Police negligence and misconduct, I was shocked by the facts of David’s case when he first approached me.  The Police Officers’ blundering stupidity had put at risk a man’s life and, indeed, potentially compromised the chances of other individuals being willing to share with the Police information about Organised Crime in that area, in the future.  It was entirely unnecessary for the “subject profile” document to have been printed off and brought to the premises – in other words, there was no need for the Officers to be carrying their homework around with them whilst they executed the search warrant at the premises, and certainly no excuse for leaving that homework behind. 

I pursued a claim for compensation on David’s behalf against the Police, seeking damages for negligence, breach of the Data Protection Act and breach of the Human Rights Act.

The law in this area was well-defined by the 2012 case of An Informer v A Chief Constable in which it was established that the Police owe informants such as David a duty of care to take reasonable steps to protect them from physical harm, as well as a duty of confidence.  It was admitted by the Police that the circumstances of the loss of the subject profile did amount to a breach of those duties, although they put David to proof as to the nature and extent of his loss.

As was stated by Lord Justice Toulson in the Informer case (paragraph 62 of the judgment) –

“The relationship between the police and a CHIS [“Covert Human Intelligence Source”] is a confidential relationship. The confidentiality serves two main purposes. The first is the safety and peace of mind of the CHIS. Acting as a CHIS may be risky and stressful. If the person’s identity became known, he or his family might in some cases be exposed to serious injury or death and in less extreme cases to other disturbing forms of harassment. The second purpose is the encouragement of the supply of information to the police by people who are unlikely to come forward unless they can be confident that their confidentiality will be protected.”

After negotiations, I was able to get the Police to agree to pay David a significant amount of money, plus legal costs.

No doubt he would trade every penny of it to be able to undo that breach of trust, whereby the Police exposed him to such clear and present danger; and the Police themselves must be mindful that every such breach of trust chips away at the sense of confidence which society at large needs to be able to have in them, in the over-arching fight against the blight of organised crime.

This week’s blog post concerns the unlawful arrest of one of my clients for what can only be described as a non-crime; and the action I took to win compensation for him. My client’s ordeal was recently reported upon by the Daily Mail, and I can here provide some further detail and commentary.

One afternoon in November 2022, my client (who goes by the YouTube name “Eye Spy Audit”- ESA in this blog post) filled up his car with £20.10 worth of diesel at a BP Fuel Petrol Station in Stockton-on-Tees and offered payment by way of a £20 coin and 10 pence coin to the cashier.

A £20 coin is legal tender in accordance with the Coinage Act 1971.

ESA was wearing a face mask, as had become common during the Covid pandemic. The manager of the petrol station refused to accept the £20 coin as payment unless (-this was a bizarre stipulation-) ESA removed his facial mask. This was despite the fact that there was no notice or advertisement on the fuel pumps warning potential customers that certain denominations of otherwise legal tender would not be accepted in payment of the goods being offered for sale (in this case, diesel).

ESA refused to remove his mask, rightly considering this to be irrelevant to the issue of whether or not the petrol station should accept his method of payment.

The manager of the petrol station then telephoned Cleveland Police and two officers, PC Gates and PC Rose, attended at the scene and spoke to Isaac, who was waiting patiently in the station shop. 

ESA politely explained the situation to both Officers.  The manager passed to PC Gates the £20 coin and ESA explained that the coin was legal tender (although being under no obligation to explain the law to a Police Officer).

PC Gates refused to accept that Isaac’s £20 coin was legal tender and threatened him with arrest for “bilking” i.e. making off without payment – unless he agreed to provide his name and contact number.  Isaac refused this unlawful demand.

Nevertheless, PC Gates in fact did then establish ESA’s name, by carrying out a vehicle check on ESA’s car.  PC Rose then read ESA’s name out loud in front of the petrol station manager and other customers.

Shortly thereafter, PC Gates placed ESA under arrest on suspicion of “making off without payment”, despite the fact that ESA was continuing to offer payment in entirely legal tender and was very much ‘remaining put’.

The Officers escorted ESA outside the shop.  He was obliged to remove his hat, face mask and jacket and was then searched.  His car keys were also confiscated.

ESA was then required to get into the rear of a Police van and was transported to Middlesborough Police Station by PC Gates.

Upon arrival at the station, ESA was advised that there was a queue of people to be processed.  ESA was obliged to wait in the van, where he noticed blood smears in all the seating locations on both sides and on the ceiling. When ESA made reference to these blood smears, PC Gates was dismissive of his concerns.

As the delay continued, ESA began to experience neck and back problems. He suffered uncomfortable stabbing pains in his legs, back and neck and arms.  However, PC Gates refused his reasonable request to be allowed to get out of the van and stretch his limbs.

In the circumstances, ESA then asked to see the nurse. PC Gates briefly left the van and then, on her return, derisorily informed Isaac that the nurse had apparently refused to see him unless he “wasn’t breathing” or was “dying”.

After what felt like an hour, ESA was finally allowed to exit the van and was taken into the police station where he was then held in a holding area for approximately 40 minutes.

Eventually, ESA was produced before the Custody Sergeant.

The Custody Record gives the circumstances of ESA’s arrest as follows;

“Police have been called to a PFS whereby the DP has fuelled his vehicle and attempted to pay with coins which have been confirmed to be non-legal tender. The Garage as such would not accept them.  The DP would not provide officers with details at the scene.”

The assertion that Isaac’s £20 coin (presumably the Officer wasn’t referring to his 10 pence piece, although who knows…) was ‘non legal tender’ was highly misleading.  The coin certainly was legal tender and nobody had ‘confirmed’ otherwise. 

Indeed, having been told of the arrest circumstances, the Custody Sergeant pulled PC Gates to one side, and when he returned, advised ESA that his detention was not authorised and he was to be released.

The Custody Record states that –

“Detention (was) not authorised – the DP was presented as a make off without payment. The DP has not made off from the scene and has awaited police attendance.  As such this offence was not made out. The DP has also made no attempt to leave, so the offence of attempt make off is not made out either. The officer advised she arrested the DP because she was advised to by her supervisor, but she advised me she agreed there were no grounds to detain the DP, other than to identify his name/address.  The DP provided me with those details in any event.  I explained to the officer that in order to arrest to establish a name/address, there also needs to be a substantive offence to investigate – as per earlier there is no offence made out. The officer was satisfied that there were no further grounds to detain the DP, and intends to deal with the issue as a civil matter.”

Having been detained for the best part of 3 hours, ESA was now de-arrested and driven back to the petrol station where his car was parked.  All of his possessions were returned except for the £20 coin which was retained by the Police for a further 2 weeks, for inexplicable reasons. 

Regular readers of this blog may recall a very similar incident to this which occurred to my client Brett Chamberlain at the hands of Devon and Cornwall Police.

This latest incident is sadly further evidence that Police failure to understand basic concepts of law concerning payment for goods and services remains widespread, resulting in civil liberties violations and a massive waste of time and resources by Officers who show far too much deference to the agents of big business rather than the rights of private citizens behaving in a perfectly lawful manner. 

In many respects this was the opposite of a shop lifting incident – a store manager refusing to accept legitimate payment for goods and calling the Police who responded with an “arrest first, think later” approach.

In response to the claim which I advanced on ESA’s behalf, Cleveland Police adopted an equally typical “deny first, think about it later” approach. Refusing the opportunity to admit liability or apologise to ESA, they gave us no choice but to commence civil court proceedings.

The Police then filed a full-blown Defence, disputing ESA’s claim on the grounds that the BP petrol station was entitled to refuse ESA’s chosen method of payment; this is simply not the case if the proffered method of payment is legal tender and customers have not been given prior notice by the business (in this case the petrol station) that there were forms of legal tender they would not accept, before irrevocably taking the goods (in this case by filling their vehicle from a self-service fuel pump).

I ultimately settled ESA’s court claim against Cleveland Police for damages in the sum of £3,999 (plus his legal costs).

A £20 coin is a legal tender of the realm, but here the Police Officers involved seem to forget their oath to uphold the laws of the land and instead acted as if they were bouncers for BP Fuel Stations.

Hopefully my client’s action will remind the Police where their true duty lies. 

Watch ESA’s YouTube video about this here and his t.v. interview here.

The names of my client and the officers involved have been changed.

Today’s blog post addresses following the question: can you be arrested for Obstruction of a Police Officer, simply for failing to answer their questions? Or perhaps I should say – can you be lawfully arrested for this?

My client, Anthony Rippingale, is the 72-year-old proprietor of a vehicle repair garage and MOT centre in Cambridgeshire and lives on the same premises as the garage.

As at January 2023, he was the registered keeper of a BMW motor car, one of approximately ten vehicles he owned for his business.

One Monday morning, Anthony received a visit at his premises from two Cambridgeshire Police Officers who wanted to know who had been driving the BMW two days previously.

Anthony answered truthfully that he did not know who had been driving that particular car, as he had been away from home over the weekend and it was one of several “garage” cars, which might be used by a lot of different people, including his customers.  All Anthony knew for certain at that time was that he himself had not been driving the BMW on the evening in question.

Anthony questioned the Officers as to whether the vehicle had been reported as involved in an accident or a crime; in response they confirmed it had not, but that there had simply been a report of an unknown man and woman in the car “having an argument.” At this point Anthony legitimately questioned whether the Officers had nothing better to do with their time, as he wasn’t going to waste his own looking into the answer to a question which he felt the Police had no right to be asking, in the absence of an accident or allegation of crime.

The Officers persisted in demanding that Anthony find out who was driving the car over the weekend and then, when he failed to immediately agree to do so one of the pair threatened Anthony as follows: “I’ll arrest [you] under Obstruct Police until you tell me.”

Not willing to submit to such crass bullying, Anthony replied “You do that then”, whereupon the Officer announced: “Ok, you’re under arrest on suspicion of obstructing Police, let’s go”.

The Officer now stepped into the porch of Anthony’s house, seized hold of his right arm and handcuffed him whilst the second Officer also stepped into the porch and took hold of Anthony’s left wrist.

Anthony was then led outside whilst his wife and son remonstrated about the Officers’ actions.

Anthony was taken to the Officers’ car, searched and placed into the back seat.

Anthony couldn’t quite believe what was happening to him but remained stoical in the face of the Officers’ intimidation.  Do we live in a country in which ordinary citizens can be taken from their homes by force for failing to answer a Police Officer’s question, absent any evidence that they have committed a criminal offence?

The answer of course, is that we do not, and the Police Officers who had abducted Anthony from his house should have known this as well, but they nevertheless undertook a strange charade in an apparent attempt to ‘crack’ Anthony’s perceived uncooperativeness. 

Shortly after Anthony had been placed in the Police car the arresting Officer approached him and stated as follows –

“So, you are under arrest.  You don’t have to talk to me, I explained that in the caution, and anything you do say I can use against you in Court.  But the option is, the van is still not here.  You tell us who was using the vehicle over the weekend, and we check on the female, then it’s all hunky dory.  Potentially.  That is another option.  If that option works and checks out, I will take the cuffs off, de-arrest you and get back to work for the rest of day.  How does that sound?”

It sounded to Anthony like a threat from an Officer who was breaking the law and he quite rightly replied only with his silence.

Anthony was held prisoner in the car for about 20 minutes, until a Police van arrived and he was transferred, still in handcuffs, into the caged section at the rear of the van – the ‘loading up’ manoeuvre performed before an arrested person is driven off to Custody.  Anthony has arthritis in his knees, and struggled to climb up into the van, experiencing discomfort as he did so. Furthermore, it being January, the cage section of the van was, in colloquial terms, “freezing cold”.

Anthony was then detained for a further period of approximately 50 minutes during which time the Police Officers searched his home and garage premises, claiming the right to do so under Section 17 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE).

They did not in fact have any such right in the circumstances. Section 17 gives Officers the right to enter and search premises for the purposes of finding a person who they want to arrest for an indictable offence i.e an offence sufficiently serious to be tried in the Crown Court (Obstruction is in fact a summary only offence – triable only in the Magistrates Court – and, of course, Anthony was already under arrest) OR for the purposes of ‘saving life or limb or preventing serious damage to property.’

It is one of the most commonly abused powers in PACE, misused by Officers who either don’t know or don’t care where the limit of their authority lies.

Whilst on the premises, the Officers encountered Antony’s wife, his two adult sons and young granddaughter. The Officers questioned the family as to the whether they knew anything about the whereabouts of the woman who had been seen ‘having an argument’ two nights previously, in alleged connection with the BMW. When these enquiries also drew blanks, the following immortal words were captured on the Officers’ Body Worn Video recorders  –

Officer 1: “He [Anthony] could tell us who was driving it, but won’t.”

Officer 2: “Yeah, but I also think they [the rest of the Rippingale family] could tell us as well.”

Officer 1: “But they’re not. So why aren’t we arresting everybody then?”

This exchange was rounded off by the first Officer coming to the regretful conclusion that: “We can’t nick them all, because of the 2 year old, someone has to look after her...”

It was already a farcical situation, but frankly could have escalated to utterly ridiculous levels had the Officers not, barely, been able to restrain their impulse to arrest the entire family.

All of this was unbeknownst to Anthony in his captivity in the Police van. Eventually, Anthony heard the engine of the vehicle starting up and he was driven away – but after travelling for approximately 2 miles, the van turned around and returned to Anthony’s house where he was allowed to exit the van and was de-arrested, the Officers telling him that they had had a “change of heart.”

That was all very well; but Policing is something that always needs to be done with the head, not the heart. No competent Officer could have thought that Anthony was committing a criminal offence – so either the Officers concerned need to go back to training school, or they were acting out a deliberate charade – a bluff which they then escalated by ‘pretending’ to be driving Anthony into Custody before turning around.

Anthony showed great determination in stoically standing his ground, in such trying circumstances, and calling their bluff.

