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….”
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.
The case proceeded to trial at Nottingham County Court in April 2023, at which 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.
Read more here: Court Punishes Police Pigheadedness Over Failure to Settle Farmer’s Claim.
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