It subsequently transpired that the reason for the Police interest in the BMW was an incident which had been reported occurring 2 days previously when a member of the public had seen a man and woman arguing and the man then getting into the BMW motor car in an apparently drunken state with the woman not wanting him to drive in that state.  There was no suggestion that the man in question (who was not Anthony) had been involved in any physical altercation with the woman, nor that he had actually driven the car whilst under the influence.

Although it felt like much longer for Anthony, when we obtained the Police records for this incident it was established that his total length of detention was for 1 hour 21 minutes. Thankfully, Anthony did not sustain any long-term psychological impact nor any injury other than transitory discomfort to his knees whilst he was held captive in the van.

Under guidelines laid down in the landmark 1997 Court of Appeal decision Thompson & Hsu v The Commission of Police of the Metropolis, the general range of damages for a wrongful arrest runs (on a reducing scale) from £1,000 for a detention of one hour to £6,000 for a detention of 24 hours (once the figures have been updated for inflation).  However, although Anthony’s detention was for not much more than a single hour, I was successful in recovering no less than £7,000 damages for him, plus his legal costs, which I think is correctly reflective of the aggravating circumstances of this incident and the seriousness of the Police abuse of power.

Silence is not Obstruction

The Cambridgeshire Police log in regard to Anthony’s arrest attempts to justify it as follows: “The male was purposely obstructive to Officers by not supplying the information”.

Silence is not obstruction, nor is refusal to supply information.

The offence of obstructing a Police Officer is defined by Section 89(2) of the Police Act 1996 as wilful obstruction of a Constable in the execution of his duty.  It is a summary only offence (i.e. triable only in the Magistrates Court, not the Crown Court.)  It carries a maximum penalty of 1 month imprisonment or a level 3 fine.

Whilst many examples of this offence involve actual physical obstruction of an Officer there are of course several verbal and non-violent ways in which the offence can potentially be committed – generally circumstances in which a person ‘tips off’ potential offenders that the Police are coming (including giving warning to other motorists of a Police speed ‘trap up’ ahead) and instances in which a person is actively giving misleading information such as a false name or address.

There is no legal duty at common law to provide the Police with information or actively assist them with their enquiries.  This principle – effectively the right to remain silent prior to arrest, as well as after it, was clearly defined by Lord Parker CJ in the 1966 case of Rice v Connelly  –

“The sole question here is whether the Defendant had a lawful excuse for refusing to answer the questions put to him.  In my judgement he had.  It seems to be quite clear that although every citizen has a moral duty, or, if you like, a social duty to assist the Police, there is no legal duty to that effect, and indeed the whole basis of the common law is the right of the individual to refuse to answer questions put to him by persons in authority, and to refuse to accompany those in authority to any particular place; short, of course, of arrest…in my judgement there is all the difference in the world between deliberately telling a false story – something which on no view a citizen has a right to do – and preserving silence, or refusing to answer, something which he has every right to do”.

Such a principle is of course one of the defining hallmarks of a free and democratic state as opposed to an authoritarian Police state. How ludicrous it is for a person to be arrested for failing to answer a question (or even deliberately refusing to answer it) when one of the inalienable rights of an arrested person is the very right to remain silent that the arresting Officer must immediately inform him that he has.

Anthony’s arrest was a sham; a gross abuse of power which on no interpretation of the facts could ever have had a legal basis.  It is shameful that Cambridgeshire Police have failed to take the opportunity to admit this or to offer Anthony an apology.

Perhaps they are maintaining their right to silence; but in this case the damages they have paid speak louder than words.

The actual last word in this blog post, however, I will leave to Anthony, who wrote this very kind review of his case-

Knowing that the actions of the Police that day were unquestionably a breech of their authority I contacted 10 different law firms to air my concerns. Iain Gould was THE ONLY legal representative to get back to me and confirmed what had happened to be outrageous. Mr Gould began work building a case straight away and I’m pleased to report negotiated a very good settlement on my behalf as compensation for what I was subjected to by bully mentality police officers that day.

Iain and his colleagues are a friendly, no nonsense team who get the job done and stand up to the police abusing their powers. I asked Iain Gould to give them a bloody nose which he delivered 100%, if you have a problem with injustice he is your man.

It was only two years ago that four Merseyside Police Officers were convicted and sentenced to jail for conspiracy to pervert the course of justice,  after one of them (PC McIntyre) had launched an unprovoked attack upon my client Mark Bamber, a conspiracy that centred around officers turning off their body worn video (BWV) cameras and then failing to upload the earlier footage which they had filmed. This is an example of a new spin on a very old story, one of the oldest forms of Police corruption – Officers beating up a civilian, or witnessing a Police colleague beat up a civilian, and then lying in their subsequent statements in order to cover up the act of aggression and attempt to place the blame on the innocent victim.

Thankfully all four Officers were exposed and have been justly punished for what they did – but only because they were caught out by their own body cameras, and their ham- fisted attempt to hide/ destroy that incriminating evidence.

Indeed, it is now increasingly common for Officers to be convicted of misconduct and/or criminal offences on the basis of their own video footage, as highlighted in a shocking BBC expose published this week which includes the case not only of Mark Bamber, but of another of my clients, assaulted by an officer who then asked the only one of his five colleagues who had turned his body camera on, to not upload his footage on their return to the station. The guilty Officer hoped that thereby the footage would be deleted; instead, it was preserved and led directly to his conviction.

You might think that in light of this wake-up call, Merseyside Police, in particular, would take a strict and rigorous approach to the issue of Officers switching on (or failing to switch on) their cameras in potential conflict situations for the safety of everybody concerned and to best uphold the course of justice.  Sadly, as a very recent case in which I am acting illustrates, this is not what has occurred and instead Merseyside Police seem content to allow their Officers to operate a laissez-faire approach to whether they turn their cameras on or not.

This case concerns a 13-year-old boy, whom I will identify for the purposes of this blog as ‘Joseph’, who has ADHD and learning difficulties, and who was walking home from school, when he was stopped by two Merseyside Police Officers in a patrol car. 

Even on the Officers’ account, there was no suggestion that my young client was doing anything wrong other than “staring at the Police vehicle” as they passed him by.

Nevertheless, the Officers performed a u-turn and approached Joseph; a potentially intimidating event for any adult, let alone a young teen.  

One of the Officers began to ask Joseph whether he was “distressed”; Joseph honestly told the Officer that he didn’t understand what he meant.

The Officer then exited the car, and confiscated a ‘vape’ cigarette from Joe, before searching his trouser pockets and school bag – without complying with any of the Code A PACE (Police & Criminal Evidence Act) requirements for a lawful search (see my blog post on GOWISELY for an explanation of the public’s rights and Police responsibilities in this regard). 

I will add that the Police account is that they did not carry out a ‘stop and search’ on Joe – although they accept that they confiscated his e-cigarette and looked in his bag after he opened it for them.

Unfortunately, the Officers failed to leave this encounter there.  Joe’s account is that the Officers continued to follow him in their car, and when he took out another e-cigarette from his jacket, the officers also confiscated that, causing Joe to become upset and shout at the Officers.

At this point, one of the Officers again exited the vehicle, and now arrested this 13-year-old boy under Section 5 of the Public Order Act (also confiscating Joe’s mobile phone in the process, which Joe had taken out in an attempt to record what was happening to him). This offence is defined as using threatening or abusive words or behaviour in the presence of a person likely be caused harassment, alarm or distress. 

Both Officers involved were equipped with body worn video cameras, but failed to activate them even when they were evidently contemplating arrest and then actually arresting this child. 

Notably, Joe states that the arresting Officer immediately, and unnecessarily, handcuffed him, before forcing him into the Police car, with a threat to take him “to the cells”, whereas the Officers maintain that although they took Joe into their car, they did not handcuff him, until Joseph began “bouncing up and down in the rear of the vehicle” and “making verbal threats”.

Joe also maintains that one of the officers was pulling on the handcuffs in the car, causing him pain, which the Police deny.

In an apparent attempt to justify the Officers’ use of handcuffs, Merseyside Police PSD asserted that-

“Constable S_____  recalls your client to be the most abusive and possibly the most aggressive person [he has] encountered in the 14 years of his front line service in the Police…”

I will pause here to observe that this description of “the most aggressive person I’ve ever encountered…” is something of a stock-phrase in Police Officer statements – leaving the impression that the Officer has only just been redeployed from Camberwick Green to the inner-city in each case – but I have never before seen it applied to such a young child.

The officers then called Joe’s Mum – I presume by having accessed her number from the phone they had confiscated from Joe – and drove him back home, where Joe’s Mum was understandably shocked and upset to see her young son in handcuffs.

As stated above, neither Officer had activated their body worn camera when-

• first approaching Joe;
• nor during the period when they alleged that he was committing a criminal “Public Order” offence;
• nor when they were arresting him;
• nor when they were handcuffing him. 

However, one of the Officers did choose to activate his BWV when Joe’s mother became ‘agitated’ on seeing her son being held captive in handcuffs by the Officers.

Joe now began to suffer an asthma attack and had to be provided with his inhaler by his step-father, whilst he was still detained in the rear of the Police vehicle in handcuffs, and only after this were those handcuffs removed and Joe was returned to his mother’s care. 

In rejecting the complaint which I subsequently raised on behalf of Joseph in regards to this incident, Merseyside Police PSD seemed very happy to have the deliberately limited footage which the Officers had recorded as (in their words) it “captured both your client and mother’s abusive behaviour and it has captured events that occurred outside your client’s property”.  At the same time, they are completely blasé to the absence of any earlier video record of this incident.

Needless to say, I do not intend to let matters rest there, and I am currently advising Joe and his Mum about a complaint appeal and claim for damages.

Who Watches The Watchmen?

Merseyside Force Policy in regards to activation of body worn video cameras states as follows:-

Body worn video (BWV) is a body camera worn by Police Officers and deployed by Officers at their own discretion.  However, policy stipulates BWV must be deployed in the following circumstances;

• Domestic and hate crime incidents.

• In private dwellings.

• Stop search.

• Crime and traffic scene.

• Public Order.

• Police pursuit.

• Using Police search powers.

• Method of entry.

Frankly, this policy does not appear to be worth the paper it is written upon. For a start – this was (allegedly) a ‘public order’ incident and, arguably, a stop and search, and yet PSD have offered no criticism of their Officers’ failure to record anything other than the very end of the incident (when it suited their purposes to do so).

A great deal, if not all, of the factual disputes between Joseph and the Police – whether or not he was searched in breach of PACE, whether or not his behaviour justified arrest, and at what point he was handcuffed – would not be open for debate if only the Officers had turned on their cameras, and it beggars belief that Merseyside Police seem content to allow their Officers ‘discretion’ on this issue, in situations where the Officers are interrogating and then forcefully arresting a child.

At this juncture, I am caused to also think of the case of my client John Kennedy – not a child, but certainly a vulnerable individual who was experiencing a mental health crisis – and who had to go through a five year legal battle, culminating in a victory at Court in the Summer of 2022 and damages of £50,000 – to prove that a Police Officer who had come to his house to perform a welfare check upon him, had in fact assaulted him and viciously broken his arm. The Officers attending at John’s house that night had also exercised their ‘discretion’ not to activate their cameras, and we might well wonder what the result would have been if they had been compelled to switch their cameras on: a much shorter legal case, or even, perhaps, no injury caused at all – for no doubt some Officers think twice about their use of force when that little box with its red light, is switched on upon their chests, like an electronic conscience?

The cynical – or perhaps merely the experienced – amongst us might comment that the absence of a video record of ‘conflict encounters’ between the Police and the public all too often leaves Officers with the temptation to ‘massage’ the facts of what happened in their own favour; or indeed, for the most unscrupulous Officers, a blank canvass on which to paint a totally false version of events, in an attempt to frame an innocent party.

My firm view is that it is well beyond time for the Police to mandate that their Officers activate their cameras in all situations in which they are exercising Police powers, and especially as soon as they start to contemplate use of force or arrest. To do so, would clearly be in the interests of transparency, accountability and safety for all – as well as restraining Police abuse of power and helping to root out abusive Officers. Any wilful failure to activate cameras in such circumstances should, in my opinion, constitute a punishable act of misconduct in itself, regardless of whether any other misdemeanours are proved to have occurred.

And the reason for this, is that we have ample evidence that the Police cannot be trusted to turn their cameras on when they should. In answer to the age-old question of “Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?” – who watches the watchmen – we have an answer which the Romans did not: their own body cameras.

But only when they turn them on, is Policing conducted in the full light of day.

Only last week, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley could be heard playing to his gallery by claiming that Police Officers are treated differently to members of the public when the Crown Prosecution Service decides whether to charge them with criminal offences.

Sir Mark described the situation as being ‘dispiriting and unfair’.  I commented at the time that it is absolutely imperative that Police Officers are seen to be held to account within the Laws of the Land and that it was frankly dangerous for our Country’s senior Police Chief to undermine this. 

Indeed, what I find to be dispiriting and unfair in this context is the perennial ‘light touch’ which Police Complaint Investigators take towards their colleagues, resulting in Officers escaping both criminal and misconduct charges – when they have behaved in a way that, were they a member of the public, would probably lead to criminal prosecution.

By way of illustration, I will describe a case in which I have recently been instructed, which amply illustrates the continued pro-Police bias and leniency towards officers in the Police Complaint System.

My client, whom I will identify by the name of Ben, was, in July of this year, driving home from a craft fair in Doncaster, with his wife and daughter in the car.

Ben is almost 60 years of age and approximately 6 years ago underwent a quadruple heart bypass. He is not a heavily built man, nor of robust health.

During the family’s journey through Cheshire, Ben’s car unfortunately broke down, owing to a mechanical fault, and he had to pull over to the side of the road and put his bonnet up, so as to signal to other drivers what had happened.   He then telephoned his son and made arrangements for his vehicle to be towed.

It had been a long day and Ben was understandably tired and frustrated by events.

However, whilst Ben was still waiting for his son to attend, a marked Police vehicle pulled up and two Officers of Cheshire Police alighted (whom I shall identify for the purpose of this blog as PCs A and B). 

PC A informed Ben that he and his colleague had come to see if Ben and his family were “Okay after the accident”.  Ben pointed out that he had not been involved in an accident, but rather that his car had broken down. 

Without any justification, PC A then accused Ben of driving whilst under the influence of alcohol and asked PC B to get the breathalyser.

Ben, who by reason of his health conditions had not drunk alcohol for many years, was outraged by this unfounded accusation and got out of his own car to explain this.  PC A immediately shouted at Ben “Don’t come any closer to me or I’ll pepper spray you”.

Ben again stated that he could not drink alcohol by reason of his health and medication. 

However, PC A was now holding a cannister of ‘pepper spray’ in his right hand (actually PAVA incapacitant spray, a standard weapon in the Police Officer’s armoury) and said, “Stand back or I’ll pepper spray you”. 

Ben explained that he would get his medication from the boot of his car, to prove to the Officer that he was telling the truth, and accordingly began to move towards the rear of his car. 

PC A then sprayed Ben directly in the face with PAVA spray.

Ben experienced immediate burning pain to his face and eyes but managed to open the boot of his car and retrieve his bag of medication to show the Officer.

By now, other Officers had attended at the scene of the incident and Ben explained to them what had happened.  He was understandably upset and distressed. 

He agreed to undergo the breathalyser test, which was of course negative.

By reason of this incident, Ben suffered chemical burns to his neck and face, including his lips and throat and his right eye became swollen.  It took several days for his physical injuries to resolve.

He naturally lodged a complaint in regards to his outrageous treatment by PC A.

Complaint Appeal

My client’s complaint was investigated by Cheshire Constabulary Professional Standards Department who reviewed the Officers’ Body Camera footage and  provided their complaint response in early September 2023.

Ben was informed that the Inspector who had reviewed the Police Body Camera Footage of the incident had concluded that-

“The situation could have been avoided and was due to poor communication by the Officer”.

The report went on to detail the following –

“The complainant had broken down with his family after a long journey; the vehicle also being on a fast road. The complainant stated he was awaiting the arrival of his son to recover the vehicle. [Ben] was understandably anxious and upset at that time, which should have been taken into consideration by [PC A]. Having established that the occupants of the vehicle were safe and well the incident should have come to a swift conclusion with [Officers A and B] leaving… the manner in which [PC A] reacted towards [Ben] was unprofessional and aggressive…there were two Officers present and I am not satisfied that [PC A] was in fear for his safety at the point where he sprayed the complainant.”

The report also revealed that PC A had actually considered using his taser gun against Ben, but had decided not to because “the male was too close to me for taser to be effective”. This was a very disturbing fact, even for Ben to become aware of after the event. Given his history of cardiac problems, Ben believes that he would have had a heart attack and died if a taser had been used upon him, and has been left ruminating upon this narrowly- averted tragedy.

Although Cheshire Constabulary felt it appropriate to offer an apology to Ben for the upset caused it was, shockingly in my opinion, concluded that PC A’s conduct was below the misconduct threshold and accordingly all he would face would be the ‘Reflective Practice Review Process’: learning advice and a temporary rescission of his taser licence. In other words, an administrative ‘slap on the wrist’ for his assault upon my client.  

My client has a right to appeal this outcome to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) and also to invite Cheshire Constabulary to consider a referral to the Crown Prosecution Service and I have advised him to exercise those rights;  as if unchallenged, this is yet another Police decision which would leave us with the feeling that there is one rule for the Police and one rule for everybody else – and not in the way that Sir Mark Rowley implies.

This week’s blog concerns an incident in which the Police overstepped the boundaries of their powers quite literally – by trespassing in a man’s house before assaulting and unlawfully arresting him.

My client Richard, who was at the time of this incident aged in his 60s, lives in Humberside with his wife and family.  He suffers from a number of adverse health conditions including Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, Angina, and Diabetes.

One afternoon, on a day in November 2020, several officers of Humberside Police knocked on Richard’s front door, which was answered by one of Richard’s adult sons.

Without being invited inside, one of the officers entered Richard’s home and dragged his son out into the front garden.

Richard had been asleep but was awoken by the noise of this commotion and he came downstairs – in his pyjamas – to the shock of seeing his son being violently arrested by the officers.

Richard moved towards his front door and said to the officers “What do you think you’re doing?”

Four Police Officers were present in total (three male and one female) and one of the male officers now stepped into Richard’s house (again without any invitation) and raised his arm against the door frame, blocking the exit.  This, it seemed, was to be the officer’s only response to Richard’s legitimate question.

Richard protested “Excuse me!” and tried to get past him, but the officer prevented Richard from exiting his home by grabbing Richard by his throat and arm and shouting “Get back in there”.

As Richard protested “Get off, get out of my house” another officer now intervened, pushing Richard backwards whilst a further officer announced, “You’re coming for assault Police as well”.

Richard was now dragged out of his house and forced to sit down on the pathway outside.

By reason of the force used upon him, Richard was breathless and conscious of his blood pressure increasing, and he immediately and repeatedly advised the officers that he needed his medication.

Instead, the officers instructed Richard to put his arms behind his back, and when he refused to do so, they forced his head forwards whilst seeking to manoeuvre his arms behind his back.

At this point, a female officer sprayed Richard in his face with her PAVA spray at point-blank range.

The effects of the spray naturally made Richard’s eyes begin to sting and significantly aggravated his breathing difficulties.

Richard was eventually permitted to get to his feet, but the officers then forced him against a side wall and again continued to apply force to his head and to his arms (in a continued attempt to handcuff him to the rear), ignoring Richard’s requests for medication and his (correct) assertion that he had done nothing wrong.

Finally, the officers succeeded in handcuffing Richard to the front, although during this process Richard’s pyjama bottoms had fallen, exposing his buttocks in view of the street, which was extremely embarrassing for him.

More officers now attended the scene of the incident, and one of the original officers stated that Richard had “come flying out to assault” them and, furthermore, that Richard had deliberately punched one of the officers.

This was a gross exaggeration of events, apparently made in an attempt to justify the officers’ assault upon Richard because the opposite was in fact true; rather than Richard coming out of his house to attack the officers, it was they who had gone into his house, attacked and dragged him outside.

After hearing what was being said Richard immediately stated that he wished to make a complaint about the officer who was speaking these untruths.

Remaining under arrest, Richard was then ‘frog marched’ down the street to a nearby police van, his buttocks still exposed.  Richard’s complaint of chest pains and further requests for his medication were again ignored.

Richard was then transported to a local Police Station where he was detained in a cell until an examination by a Police Medical Examiner determined that he required urgent medical treatment, and he was transported to hospital by ambulance.

Humiliatingly, Richard was ‘escorted’ by Police Officers throughout most of his time in A&E, whilst he was examined and underwent various tests, and it was not until late that night that the officers finally left the hospital and after Richard’s tests were completed, he was able to be discharged and returned home.

Sadly, this was not the end of Richard’s ordeal.  In December 2020 he received notification of prosecution for the alleged offence of assaulting two of the Police Officers who had come to arrest his son, in the execution of their duty.

Richard duly attended Court, pleaded not guilty and had to wait a further ten months with these serious charges hanging over his head, until, in October 2021 he was found not guilty at trial. The only silver lining to this process was that Richard did not himself have to give evidence at the trial – after the Court had heard the evidence of the two Police Officers who alleged Richard had assaulted them, it was determined that in fact there was no case for Richard to answer.

However, just because Richard had successfully cleared that first hurdle in the criminal court, did not necessarily mean that he would succeed in a claim for compensation against Humberside Police. The question which the criminal court was addressing was whether it was “beyond reasonable doubt” that Richard had committed a criminal offence; a finding that he had not did not equate to a finding that the Police had themselves behaved unlawfully, and the burden was now on Richard to prove this in the civil court, unless Humberside Police admitted liability – which they did not.

Richard was referred to me by his criminal defence solicitor, who was aware of my expertise in claims against the Police. I carefully reviewed the evidence, including the Police body worn camera footage and concluded that Richard had meritorious claims for damages for trespass, wrongful arrest and assault and battery.

The Police Officers had wrongfully entered Richard’s home without lawful justification, thereby becoming trespassers on his property.

This had begun when the female officer first stepped inside Richard’s home, without permission, to purportedly arrest Richard’s son for the alleged offence of common assault – this being a ‘summary only’ offence (i.e. a minor offence triable only in the Magistrates’ Court) which did not confer a legal power of entry to Richard’s property upon the Police in the absence of any consent from the homeowner/occupiers.

Thereafter one of the male officers had also stepped into Richards’ home, without permission to unlawfully block his exit and had assaulted Richard there, by first grabbing Richard’s throat.

By forcibly blocking Richard from leaving his own home, the officer was committing an act of false imprisonment upon Richard, and Richard’s subsequent arrest was unlawful as it was he who was the victim of an assault by the officers present, not vice versa.

Richard was very roughly treated by the officers present – especially in view of his age and health conditions – but it is unfortunately common in my experience for this type of ‘Police mob’ assault upon a single individual to unfold in this way.  After one officer has started to use force against a person, then rather than assessing the situation objectively, or seeking to de-escalate the conflict, many officers will simply ‘pile in’ upon the first officer’s victim, including ‘spray painting’ the victim with PAVA.

I advised Richard that to the extent that he had resisted the officers’ attempts to handcuff him thereafter, he was, in my opinion, entitled to do so, as there would have been no lawful basis for the officers’ entry into his home or their purported arrest of him.  Richard’s use of force in response was, in my opinion, reasonable self-defence.

Thereafter I obtained expert medical evidence in support of Richard’s claim for physical and psychological injury and issued Court proceedings to hold the Chief Constable of Humberside to account for his officers’ gross abuse of their powers.

The officers had behaved in a disrespectful and demeaning way to Richard throughout the incident, had shown only a callous disregard in response to his repeated pleas for medication, and Richard had further been subjected to a criminal prosecution which, in my opinion, lacked any credible basis and had been designed as a ‘smokescreen’ to hide the officers own unlawful actions.

The Custody Record had inaccurately asserted that Richard “charged towards the arresting officers”.  Such exaggeration is another hallmark of these type of cases in which, once officers have gone ‘over the top’, they will resort to flamboyant and exaggerated language in an attempt to paint their victim as the aggressor.

As I have said before, an Englishman’s home is his castle and in the circumstances of this incident Richard should have been inviolate whilst he stood within the threshold of his home, his lawful property which the statutory and common law of England respects as a place of safety and security for the private citizen.

The officers in this case sought to trample over those rights, but thanks to Richard’s determination and my expertise in such matters they have now been held to account, and I am pleased to confirm that after we rejected an initial derisory offer of £4,000, Richard’s case has recently been concluded for payment of damages in the sum of £17,500 plus his legal costs.

As ever, it is my pleasure to keep fighting the good fight on behalf of all of those who have had their rights unlawfully infringed by Police abuse of power.

(My client’s name has been changed.)

I have recently concluded another successful claim, which once again sadly demonstrates why the public of England and Wales cannot have the faith which they deserve in the Police complaints system.

On this occasion, the offending Police Force was Cleveland Police, and the incident about which I was instructed took place in 2019.

My client Edward was pulled over whilst driving and arrested on suspicion of motoring offences.

Edward was transported to a local Police Station and ‘booked in’ before the Custody Sergeant.

Edward was wearing trainers.  The Custody Sergeant informed him that he could keep his trainers on whilst in the cell if he removed the laces.  It was cold and Edward had no socks on; not wanting to have to go barefoot in the cell, he compliantly removed his laces and handed them over.

Edward was then escorted to a cell by two Detention Officers.  When they reached the cell door, one of the Detention Officers told Edward to remove his trainers. Edward declined to do so, on the basis that he had no socks on and that the Custody Sergeant had been content with him removing his laces. 

However, the Detention Officers continued to demand that Edward remove his shoes, without making any effort to explain why.  Edward requested a pair of custody slippers as an alternative, but this was also refused by the Detention Officers, as was his request to speak to a senior officer about the issue.

The officers then resorted to force. They took hold of Edward’s arms and pushed him against the corridor wall before twisting his right arm up behind his back.  While Edward was restrained in this painful position, one of the officers forcibly removed his trainers and he was then pushed barefoot into the cell. 

There was absolutely no need for this violence or indeed the whole degrading act of removing Edward’s footwear.  Edward felt upset, hurt, and humiliated.

Edward was released from custody the following day.

Prior to his release he made a complaint to the Duty Inspector regarding the assault that he had suffered from the Detention Officers and was informed that his complaint was to be forwarded to the Professional Standards Department (PSD) of Cleveland Police for investigation.

PSD duly investigated and after reviewing relevant Custody CCTV footage and considering the accounts of the two Detention Officers involved, dismissed Edward’s complaint in its entirety.

Long experience has taught me to be cynical about the methods and agenda of the Police complaint process.  In Edward’s case, the PSD report (which was barely four pages long) sought to justify the confiscation of his trainers on the alleged basis that he could have used them as weapons or that they could have been picked apart to create material for use in self-harm.  However, the report singularly failed to address the fact that the Custody Sergeant had directed that Edward could keep his trainers (if he removed the laces, which he did) and the report failed to provide any justification as to why it was suspected by the Detention Officers that Edward might use his pair of trainers to self-harm or to attempt to harm others.

Edward had not been resistant or violent to the officers and nor did he have any mental health issues.

Having had his complaint rejected, Edward was left, as so many others in the past have been, with no way of achieving justice other than suing the Police and he duly sought my specialist assistance in doing so.

The author of the Complaint report had approached his task as if he were a student addressing a theoretical question as to possible justifications for the removal of a detainee’s footwear – but then utterly failed to consider the reality of what happened and whether the Detention Officers had such justification in the circumstances. This demonstrates either naivety or cynicism on the part of the PSD investigator, and I strongly suspected the latter.

In my opinion, PSD had wilfully failed to consider whether the Detention Officers had any reasonable justification for their actions – no matter what hypothetical justifications there might have been, applicable in other scenarios – or whether those officers were, in fact, just giving vent to ‘bully-boy’ impulses.

As a result of the use of force upon him Edward had sustained injuries, in particular to his right shoulder, which caused him to have to attend hospital several weeks later because of persisting pain and he was there diagnosed with a rotary cuff injury.

Upon receiving Edward’s instructions, I took steps to obtain his Custody Record and all available CCTV footage before presenting a letter of claim to Cleveland Police.

As per the standard Police playbook, liability was denied.

There was no dispute that force had been used to remove Edward’s shoes, but the Chief Constable’s lawyers contended that force from the Detention Officers was proportionate, necessary, and reasonable.

On review of the documentary evidence which Cleveland Police had provided with their letter of denial, I noted that several important pieces of evidence were missing and thereafter took steps to obtain the same including the notes of the Inspector to whom Edward’s complaint had first been reported, Edward’s Custody medical assessment, and the PSD complaint investigation file.

Notwithstanding Cleveland Police’s robust denial of liability, I counselled Edward that his prospects of success were good and advised him to continue with the claim and thereafter commenced County Court Proceedings against the Chief Constable.

The Police instructed senior Counsel and filed a Defence maintaining their denial of liability, and directions were set to prepare the case for trial.

I am pleased to confirm that Cleveland Police caved in prior to trial and have recently settled Edward’s claim for a significant sum of damages plus legal costs.

Suffice it to say that the money recovered is sufficient to keep Edward in comfortable footwear for the foreseeable future…

In my opinion this is not a matter which the Police should ever have allowed to get to the point that it did.  If PSD had adopted an open-minded and fair approach to Edward’s complaint and upheld that complaint, then it is likely that his claim for damages could have been settled through negotiation at an early stage and Court proceedings avoided.

Instead, as is so often the case, I have had to use the tools of the Civil Justice System to rectify another injustice stemming from the biased and dysfunctional Police complaints system.

The standards set by PSD strike me as being most frequently standards of delay, denial, and obfuscation – and those standards then permeate the rest of the Police response to legitimate claims.

The name of my client has been changed.

In October 2021 my client Rachel attended a B&Q store along with her 1-year-old son. Rachel selected a few items, which she paid for, and then went to exit the store with her purchases in her son’s pushchair.

However, as Rachel was exiting the store, she was accosted by a security guard employed by Mitie Security. The guard prevented Rachel from exiting the store, aggressively claimed that he had seen her put several goods in her handbag without paying for them, and loudly accused her of being a “shop lifter”.

Rachel was understandably very distressed by the guard’s false accusations, especially as this was occurring immediately inside the store and was witnessed by a large number of people. Rachel calmly attempted to explain her innocence; however, the guard claimed that he had seen her put items into her handbag on CCTV and demanded that she open the bag.

Rachel was scared and intimidated by the guard’s behaviour, so much so that she felt obliged to comply with his demands. Rachel’s handbag, her purchases and her son’s pushchair were then searched; nothing stolen was found. Nevertheless, the guard continued to insist that Rachel must have something hidden on her person and demanded that Rachel empty her pockets as well.

Rachel was increasingly concerned at the guard’s aggressive demeanour and asked him to summon a store manager. The guard then pointed to a nearby member of B&Q staff and stated that she was the manager. Rachel asked the manager what policy the guard was operating under, that allowed him to humiliate and harass customers in such a manner?

Sadly, the manager merely reiterated the guard’s false allegations that Rachel had stolen items. They continued to refuse to allow Rachel to leave the store and instead insisted that she accompany them to a side office where, they claimed, they would produce CCTV evidence that would prove that she was a “liar and a thief.” As Rachel was being escorted to the office the guard remarked that “You people are always stealing here”. Once at the office they refused to allow Rachel inside and she had to wait outside, fearful that she would be pursued and manhandled if she tried to leave, albeit secure in the knowledge of her own innocence.

Shortly thereafter, after having indeed viewed the CCTV footage, the store manager and the guard opened the office door. The guard offered Rachel an insincere and dismissive apology, acknowledging that she had not in fact stolen anything. He further stated that he had stopped Rachel because he had seen her look in her handbag whilst in the store. Rachel remonstrated with him and questioned why he had lied about seeing her stealing. However, having only moments before taken Rachel ‘prisoner’ and made her listen to all his slurs and accusations, the guard was now uninterested in her, and went away without any word.

Rachel is of Black Caribbean descent and could not understand why she, in particular, was stopped for such an innocuous activity – simply looking in her handbag – other than being racially profiled by the guard. Rachel questioned the manager about this and the meaning of the guard’s earlier comment about “You people…”; however, the manager was unable to offer any explanation for his behaviour. Rachel requested the manager’s and the guard’s name, but she only identified herself by her first name and the guard as “Mitie” (i.e. the Security Company he worked for) refusing to provide any other details.

Rachel subsequently submitted a complaint to B&Q, who apologised for the incident and offered a “gift voucher” as a gesture of good will.

Rachel, a person of the utmost good character, was deeply upset at the accusation of theft that had been levelled against her. Furthermore, she felt extremely humiliated that the incident had taken place in full view of members of the public, B&Q staff, and her son. Rachel is a teacher and was recognised by a member of the public during the incident, causing damage to her reputation in the community, as she was later questioned about the incident by a former pupil.

After Rachel instructed me to act on her behalf, I made immediate efforts to obtain the relevant CCTV footage from B & Q and sent letters of claim to both B & Q and Mitie Security seeking damages on behalf of Rachel for false imprisonment, assault and battery and trespass to goods.

Following the incident, Rachel was deeply traumatised by what had happened to her. She experienced sleep disturbance, specifically nightmares, waking in a panic and being unable to return to sleep. She experienced racing thoughts and jumpiness and felt particularly anxious in shops. This anxiety was naturally exacerbated if she saw security personnel.  She was also fearful of being again accused of theft and of her children being removed by Social Services. These are not the sort of symptoms which can be resolved by a ‘gift voucher’ and Rachel was quite right to seek full legal redress with the assistance of a specialist solicitor.

I arranged a psychological examination for Rachel. The appointed doctor was of the view that Rachel was suffering with a Specific Phobia and Depression.  The expert recommended that Rachel undergo Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and that with such treatment, she should return to her pre-incident state of health.

I disclosed Rachel’s medical report to the Mitie Security, who had failed to either admit or deny liability for the actions of their Security Guard, but it was only when I gave them notice of commencement of County Court proceedings that they started to engage properly with the settlement process.

I am pleased to confirm that I have recently concluded Rachel’s claim by way of an out-of-court settlement for substantial damages, which includes the projected cost of the psychotherapy she requires, and which should now allow her to achieve closure on this traumatic event.

Unfortunately, it is far from uncommon, in my experience, for store security guards – pretend policemen at the best of times – to fall into the same vices which police officers are prone to, such as authoritarian aggression, without any of the saving graces of professionalism and proper training.

It is far from unusual for security guards to put their egos where the evidence should be and to accost and ‘arrest’ innocent shoppers without reasonable cause and I have written before about the failings of Store Security, and the Wild West industry of private security generally.

If you have suffered a similar experience of being assaulted by a security guard and/or being detained on false accusations of shoplifting, please don’t hesitate to contact me for assistance and advice.

The name of my client has been changed.

This week’s blog post – at the height of what is traditionally known as the ‘silly season’ of high Summer – contains a very silly, but sadly also very true story of a mistaken identity arrest.

My client Alan works in a pub in Cheshire.  In December of last year, he was approached at work by two officers from Cheshire Constabulary.

The officers asked my client if his name was “Alan” and if he knew “Nicola”, to which Alan innocently answered affirmatively.  He did indeed know a former work colleague by the name of Nicola. 

To Alan’s shock, the officers then arrested him on suspicion of harassment, criminal damage, and threats of violence.

Alan was led from his place of work under arrest and searched before being placed into a police car and taken to a nearby custody suite.

It was only on Alan’s arrival at the station that the officers finally asked what his surname was (which he confirmed as Simpson).  The officers then queried whether he had been in a relationship with ‘Nicola’.  Alan explained that he had not; he was married and the Nicola he had referred to was just his former colleague.

It then emerged that the correct suspect was an Alan Brown, who also worked at the same pub as my client but who had not been present at the time of the police visit.

In view of these circumstances, the Custody Sergeant correctly refused to authorise Alan’s detention and he was allowed to return home.

Although Alan’s detention had lasted for less than an hour, the emotional and psychological consequences upon him were much longer lasting. The arrest had taken place in front of Alan’s work colleagues and Alan, who had no previous experience of arrest or detention, was significantly embarrassed, humiliated, and distressed.

To add insult to injury, following Alan’s arrest, one of his colleagues at the pub had called his wife – who at the time was pregnant – to inform her of his arrest and learning of Alan’s arrest in such circumstances naturally caused his wife extreme distress.

I am pleased to confirm that Cheshire Constabulary have promptly admitted liability for Alan’s wrongful arrest, and I am now in the process of seeking on Alan’s behalf:

• substantial damages
• a formal apology
• the destruction of the records created about his arrest.

Whilst it may beggar belief that officers would arrest a person – especially in a non-emergency situation – on the basis of first name identification only (and that name being one of the most common British male names), that is what happened.  Remember also, that this was not a residential address the officers were visiting but a place of business where naturally numerous people, potentially several sharing the same name, could expect to be found.

It was, frankly, blindingly obvious that the officers should have checked the surname of the man they were arresting, but they failed to do so and consequently wasted a significant amount of public money and police time.

The Chief Constable of Cheshire himself also has a very common first name, and we can only trust that he will not be accidentally arrested the next time his zealous Officers are looking for a “Mark” …

My client’s name has been changed (but only from one very common male first name to another).

The case of PC Rosalind Holt, who was dismissed without notice from Greater Manchester Police for gross misconduct for her violent assault upon my client, and her subsequent dishonest attempts to justify that assault, has recently hit the headlines.

A Misconduct Panel, led by Legally Qualified Chair Warren Spencer, found that PC Holt’s use of CS gas spray against my client was “excessive, not proportionate, legal or necessary”.

In finding that PC Holt was no longer of suitable character to be a Police Officer, the Panel criticised not only her aggression but also her honesty – describing the version of events that she presented to other Officers as “Untrue, exaggerated and embellished”. 

The Panel found that PC Holt had discharged her anti-personnel spray in my client’s face at a dangerously close range of less than a metre, and with no attempt having been made at communication or instruction. 

The five- day disciplinary Hearing concluded that PC Holt’s actions had breached the professional standards of honesty and integrity at a gross misconduct level, and she was dismissed for breaches of the professional standards in regard to use of force, honesty and integrity and discreditable conduct, with her name now being placed on the College of Policing Barred List. 

My client Charles is a black man.  In July 2020, PC Holt and other GMP Officers had been called to a disturbance at the Golden Lion Pub in Manchester and although my client was present, he had not been involved in the disorder and was not committing any criminal offences. My client and others were ordered to leave the pub and he complied with that instruction.

What then occurred at the pub was well documented by both CCTV and Police body camera footage.

The Panel heard that PC Holt had approached Charles from behind as he was on his way out of the pub, taken hold of him, and removed a wine glass that he was holding.  Shortly afterwards, PC Holt then discharged her CS gas spray in Charles’ face, injuring him, and subsequently falsely claimed that Charles had tried to hit her (PC Holt) “with a glass bottle”.

None of this was true, but as a result of these false accusations, Charles was arrested for affray and taken into custody, whilst still suffering agony from the burning liquid spray which had been used against his face.

The footage viewed by the Panel demonstrated that when PC Holt sprayed my client, Charles simply had his arms down by his side, holding his phone.  He was in no way attempting to assault PC Holt and she had already removed the glass he had been holding, without any resistance from him.  

Nevertheless, shortly after deploying her spray, PC Holt could be heard on the footage informing her colleagues that Charles had tried to hit her with a glass bottle.  When she was challenged about this statement during her cross examination at the Misconduct Hearing, PC Holt claimed that this completely false accusation of an extremely serious crime against my client was “just a mix up of words [not] meant to be in any way misleading”. 

The footage demonstrated that PC Holt continued to ‘spray’ her outrageous lies around – or as she would put it, continued to ‘mix up her words’, alleging –

“[He’s] come out with a glass bottle, tried to smash it in me so he has been sprayed”.

When asked by another Officer if she was okay, PC Holt responded “Yeah, apart from a glass bottle in my face” which with the benefit of hindsight – and cross examination – she was prepared to accept was a ‘misuse of words’.

It is fair to say that Charles was affronted when – having not been involved in the earlier disturbance and knowing he had done nothing wrong – he was grabbed hold of without warning from behind by PC Holt and he protested about this and called the Officer a ‘midget’.  Neither that comment nor anything else Charles did justified the brutal assault which PC Holt then perpetrated against him – nor the mendacity with which she then attempted to ‘frame’ him for a serious crime, causing him to be wrongfully arrested.

Under cross examination, PC Holt tried to claim that she did believe she had been threatened with a glass, despite the fact that in the Use of Force form which she completed after the incident she had indicated that no weapon had been involved. PC Holt stated that this was because she defined the word ‘weapon’ as only meaning a knife or something specifically designed to cause harm, a reply which the prosecuting barrister Mr Dos Santos correctly described as “A ridiculous answer for an Officer…nothing but an attempt to squirm out of [the truth]”.

The role of the GMP Officers called out to the pub that night had been to ‘de-escalate’ the situation, but PC Holt had in fact done the exact opposite – targeting Charles when he was doing nothing wrong (indeed was attempting to leave the pub), grabbing hold of him without warning, cornering him, spraying him in the face and then falsely alleging to her colleagues that he had tried to attack her with a glass, presumably in a guilty attempt to justify what she had done to him.

Although the right outcome was achieved in the end – the dismissal of Holt from the Police Force – my client was still left with a sense of incomplete justice and of having been excluded from the complaint investigation process – a process which specifically centred around outrages committed against his person and liberty. 

The reason for this was that when the complaint investigation – which had dragged on for well over a year – was concluded in October 2021, GMP’s Professional Standards department advised Charles that whilst it considered PC Holt had a case to answer for Honesty and Integrity and Discreditable Conduct (and should face a Misconduct Hearing) there was no case to answer for her in regards to either excessive force or discrimination. My client did not agree with these findings – feeling both that he had been targeted because he was a black man, and that PC Holt should also face disciplinary charges over her gas-spray attack upon him – and so requested a copy of Professional Standard’s Investigation Report so that he could appeal the same. It will be appreciated that a meaningful appeal against any report is difficult if you have not in fact been given a copy of the report, and thus are left completely in the dark as to the evidential findings and reasonings behind its conclusions. Nevertheless, in a Kafkaesque turn of events, which made Charles feel like an unwanted ‘outsider’ to the whole process, GMP stated that although he could appeal the report’s conclusions, he would not be given a copy of it until after the conclusion of the misconduct hearing – by which point, of course, any appeal would have no meaning.

I assisted Charles in now getting the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) to review his case, on the grounds that he could obviously not make a meaningful or informed appeal without a copy of the very document which was being appealed. Despite the IOPC agreeing with this, and recommending that GMP either release the report or at least sufficient excerpts from it to allow Charles to understand their decision- making, GMP continued to refuse to do so and it was necessary for me to raise a further appeal to the IOPC. At the end of a tortuous process, the right outcome was belatedly achieved when the IOPC directed that the Misconduct Hearing must consider PC Holt’s Use of Force and the issue of Discrimination, as well as her Honesty and Conduct.

However, Charles was still not provided with the actual complaint Investigation Report and nor was he provided with any of the video footage of the incident, and he therefore had to give evidence at the Misconduct Hearing relying only on his own memory, obviously hampered by the attrition of time (over three years from the original incident), whereas PC Holt had both immediately after the incident and in the run up to the Hearing been able to go over the footage on a “frame by frame” basis, to best prepare her case.  

GMP’s Barrister, Mr Dos Santos, made an impassioned speech to the Panel stressing how members of the public would be “Absolutely appalled” about the actions of PC Holt, if the video footage was played to them and that Holt’s “unforgivable” actions, especially coupled with her continued unrepentant stance  three years after the event, suggesting she had learned nothing from her mistakes, deserved the strongest penalty available, i.e. dismissal.  Mr Dos Santos said that any other outcome would risk undermining public trust and confidence in the Police.

Whilst I endorse all of that, there is another aspect to public trust and confidence in the Police – and particularly the Police disciplinary and misconduct process – and that is the extent to which the Police still fail to adopt open, communicative and collaborative approaches to complaint investigations with the victim in each case.  To me it is “appalling” that for three years after the incident, Charles was kept in the dark about the available evidence and the decision-making process – to such an extent that not only was he refused by the Police permission to view any of the video evidence he wasn’t even given a copy of the Complaint Investigation Report.  I consider this to be a quite outrageous state of affairs which significantly undermined Charles’ confidence in the Police and made him feel throughout the whole complaint process like, frankly, a second class citizen.  

If the Police really do want to raise levels of public trust and confidence in themselves, then they must significantly reduce the levels of secrecy and what I might call automatic obstructionism in their complaint handling.  The institution of Policing remains very inwards focused in its attitudes and approaches, even at a public Misconduct Hearing.  Throughout the process leading up to the hearing Charles – the actual victim of PC Holt’s misconduct and the person whose complaint was the catalyst for exposing PC Holt’s misconduct – was largely ignored by the Police, passive-aggressively denied access to material and treated as little more than another name on the roster of witnesses.

I call upon the Police to reflect on that.

In the meantime, I will now take action to deliver to Charles a complete sense of justice being done, in the form of substantial damages and a holistic apology from Greater Manchester Police for the egregious actions of their Officer.

The name of my client has been changed.

Update

Read the BBC’s report here.

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In September 2020 my client Harjinder was arrested by Kent Police for a driving offence and the following day appeared before the Magistrates’ Court where he was granted conditional bail. 

Unlike the majority of the cases in which I am instructed this was not a case in which my client was disputing the legitimacy of his arrest or alleging that the Police had physically injured him. What, in fact, aggrieved Harjinder and caused him to seek my help was an entry in his PNC (Police National Computer) record, which his criminal defence solicitor received from the Crown Prosecution Service.

Harjinder, a man of Asian descent, was born in Kent and is a British Citizen but the official PNC entry relating to his date of birth stated “13/10/80 Terrorist Land”. 

Harjinder was understandably extremely upset and distressed once he was notified of this entry.  The creation and maintenance of such an entry, enshrining in National Police records an egregiously racist and prejudicial view of Asian-descended people, was both highly offensive and disturbing.

As a result, Harjinder suffered anxiety, loss of trust in the police and fears for his future prospects of travel and employment given the existence of this slur on his character in the PNC database. Harjinder felt targeted and racially stigmatised which caused him anxiety and sleeplessness which, in turn, led him to excessive drinking as a coping mechanism.

Only when my client actively complained about the entry did Kent Police carry out an investigation and establish that the entry had been made by a member of the Metropolitan Police Service following an earlier interaction between Harjinder and the Police in January 2020.  That earlier interaction, I hasten to add, had been in regard to an allegation of nothing more serious than drunk and disorderly behaviour by my client. 

Although Kent Police quickly sought to point the finger of blame at the Met, the fact remains that it was only after they received my client’s complaint that they “updated the PNC with the correct details,” referring to the “notification of the error.” In my opinion “error” was a bizarre choice of words. Why on earth did any Police Force need to wait to have this pointed out to them before they changed it?  Were the Police Officers who had come across this entry prior to Harjinder complaining about it, as malevolently amused by it and content to let it remain unaltered as I can only presume the member of Met staff who first inputted this appalling racist slur into my client’s National (and potentially International) Police biography was?

I am pleased to confirm that I have recently settled Harjinder’s claim against the Met for substantial damages and legal costs.

But, once again, it has taken the actions of a brave and determined Claimant and his Solicitor to help the Police clear up their own mess.  The fact that the ‘Terrorist Land’ entry should have been created in the first place is bad enough – but almost equally shocking is the fact, indicative of an ambient level of racism throughout our Policing institutions, that the entry was allowed to persist unamended until my client directly challenged it.

I hope that now my client’s case is settled, this is another lesson that the Police will learn on their promised path to reform.

The name and date of birth of my client has been changed.

In today’s world, the increasing ubiquity of ‘intelligence technology’ for gathering and delivering reams of data and information, leads many to say that the ‘mechanisation’ of our professions is imminent – envisaging a future in which the human professional is just one half of a ‘cyborg’ collaboration with an artificial intelligence program. In the realm of law enforcement and litigation, we certainly already have available to us technologies which can make our jobs speedier, faster and deliver outcomes which are more just – but human error remains, whilst the machine can fetch information in the blink of an eye – but not understand it.

We therefore remain in a world in which human mistakes can turn a useful technological tool into a trap or hazard – potentially wasting the time of the Police, of the Court and, worst of all, causing the invasion of innocent people’s lives, as today’s blog post about yet more errors in Police use and interpretation of Automatic Number Plate data (ANPR) will reveal.

The ANPR database is available to all Police Forces, and vehicle registrations can be searched upon it for a specified period of time, generating a type of ‘dot to dot’ map of the vehicle’s journeys on any given date i.e the location of the vehicle by reference to its plate having been ‘read’ by the ANPR cameras which are installed at regular intervals along our road network.

My client Alistair and his wife Deborah are Directors of a small business whose registered address is also the couple’s home in Surrey, where they live with their children.

The business is the owner and registered keeper of a Ford van.

At approximately 18.00 on 17 August 2021, West Mercia Police (WMP) emailed Surrey Police to request that a log be created to deploy Officers to Alistair and Deborah’s address in relation to a “Class A drugs investigation”.

WMP advised that two vehicles had been witnessed to make off from the scene of a potential drug deal. One of these vehicles bore the same plate number as my client’s van and West Mercia Police believed that it might be transporting drugs; they had obtained the couple’s address via DVLA records for the plate and informed Surrey Police that the suspect van had recently “pinged” (i.e been recorded passing) an ANPR camera in Surrey.

Surrey Police allocated the job to their “Proactive and Priority Crime Team” and that evening applied to the Magistrates Court for a search warrant for Alistair’s house. In the warrant application, the Officer asserted that “ANPR analysis” had been carried out on the suspect van and it had been shown to be present in Surrey. In fact, it now seems likely that Surrey did not in fact carry out any ANPR analysis, but the Court would not have been aware of this.

Just before midnight on 17 August 2021, when the family were in bed, Surrey Police Officers attended the house, forced entry by smashing in the front door and multiple windows and detained Alistair and Deborah in handcuffs. The couple and their two teenage children were utterly shocked and could not believe what was happening to them.

Officers swarmed through the house, crunching shattered glass beneath their boots, and Alistair was arrested, escorted to a van and then taken to Custody. Deborah and the children were told that they had to immediately dress, pack their backs and leave the house whilst it was searched; they were allowed to go to a relative’s for the night, but not before having to hand over their phones and ipads. They left the house, devastated by this midsummer nightmare…

According to the Custody Record, Alistair was arrested at 01.05 on 18 August 2021 and the reason to arrest was recorded as “Drugs Trigger – MD71179 – concerned in the supply of a Class A drug.”

Following processing, Alistair was placed in a cell overnight.

Between 11.46 – 12.28, Alistair was taken for interview during which he protested his innocence, gave an account of his comings and goings the previous day and disavowed any involvement with the alleged ‘drug deal’.

Meanwhile, Surrey Police Officers then carried out ANPR checks on the registration plate of Alistair’s van, which showed that the plate had ‘somehow’ triggered ANPR cameras in both West Mercia and Surrey between 12.59 – 14.10 on 17 August… In other words, the vehicle was showing as being in ‘two places at once’ as it was simply not physically possible for the same van to have moved between these various locations in the short time between ANPR ‘hits’, which were recorded as follows-

12.59 in West Mercia

13.04 in Surrey

13.14 in Surrey

13.21 in West Mercia

13.24 in Surrey

14.10 in West Mercia

Bear in mind the obvious geographical absurdity presented by this list, to which the existence of a ‘clone’ is the only logical explanation – Surrey lies to the south of London, whilst West Mercia borders Wales, and is separated from Surrey by the Police areas of Gloucestershire, Thames Valley, Wiltshire and Hampshire.

It therefore quickly dawned on the investigating officers that Alistair’s business vehicle’s plate number had been cloned and he had no involvement in the alleged crime and at 12.39. He was released with no further action.

The truth is that all of the terror, heartache, and humilitation which Alistair and his family experienced could so easily have been avoided had Surrey Police carried out proper ANPR checks before applying for the search warrant on the evening of 17 August (a process which generates almost instant results). It is most disturbing that the Police either did not bother to do so, or if they did, catastrophically misinterpreted the data, before obtaining a warrant from the Court, which clearly issued that warrant in reliance on Surrey’s assertion that the evidence was backed up by a (competent) “ANPR analysis.”

When I pressed the solicitors acting for Surrey Police on this issue, all they were able to say was the following –

“Unfortunately, we have not been able to locate the data detailing the ANPR checks completed prior to the application of the warrant. This is not to say that those checks have not been done but simply we are unable to locate documentary evidence of the same. We have only been able to locate the post execution of the warrant further ANPR checks, which we enclose a copy of for completeness…”

This is the 21st century and the ANPR system is entirely computerised; we are not dealing with filing cabinets full of papers here. The inescapable conclusion was that either:

• the warrant was procured on a false basis (ANPR checks had not been carried out) and so the Court was misled and a decision to arrest was made without crucial and easily obtainable information, or
• the ANPR checks had been done on 17 August and Surrey Police failed to draw the proper and reasonable conclusion from these checks i.e. that the suspect vehicle in question was a clone.

This was transparent from the checks which were actually carried out on 18 August, and would have been equally transparent had Surrey Police actually and/or competently carried out the purported ANPR analysis on 17 August 2021.

I am pleased to confirm that I have now settled the claims of Alistair, Deborah and their children for substantial awards of damages and an agreement to pay legal costs.

I trust that Surrey Police will learn lessons from this and take steps to ensure that the investigative tools available to them are utilised correctly, and to avoid other innocent people suffering this kind of terrifying experience, especially given the increasing number of ‘cloned plates’ on our roads. In this as in other matters, it is requisite that the Police use brains as well as brawn, and do not rush in where ANPR angels fear to tread.

In early 2018 British Transport Police (BTP) commenced a misconduct investigation in relation to one of their Police Officers.  The investigation was undertaken by the Counter Corruption Unit (‘CCU’) in the Professional Standards Department at BTP in relation to allegations that included that the Officer:

“was leaving work prior to the end of his rostered shifts for non-police purposes, including visiting a female friend, on duty time”

The female friend referred to was my client Alice, although it was not alleged that she herself was involved in any kind of wrongdoing.

During the course of the misconduct investigation, GPS data obtained for the Officer indicated that on several occasions during his rostered hours he had apparently left work early and had spent time at or in the vicinity of Alice’s home address.

In June 2018, the Counter Corruption Unit conducted the following online enquiries:

(a) a ‘Google street view’ search on my client’s address;

(b) a further search showed that the address was registered to Alice; and

(c) a Google search in relation to my client which “revealed her public Facebook page on which there were photographs indicating that she described [the Officer under investigation]  as her boyfriend”. The CCU investigator took screenshots of these photographs and included them in his investigation report. The images included pictures of Alice with a school-age child (her son).

In July 2018, the CCU investigator submitted an application for ‘Non-Regulated Covert Surveillance’ pursuant to a non-RIPA internal authorisation procedure [i.e a surveillance investigation which did not fall under the governance of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000, succinctly known as “RIPA”]. He sought authorisation for “covert, directed but not intrusive surveillance of [the Officer]” including:

1. “the monitoring observing and listening to, of the movements, associations and conversations of [the Officer], and/or the monitoring and observing of [Alice’s address]”;

2. the subsequent recording of anything monitored, heard or observed during the course of the surveillance;

3. “surveillance activity to be carried out by trained surveillance operatives working for and/or on behalf of the British Transport Police, supported by or with the assistance of surveillance devices namely imaging equipment to include static and/or hand held digital still and/or video cameras and vision enhancing equipment to include binoculars and night vision equipment if necessary”; and

4. the use of observation vehicles, observation points and foot and mobile surveillance tactics where necessary.

In relation to collateral intrusion, the application stated:

“It is considered that there will be a certain amount of collateral intrusion when officers/surveillance operatives are deployed as the activity will be monitoring [the Officer] from his place of work to locations of interest that may be residential properties… Those impacted would be any other residents at the addresses he attends and also any other members of the public in company with [the Officer] …

However, no private information is anticipated to be obtained nor will it have any impact on their private lives or breach any privacy under the Human rights Act as surveillance officers will be working in public areas, where members of the public would not normally expect to have a privileged amount of privacy…”

On the same day, a Detective Superintendent approved the surveillance operation subject to the following restrictions:

• the activity was to be concentrated on the Officer and no images of other individuals were to be taken or obtained during the surveillance;
• no surveillance was to be conducted within Alice’s address; and

• on foot/mobile surveillance was not approved.

A covert surveillance vehicle was then ‘deployed’ outside Alice’s house on four occasions during August 2018. On each occasion the vehicle was deployed, it was left unmanned in a position where an onboard camera could observe the pavement and front gate to Alice’s house. The camera was switched on and off remotely on various occasions. On one occasion a surveillance officer (who was in charge of the vehicle) specifically took photographs on his mobile phone not only of Alice but also her young son, as they left the house in the company of the Officer.

Alice understandably felt that this surveillance was highly intrusive to the lives of both her and her son. It was directed at their home address and showed them coming and going from their home at times when they had a reasonable expectation of privacy. Particularly distressing for Alice was the thought (though this was denied by the Police) that the surveillance was intended to prove that she was in a sexual relationship with the Officer, which was information of the most private and personal nature.

The surveillance photographs and screen shots from Alice’s Facebook page were included in a CCU Report dated September 2019, documenting the outcome of the investigation into the Officer.

When Alice learned about the surveillance, she first sought accountability by bringing proceedings before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (IPT), which provides rights of redress to those who believe they have been the victim of unlawful ‘spying’ by public authorities such as the Police and the Intelligence services.

However, in March 2022, the IPT ultimately dismissed Alice’s claim on the basis that the tribunal did not have jurisdiction because the investigation into the Officer was a non-criminal misconduct investigation and hence did not fall within the remit of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act.  

In other words, the IPT had jurisdiction to rule on the lawfulness of surveillance carried out in criminal investigations – but not civil matters.

After her claim was dismissed by the IPT, Alice approached me for help and after reviewing her case, I identified that she did still have a valid claim that could be brought within the Civil Court system (i.e. the County Court or High Court).

The reason for this was as follows:

Non-RIPA governed surveillance is frequently used by private companies in connection with investigations into suspected misconduct by members of staff (e.g. where an employer suspects that an employee is exaggerating the extent of an injury or disability) or in connection with civil litigation or pension disputes, on similar grounds.  

When a non-public entity undertakes such measures there is no illegality in the fact of surveillance itself (provided actions taken in the course of the surveillance do not amount to torts or crimes in themselves), however when a Police Force, or other public body, carries out such surveillance it is governed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and hence the Human Rights Act by the very fact that it is a public entity.

Therefore, the Police had to be able to justify their actions under Article 8 ECHR, or otherwise would be liable for a breach of the right to respect for private and family life.

British Transport Police could not turn for protection to the ‘umbrella’ of the RIPA rules and procedures, because they themselves had successfully argued that this non-criminal investigation was not governed by RIPA, in order to defeat Alice’s first claim in the IPT. In the circumstances they therefore had no defence to the contention that the taking of photographs of Alice and her son was a breach of both of their rights under Article 8.

Utilising the tools of the civil law therefore, and particularly a threatened claim under the Human Rights Act, I was able to secure for Alice and her son a total award of £12,000 damages.  

I trust that British Transport Police and other Forces will learn a salutary lesson from this case.  With greater power comes greater responsibility; the Police are not just an ordinary employer and must tread carefully and respectfully when they seek to surveil their own staff for alleged misconduct – particularly when innocent third parties risk being caught up in that surveillance.

The name of my client has been changed.

After a person has been arrested and taken to a Police Station, they must be brought forthwith before the ‘gatekeeper’ of the Station – a hopefully experienced Custody Sergeant whose job it is to decide whether it is in fact lawful to continue to detain the arrested person.  The Custody Sergeant also has important safeguarding duties towards the detained person in terms of ensuring their physical and mental health and facilitating their access to legal representation. 

Custody Sergeants have sweeping powers over the arrestee’s person, property and liberty and it is therefore crucial for the maintenance of a democratically accountable Police Force that Custody Sergeants do not abuse this authority.

One of the powers which is granted to a Custody Sergeant over detainees is the power to ‘seize’ the detainee’s clothes, i.e. to order a strip search.  This power is set out under Section 54(4) of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act (PACE) 1984 as follows –

(4) Clothes and personal effects may only be seized if the Custody Officer –

1. believes that the person from whom they are seized may use them –(i) to cause physical injury to himself or any other person; (ii) to damage property; (iii) to interfere with evidence; or (iv) to assist him to escape; or
2. has reasonable grounds for believing that they may be evidence relating to an offence.

In Davies v Chief Constable of Merseyside Police [2015] EWCA Civ 114 it was ruled that the removal of a detainee’s clothing items in any of the above circumstances fell under the protection of Code C, annexe A of the PACE Codes of Practice.

In this regard, Code C, paragraph 4.2 provides as follows – “Detainees may retain clothing and personal effects at their own risk unless the Custody Officer considers they may use them to cause harm to themselves or others, interfere with evidence, damage property, effect an escape, or they are needed as evidence.”

Whilst paragraph 10 of annexe A makes it clear that –

“A strip search may take place only if it is considered necessary to remove an article which a detainee would not be allowed to keep and the Officer reasonably considers the detainee might have concealed such an article.  Strip searches shall not be routinely carried out if there is no reason to consider that articles are concealed”. 

Sadly, I very often come across cases in which rather than using this ‘safeguarding’ power to order a strip search sparingly and as a last resort to avert the risk of self-harm for a particularly vulnerable individual, Custody Sergeants callously or lazily use the power to ‘punish’ ‘mouthy’ or non-compliant detainees – a cohort of people which of course includes a considerable proportion of those who know that they have been wrongfully arrested and are legitimately (verbally) protesting about this and/or trying to gather information in order to lodge a complaint. 

I am presently dealing with an appeal to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) which involves a particularly egregious example of this form of abuse of power.

As the IOPC’s review is outstanding I will not identify either my client or the Force involved but here present the salient facts for your edification.

The background to this matter is that my client Vincent (who was born in Zimbabwe, but who has lived in the UK for many years) was wrongly arrested in 2022 after one Police Force failed to update the Police National Computer system (PNC) so as to confirm that a ‘curfew’ imposed upon Vincent as a bail condition had been lifted, leaving Officers of another Force to mistakenly believe that Vincent was in breach of that curfew when he was out and about, and to arrest him.

As the curfew had in fact been lifted by the Court as far back as 2020, Vincent was understandably annoyed by his 2022 arrest, particularly when his attempts to explain the true state of affairs fell on deaf ears, but he did not seek to physically resist arrest. 

The CCTV footage from the Custody Suite shows Vincent being brought into the station – protesting that he had been unlawfully arrested, but certainly not behaving in a violent manner. 

Vincent was in handcuffs, was offering no physical resistance to the multiple Officers surrounding him and on first arriving, leant casually against the Custody Desk.  Whilst he was verbosely protesting his unlawful arrest, there was no suggestion of violence from him and indeed, whilst he attempted to gather the collar numbers of the Officers who had arrested him –  in order to make a complaint – Vincent actually checked that there would be video evidence of what was occurring, which was hardly the behaviour of somebody who wanted to start a fight. 

A mere 1 minute and 44 seconds then passed between the time Vincent was presented at the Custody Desk, to the time at which the Custody Sergeant directed the other Officers to take Vincent to a cell and strip him.  Furthermore, the CCTV reveals that for the vast majority of that time, the Custody Sergeant was paying no attention to Vincent – and instead appeared to be looking at something on his mobile phone screen.  The Custody Sergeant did not in fact attempt to engage with Vincent until less than 20 seconds before giving the Order that Vincent be stripped of his clothing.

Whilst it was true that Vincent was ignoring the Custody Sergeant for that period, it was a period of 19 seconds only – and it is apparent that Vincent was already engaged with trying to get the collar numbers of the Officers around him when the Custody Sergeant started speaking.  In my view it was entirely unreasonable of the Custody Sergeant to ‘jump the gun’ like this and to order Vincent to be stripped without making a proper attempt to engage with him at the Custody Desk.

Of further note is the conversation which the CCTV footage demonstrates the Custody Sergeant had with his female colleague at the Custody Desk during the minutes immediately following Vincent’s removal to the cell.  According to the Custody Record, the Sergeant authorised a strip search “to remove an article which the detainee is not allowed to keep on the grounds of the Officer has reasonable grounds for believing that a strip search is the only means of removing the item(s)”.

I believe that the Custody Sergeant’s conversation with his colleague demonstrates the true reason why he directed Vincent to be taken to a cell and stripped, and that reason had nothing to do with a genuine suspicion that our client had upon him an article that he should not be allowed to keep.  Immediately following Vincent’s removal to the cell corridor, the Custody Sergeant can be heard stating “I didn’t want to listen to him anymore”.  He agreed with his colleague’s comment that Vincent was “boring” and then went back to apparently watching television on his computer monitor (commenting on a news report from Kiev).

All of the above was in contravention of the Force’s own Custody and Detention Policy which injuncts the Custody Officer, even when dealing with a violent detainee (which Vincent was not) to “make all attempts to engage with the detainee before that person is placed in a cell”

In clear contravention of PACE and the Police Code of Practice, there was simply no reasonable attempt by the Custody Sergeant to properly engage or communicate with Vincent or address the genuine distress he was experiencing as a result of his unlawful arrest; the Officer gave Vincent less than 20 seconds of his attention before ordering him to the cells.

To me, the evidence is persuasive that the Sergeant ordered the strip search as a ‘punitive measure’ designed to stop Vincent from complaining about his arrest and born out of personal dislike of Vincent rather than any genuine safeguarding reasons. Indeed, any clothing items which might have posed a safeguarding risk – such as belts or socks – could have been removed without a strip search.

Notwithstanding the detailed video evidence available, the Police Force in question has dismissed Vincent’s complaint, deeming the Custody Sergeant’s behaviour acceptable. I beg to differ with this and have accordingly exercised my client’s right of review to involve the IOPC in this matter.

Whatever the ultimate decision of the IOPC however, it remains the case that what happened to Vincent is far from being a unique situation. Custody Sergeants frequently punish complaining or otherwise non-compliant detainees with entirely premature/ unnecessary strip search procedures; an exercise of power designed to break the person’s spirit through humiliation and degradation rather than to safeguard and protect them or anybody else.

I am proud to make it my job to hold such abusive officers to account to the full extent that the law allows and if you have suffered mistreatment in Police custody, such as an unjustified strip search, don’t hesitate to contact me for advice.

I have highlighted on many occasions in this blog the huge problem of predators within the Police Force who groom vulnerable individuals, most frequently female victims of crime, whom they see as ‘fair game’ for their own incontinent sexual desires. A trial involving particularly heinous crimes of this nature has just concluded at Birmingham Crown Court, and I represent one of the several victims of the “wolf in sheep’s clothing” officers involved.

PCs Steven Walters and Anthony Ritchie of West Midlands Police stood trial on counts of misconduct in public office. Walters was accused of having domestic violence victims give him oral sex during callouts to their homes; one of his victims (my client) was also taken advantage of by PC Ritchie, who instigated a sexual relationship with her after likewise meeting her in the line of duty. Ritchie was also accused of pursuing a sexual relationship with a woman whom he met whilst arresting her son.

Both of these unrepentant officers entered pleas of not guilty to the criminal charges against them; Walters accusing both of his victims of lying about the sex acts, whilst Ritchie, accepting that he had slept with both women, maintained his behaviour did not amount to misconduct in public office.

Thankfully, the Jury saw through these contemptible defences and both men have today been convicted of misconduct in public office and now await sentence.

These events took place back in 2013-14, when the prevalence of Police predators had not yet been fully exposed to the public eye, and in such a culture of silence, many victims of their abuse of power felt isolated. Fear and vulnerability were no doubt part of these officers’ calculations in their cynical exploitation of these women: already abused by male partners, and as a result often emotionally fragile and lacking in confidence, officers no doubt thought they could treat such women as accessible sex objects and that they would remain timid and pliable. It was a despicable abuse of trust and power.

My client disclosed to the Court how Walters had, during the sex act, participated in a radio call with Police colleagues which he seemed to get a sick ‘kick’ out of. My client was then preyed upon again the following year, when PC Ritchie visited her home after she had been threatened by her violent ex-partner. PC Ritchie subsequently began messaging my client on a personal basis and a few weeks later came around to her house (uninvited) for “coffee.” Thereafter he began to visit her regularly for sex.

Meanwhile, PC Walters had repeated his pattern of behaviour by getting a second domestic violence victim to give him oral sex in the bathroom of her house, after he had attended in response to her crime report.

The third female victim met PC Ritchie when he came to her house to arrest her son; he initiated a relationship with her and visited her home for sex whilst on duty. The Jury also heard that in 2014, as a result of a separate incident Ritchie had been punished with the ‘slap on the wrist’ of “management advice” after he had texted a robbery victim congratulating her on meeting a “fit Police officer” and asking her out on a date. In my opinion, that incident alone should have been enough for him to be drummed out of the Police Force.

It was also revealed during the trial that PC Walters had actually been jailed for sexual assaults on two further women whom he met in 2015, again in the course of his duties.

So, two more officers who abused their privileged positions have received their comeuppance; but how many more like them remain, in a Police service still awash in the cultures and behaviours of toxic masculinity? It is utterly outrageous that female victims of crime should have to worry about whether the main agenda of the Police officer responding to their call, is not investigating the crime but the opportunity for that officer to get his penis out at the earliest opportunity.

The good news is that this case demonstrates that in today’s world accountability can be achieved; the Police perpetrators sentenced for their crimes; the victims believed. I will now be pursuing for my client the apology and just compensation which she deserves from the Chief Constable, who is liable in these cases for the abuses of his officers, to help her along the path to healing.

Update

Both Former West Midlands Police officers were sentenced in September 2023. Anthony Ritchie was jailed for four years and Steven Walters for two-and-a-half years. Read more here.

How you can help me

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this week’s blog post and the many others available on this website. If you have, then I would like to ask you a favour – in a world in which large and non-specialist law firms (generally from a personal injury background) are increasingly throwing huge marketing budgets into online advertising in order to ‘capture’ Actions Against the Police clients – I need your help to ensure that those in need of real expert advice come to the best place for representation. If you value the insights and expertise which I share on this blog, and the results which I have achieved for the people whose stories are recounted here, please post a positive review on Trustpilot to get the word out. Every 5 star review I receive makes a big difference in helping those who need the right advice to come to the right place. Thank you!

This is a guest post by my colleague and fellow solicitor, Aidan Walley.

Since their introduction in 2003, Tasers (the brand name for Axon Enterprise’s Conducted Energy Device) are now used by every police force in the UK. Despite popular belief that Tasers are harmless after the initial electrical shock and the Home Office assurances that any officer that carries a Taser is properly trained in its use, they remain dangerous and potentially lethal weapons. It hardly seems that a week goes by without news of an officer facing possible criminal charges over the misuse of a Taser. The victims of that misuse often suffer physical and psychological injuries, with long lasting effects.

Unfortunately for my client Hamish he was the victim of such misuse in September 2020.

After a night in the pub one evening, Hamish witnessed an incident of criminal damage and an affray involving a baton at a corner shop. The suspects fled but Hamish remained nearby until Lincolnshire Police officers, including PC Nicholas Fox, arrived.

Suspecting that Hamish may have been involved in the original incident PC Fox searched Hamish for a weapon under Section 1 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984. Nothing was found on Hamish.

As Hamish was intoxicated and his car was parked nearby, PC Fox suspected that he may have been drink driving and asked Hamish to sit in the rear of the police car for a breath test.

Hamish thought that he was about to be wrongfully arrested for the affray and ran away from the officers. PC Fox briefly gave chase before, without giving a warning, discharging his Taser. The barbs hit Hamish in the lower back and buttocks, and the electric shock caused him to lose control of his body and fall forwards onto the ground. As a result, Hamish sustained a number of injuries from the incident, including a broken bone in his right hand and various injuries to his body and head.

Other officers quickly attended and Hamish was arrested. After speaking with PC Fox about what happened, a Sergeant reprimanded him for discharging the Taser when Hamish was not a threat to the officers or the public. PC Fox replied “It’s fine … I suspected he might have a knife”, despite having searched Hamish himself only a few minutes before.

As Hamish had sustained an injury from the use of a Taser, the incident was subject to a mandatory referral to the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) by Lincolnshire Police’s Professional Standards Department (PSD). On review, the IOPC directed the PSD to conduct a full investigation of the incident. Hamish also made his own complaint to the PSD.

During the PSD’s investigation, it was noted that in his statement PC Fox stated that he “was within 10 feet of (Hamish) and was keeping up with him as he ran”. Moreover, on his use of force form PC Fox justified the use of force to “protect the public, effect arrest, protect other officers, protect himself, prevent the suspect’s escape and to secure evidence”.

PC Fox further justified the use of the Taser in his threat assessment: “Medium risk of harm to public and officers of injury. Weapons involved used in violent manner against property in a public place. Low regard for public safety. Subjects involved unknown and motivation for actions unknown. Subject behaving in furtive manner avoiding eye contact and giving indications of lying to officers believed untrustworthy”.

Contrast that however against the comments of the Force’s Taser Trainer, who after reviewing the Body Worn Video of PC Fox said: “Taser fired to stop subject. Where is the threat of violence to justify that use of force? That statement alone suggests that Taser was used to stop the subject escaping and running away. There is no mention of a threat of violence. … When asked to sit in the police car he runs away. He still doesn’t offer any violence to PC Fox that I can see, not even a push or shove as he runs off… It appears from [the] BWV that Taser was used to stop the subject running off.”

The Trainer went on to recommend that PC Fox’s Taser permit should be suspended.

The PSD also found that while detaining and searching Hamish, PC Fox failed to give the requisite information required by the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, known by the acronym GOWISELY, or to make a record of the search, resulting in the search being unlawful.

The PSD determined that PC Fox had a case to answer for misconduct and the matter went to an internal misconduct hearing in October 2021. Unsurprisingly for such an internal inquiry, there was a finding of no misconduct against PC Fox, notwithstanding the weight of the evidence against him.

Despite the disappointing outcome of the misconduct meeting, Hamish persevered and instructed my firm. On Hamish’s behalf I pursued a claim for assault and battery occasioning personal injury, as well as false imprisonment.

Lincolnshire Police’s solicitor accepted liability for the unlawful stop and search and the misuse of the Taser, but only offered Hamish £5,000. I had no hesitation in advising Hamish to reject this offer and to obtain medical evidence in support of his claim.

In addition to Hamish’s physical injuries, he was understandably caused significant psychological distress, including panic attacks and recurring nightmares. After a consultation with a consultant psychiatrist, Hamish was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

After negotiating with Lincolnshire Police, I am pleased to say that I was able to settle Hamish’s claim for £22,000. While this represents a good result for Hamish in light of his lasting injuries, unfortunately Hamish’s case was not an isolated incident and I have no doubt that there will be similar cases in the future.

Sadly, too many officers cannot be trusted not to play “cops and robbers” with the weapons entrusted to them, nor can the current Police misconduct system be trusted to hold them to account when they do.

There are two primary routes to hold Police officers to account for excessive force and, fortunately only the misconduct system is under the control of the Policing institutions themselves. Specialist actions against the Police lawyers, such as myself who are skilled in bringing compensation claims have our fingers on the trigger of the legal system and are ready to bring claims on behalf of Hamish and anyone else injured by an unlawful use of a Taser.

(The name of my client has been changed.)

I have previously blogged about the case of my client Courton Green who was wrongfully arrested by Lincolnshire Police as part of an RSPCA-led “investigation” into alleged animal cruelty. Mr Green, an experienced farmer, was found not guilty of the charges against him at trial in 2020, and thereafter instructed me to pursue a claim against the Police for what he quite correctly regarded as his unnecessary and unjustified arrest. In my earlier blog, I discussed the problem of the Police deferring to/ collaborating with the RSPCA as if that organisation were truly the ‘Constabulary of Animal Welfare’, when in reality it is entirely a private charitable organisation with no special law enforcement status at all.

The Wrongful Arrest of a Farmer

At the time of his arrest, Mr Green was a farmer responsible for approximately three thousand sheep and four hundred cattle. Early one morning in January 2018, he was working on his farm when he was visited by two Police officers – PC Bell and PC Birden. To his shock, the officers informed Mr Green that he was under arrest for cruelty to animals and was to be taken to Grantham Police Station. My client’s arrest was witnessed by one of his farm employees which he naturally found deeply embarrassing.

Mr Green asked the officers if he could collect his glasses from a nearby truck, but this simple courtesy was refused. Despite being fully compliant, he was then handcuffed and placed into the rear of a Police van, before being taken to the Station.  Mr Green felt that in applying the handcuffs, the male officer of the pair, PC Birden, was ‘playing up’ to his younger, female colleague.

To compound my client’s stress and anxiety, on the day of his arrest he had been expecting the arrival of a load of additional sheep from Cumbria.  By reason of his arrest, Mr Green was unable to supervise this arrival which caused him significant worry.

On arrival at the Police Station, Mr Green had to wait in the Police van, still handcuffed. The van was stuffy, with little circulating air and caused my client to feel claustrophobic.  This was particularly distressing for a man who naturally spent most of his working day out in the fresh air and sunshine.

According to the Custody Record, Mr Green had been arrested for a breach of the Animal Welfare Act 2006, specifically that as a responsible person, he had failed “to prevent the causing of unnecessary suffering to an animal.”

The circumstances of arrest were stated as follows-

“AP has found a sheep that was ill on the ground.  It is alleged he left it overnight in a trailer on a tractor, knowing that the sheep was in need of medical attention. The next day he put the sheep in the tractor bucket and dropped the sheep from an approximate height of 6ft and use the bucket to try and decapitate the sheep.”

After considerable delay, Mr Green was processed, searched and then placed in a cell. He had no prior experience of arrest and found his arrest and detention highly distressing. During his detention, he was obliged to provide a fingerprint and DNA sample and to be photographed.

Eventually, my client was allowed to ‘have his say’ in interview, conducted by RSPCA Inspector, Rebecca Harper, during which he robustly denied any wrongdoing.

As Mr Green’s detention continued, significant concerns were raised as regards his mental health and he was required to undergo assessment. He was seen by a Doctor in Police custody, who deemed him to be at risk and arrangements were made for Mr Green to be transported to Lincoln Hospital.

From there, Mr Green was allowed home, although in the days that followed, he remained in a highly distressed state, such that he even made plans to take his own life. Thankfully, he was able to come through this dark experience.

Approximately 5 months later, my client received a summons to attend court.  He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and his case proceeded to trial in January 2020 where he was found not guilty.

At trial, Judge Veits commented that Mr Green’s arrest was unlawful: 

“…  the arrest had been unlawful as there had been no attempt … to invite [the client] for interview, he had merely been arrested.  Had he been so invited and refused then the necessity of arrest would have been established….”

Civil Claim for Damages

Shortly after my presentation of the claim on behalf of Mr Green, Lincolnshire Police admitted liability for wrongful arrest.  Not only did the arrest lack the requisite level of evidence to justify a ‘reasonable suspicion’ that Mr Green had committed the offence – the Police had, as observed by Judge Veits, failed to offer Mr Green an opportunity to attend for a voluntary interview as an alternative to arrest.

Notwithstanding their admission of liability however, the Police then sadly failed to offer my client an appropriate sum in compensation, their maximum offer prior to commencement of Court proceedings being only £3,750 which I had no hesitation in advising Mr Green to reject –

• In Police custody, my client had been processed, searched and detained for over 7 hours.  He was obliged to provide his fingerprints, DNA sample and be photographed – a degrading and humiliating experience which frankly makes even innocent people feel ‘criminalised’.
• The unnecessary use of handcuffs upon Mr Green constituted an act of battery – the handcuffs being left on him for around 90 minutes and causing sores to his wrists.
• Mr Green had never previously been arrested and the experience that he underwent had such a devastating effect on his mental health that the Police actually became concerned about his wellbeing and had to arrange for him to go to Lincoln Hospital for a full mental health assessment. Even following his release, Mr Green found himself in a ‘dark place’ and experienced suicidal thoughts.

I obtained a report from an expert Psychologist who diagnosed my client as suffering from an Adjustment Disorder with Depression, brought on by his wrongful arrest.

Furthermore, the arrest took place in unnecessarily humiliating and stressful circumstances, which I correctly identified as giving rise to an entitlement to aggravated damages for Mr Green-

• Although a naturally stoical individual, Mr Green was deeply shaken by his experience of incarceration and for a while afterwards felt like a pariah in his local community because people assumed that the fact that the Police had seen fit to arrest him meant there was “No smoke without fire.”
• With a further twist of bitter irony, given that my client’s arrest was instigated by such crusaders for animal welfare as the RSPCA, one of the things that tormented Mr Green the most during his period of incarceration was his concern for the welfare of the sheep who were due to be delivered to his farm that very day, and the fact that he was not allowed to make a telephone call to the person delivering the animals.

With the Police only prepared to make such a miserly offer of settlement – despite their admitted wrongdoing – there was no choice but to commence civil court proceedings on behalf of Mr Green.   Before doing so, in March 2021, I offered Lincolnshire Police the opportunity to settle my client’s claim for damages in the sum of £20,000.

They declined that offer, and even after proceedings were issued and served upon them, offered only a modestly increased settlement of £5,000, which again Mr Green rightly rejected.

I am now pleased to confirm that in the trial that took place at Nottingham County Court in April 2023, the Judge awarded Mr Green precisely the sum of £20,000 which I had given the Police the opportunity to have settled his claim for almost 2 years previously.

Not only therefore did Lincolnshire Police throw away thousands of pounds in legal fees in erroneously fighting the court proceedings, they were also penalised by an award of additional damages and interest to represent the Court’s disapproval of the fact that they could and should have settled the claim by taking my earlier offer – and as a result the final award of damages made to Mr Green was £28,311.

I trust that Lincolnshire Police will learn two valuable lessons from this case – not to follow the lead of ‘amateur’ investigators like the RSPCA when conducting criminal investigations (and in particular deciding whether to exercise the power of arrest or not) and secondly, when they know that they are at fault, to make sensible offers of settlement at an early stage rather than a maximum offer which ultimately amounted to less than 25% of what the Court found Mr Green’s claim to be worth.

Read more about this case on the Daily Mail website.

How you can help me

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this week’s blog post and the many others available on this website. If you have, then I would like to ask you a favour – in a world in which large and non-specialist law firms (generally from a personal injury background) are increasingly throwing huge marketing budgets into online advertising in order to ‘capture’ Actions Against the Police clients – I need your help to ensure that those in need of real expert advice come to the best place for representation. If you value the insights and expertise which I share on this blog, and the results which I have achieved for the people whose stories are recounted here, please post a positive review on Trustpilot to get the word out. Every 5 star review I receive makes a big difference in helping those who need the right advice to come to the right place. Thank you!

Although the majority of the claims which I pursue are against the Police Forces of England and Wales, I have also previously written about the ‘Wild West’ world of private security, in which shop employees/security staff often unlawfully detain and assault innocent members of the public, in connection with false accusations of ‘shoplifting’: Today’s blog post discusses just one of those cases.

Here, it was the employees and security staff of a Co-op Store who behaved as if they were the sheriffs of their own private town and ran roughshod over my client David’s person and liberty; I am very pleased to have helped him bring them to account.

Early one October evening, David entered his local Co-op Store to do some shopping, carrying an orange bag containing a model building magazine that he had purchased at another store.

David perused the aisles of the Co-op and selected several grocery items, which he placed in a shopping basket, and then went to the counter to pay. 

However, as David was in the process of paying for these items, he was approached by a Security Guard. 

The security guard demanded to inspect the contents of David’s shopping bag, stating that the bag looked an ‘odd shape’.  David replied that it had nothing to do with him.

The security guard then instructed the shop assistant who was scanning David’s purchases to stop serving David.

The security guard repeatedly demanded that David go with him and show him the contents of the orange bag, and then, when David refused to do so, the security guard attempted to grab the bag. In response, David pushed the security guard away, so as to protect his property and to get the man out of his personal space. The security guard then pushed David and took hold of his arm.

At around this time, David produced the receipt he had for his earlier purchase of the magazine, but the security guard refused to accept the receipt because it did not specify the items purchased, just the total sum paid.  David grew agitated that the security guard would not believe him and because the security guard was crowding his personal space.

The security guard then stated that he wanted David to give him the orange bag so that he could ‘check’ it.  David again refused to hand over the bag and announced that he was now going to leave the store, as he was upset at the security guard’s attitude. David therefore abandoned the grocery items he had been attempting to purchase at the counter.

David then attempted to walk towards the exit; however, the security guard intercepted him and placed his arm across David’s upper body to prevent him from leaving.

The security guard now positioned himself directly in front of David, blocking his exit route from the shop, and repeatedly pushed David, gripping his upper arms/ shoulders and forcing him up against a barrier next to the tills.

The security guard then stood in front of David to prevent him from leaving. Each time David attempted to move away, the security guard stepped in front to block him.

As there were a number of other members of the public in the shop whose attention was drawn to the commotion, David suffered a great deal of distress and embarrassment.

David now decided to show the security guard the contents of the orange bag and offered to get a member of staff from the first store he had visited to confirm his earlier purchase. However, the security guard continued to block and push David.

David once more attempted to walk past the security guard who now took hold of David and his bag, refusing to let him leave with it. Under this duress, David allowed the security guard to take his bag. The security guard then released David.

Whilst the above was occurring, a female member of Co-op staff approached the automatic sliding doors of the shop and locked them. This prevented a number of other members of the public from entering or leaving the store, requiring the female employee to periodically open the doors for them manually.

After the security guard had taken David’s bag from him, David approached the locked doors of the shop. Here the female employee at first refused to let David leave, stating that he had ‘assaulted’ the security guard and the police had been called. In response, David showed the female employee his receipt and explained that he was only leaving in order to get the person who had served him in the first store and would then return with her.  Only then did the staff member open the doors for David, allowing him to leave.

David then returned to the first store and spoke with the shop assistant who had served him there. She kindly agreed to attend the Co-op store with David and confirm that he had paid for his earlier shopping. She duly did so, and she spoke to both the Defendant’s female employee and the security guard, although clearly this should not have been necessary.

After a few minutes the shop assistant from the first store left, and shortly afterwards two Police Officers arrived. The officers spoke to David and the Co-op staff. The security guard alleged that David had assaulted him, however the male police officer, after taking David’s account and apparently viewing the store’s CCTV footage, stated that David had done nothing wrong and quite correctly refused to arrest him.

David’s orange bag was then returned to him by the security guard, and he was finally allowed to purchase the shopping which he had earlier had to abandon at the counter and leave the store without further incident.

The following day, David called the Co-op to complain and received a call back from someone at the head office apologising for the incident. She assured David that the manager of the store would also apologise, however David received no such apology.

When David consulted me, I acted swiftly to secure the CCTV footage of this incident from the Co-op and on receiving that footage and considering David’s account, it was quite clear that he had done nothing wrong and his treatment at the hands of the Co-op staff – who had assaulted and (temporarily) imprisoned him in their store was quite outrageous.

David had clearly not committed any act of shoplifting and the security guard had no right to demand to inspect his belongings – and certainly not to physically assault David and confiscate his bag.

When I presented a claim against the Co-operative Group Limited on behalf of David, seeking compensation for wrongful arrest, not only was there no apology but the Co-op sought to deny liability.

They argued that they were not responsible for the actions of the security guard who was a sub-contractor from another company.  However, it was clear to me that the security guard was acting under the direction and control of the management of the Co-op store as evidenced by the co-ordinated (if you’ll excuse the pun) closing/locking of the store door by another member of staff.

Whilst the Police Officers who attended thankfully displayed a reasonable attitude and refused to arrest David, he still suffered deprivation of his liberty at the hands of the Co-op, despite being nothing other than a lawful visitor to their store.

I am pleased to confirm that following the commencement of Court proceedings on behalf of David, I have recently settled his claim for damages against the Co-op in the sum of £6,750 plus legal costs.

If you have been the victim of false accusations of shoplifting and/or assault by store security guards, please contact me for advice and representation.

The name of my client has been changed.

How you can help me

I hope that you have enjoyed reading this week’s blog post and the many others available on this website. If you have, then I would like to ask you a favour – in a world in which large and non-specialist law firms (generally from a personal injury background) are increasingly throwing huge marketing budgets into online advertising in order to ‘capture’ Actions Against the Police clients – I need your help to ensure that those in need of real expert advice come to the best place for representation. If you value the insights and expertise which I share on this blog, and the results which I have achieved for the people whose stories are recounted here, please post a positive review on Trustpilot to get the word out. Every 5 star review I receive makes a big difference in helping those who need the right advice to come to the right place. Thank you!

This week’s blog post concerns serious breaches of the Data Protection Act 2018 by South Yorkshire Police which affected my clients, the Richards family.

Mr and Mrs Richards resided at their Yorkshire home with their teenage son and daughter; at the time of these events, the Richards’ son Harry had just turned 18 and was completing his A-levels.  All of the Richards family were of entirely good character and in fact Mr Richards was himself a long-serving Police Officer.

In July 2019 South Yorkshire Police Officers executed a search warrant at the family’s home in respect of a criminal investigation. Mr Richards returned home to find several Police Officers in his house, busy removing computers, mobile phones, laptops and hard drives in clear plastic bags.  All of this activity was taking place in full view of their neighbours and Mrs Richards was distraught.  The level of Police intrusion at the time of the search was such that the Richards’ daughter had her bedroom and wardrobe searched and the Police confiscated her laptop, which had been issued by her school and was needed for her studies.  It transpired that the Police were carrying out the search on the basis of information suggesting that Harry Richards had, when he was 17, downloaded what was allegedly an indecent image of a child; Harry later explained to his parents that this had occurred when he had naively clicked on a link sent to him in a message on the social media platform Instagram. The family was in shock.

The warrant which the Officers provided to my client at the time of the search contained an incorrect address in that on the warrant the address was described as ‘12 Evergreen Road’ whereas the correct address of the family’s home was 12 Evergreen Way.

Almost a year later, in June 2020, one of the Defendant’s Officers sent an email to the family email address stating that Harry would face no further action in relation to the investigation.  That email contained the following passages-

“I am writing to inform you of the outcome of the investigation into the Possession of Indecent Images of Children for which you have been involved in.

After reviewing all material, I have spoken at length to Detective Inspector M… who has agreed that it is not in the public interest to proceed with this matter.

I will take this opportunity to remind you of the legislation surrounding Indecent Images of Children, the law states that a person under the age of 18 is to be recognized as a child for such offences.  Such an image was located on your mobile phone and therefore, this phone cannot be returned to you.  I am asking you to disclaim any ownership.  I will approach our legal services to apply to the courts for a destruction order to be made.”

The Richards were overjoyed that this matter had now been resolved, and that Harry would now be able to fully put it behind him and pursue his planned career in the Armed Forces. The lengthy investigation had evidently shown the truth of Harry’s account i.e that this was material he had ill-advisedly clicked on once without soliciting it, and that upon all of his hard drives and other computer technology, there was absolutely nothing else of this nature. However, relief turned to dismay only a few weeks later when Officers from South Yorkshire Police reattended at their home and informed the family that a letter intended for Harry, containing materially the same information as the email quoted above, had been sent to an “incorrect address”.

The Richards were naturally concerned for their safety following this Data Breach given the inflammatory nature of the offence and the risk of vigilante violence and/or social stigma notwithstanding the decision not to bring any criminal charges. 

The Officers stated that they would perform a risk assessment relating to the Richards’ home and social media generally, and that a priority tag would be placed on any calls to the Police from the family. Mr Richards was warned to be vigilant and to be wary of strangers coming to the house, or of unknown vehicles parked outside.

Following the Data Breach and the Police’s safeguarding advice, the Richards all felt anxious and unsafe, fearing that the contents of the misaddressed letter would expose the family to harm. They fitted a security alarm to their property, but that could not provide much comfort.

My clients’ subsequent complaint regarding these matters was upheld by South Yorkshire Police who accepted that one of their Detective Constables had made an ‘error’ when inputting the family’s address into the warrant and that “Clearly the information on the warrant should have been checked…prior to it being sworn out”. 

The complaint response further stated that the Police had in fact received a phone call from a third party “Who had opened the [misaddressed] letter not realising it was for him.  On realising the serious content of the letter, the resident contacted [South Yorkshire Police] using the details provided on the letter…an incident log was not created in respect of this”.

This information naturally heightened the concern of the Richards family as it was now clear that the misaddressed letter had indeed been delivered to a different residential address, presumably one in the local area, for there was indeed an ‘Evergreen Road’ nearby as well as ‘Evergreen Way’, and it had evidently been read by at least one person living there, who was concerned enough by its contents to contact the Police. The Richards had no way of knowing how far this highly confidential information had been spread.

The tone of the complaint response conveyed to the Richards family that South Yorkshire Police did not seem to care very much for what they had done, as the Police offered only a very lukewarm apology for the poor ‘level of service provided’; a typically passive-aggressive corporate response from the Police. Mrs Richards felt that the whole family had been ‘looked down on like scum’ at the time of the Police raid upon their house, and that this attitude had been maintained in the treatment they had received since then.

In light of the above I advised my clients that not only did they have claims against South Yorkshire Police under the Data Protection Act, but that Mr and Mrs Richards (as the owners of the premises) had a claim for trespass to land against the Police in that the Officers had entered and searched the house under a warrant bearing an incorrect address.  That error undeniably invalidated the search warrant.

South Yorkshire Police’s careless error in regards to the misdescription of my clients’ home address – twice perpetuated in the circumstances set out above – represented a gross and reckless abuse of power which had significant adverse consequences upon the entire family – all of whom suffered negative psychological reactions with symptoms of anxiety, depression and sleep disturbance. The family feared not only for their physical safety but for their general reputation and career prospects in regards to the ‘leaking’ of this highly sensitive and confidential information.

Indeed, the family’s distress and anxiety was such that Mr and Mrs Richards made the heartbreaking decision to sell the house in which they and their family had placed several decades of financial and emotional investment and relocate to a new area, because they could no longer feel safe at that address.

Despite the fact that my clients’ initial complaint had been upheld, when I presented claims for damages on behalf of the family, South Yorkshire Police at first offered only ‘nominal’ damages for trespass under the misaddressed warrant and refused to admit liability for the data breach and hence it was necessary to issue and serve civil Court proceedings against the Chief Constable.

I am pleased to confirm that after dismissing South Yorkshire Police’s initial offer of settlement of only £250 I have recently concluded settlement on behalf of Harry and his parents for total damages of almost £25,000.

The bottom line is that the Police have to be punished for acts of carelessness like this in order to force them to raise their standards; it is simply not acceptable that errors such as the use of the wrong address in connection with a serious criminal investigation are allowed to occur. Indeed, it is also somewhat unfathomable to me that the Police wasted time and money and unnecessarily increased the risk of an accidental disclosure, by posting a letter which was simply a repetition of the email which my clients had already received.

Lazy policing should not be allowed to blight the lives of the innocent.