.
I am a great supporter of the police who I know from my work with them do a difficult job under difficult circumstances, often hampered by unnecessary regulation, political correctness and too much paperwork. But now and again, like people in any other walk of life, some of them seem to go off the rails.
Witness the video, widely shown on television, taken by the camera in a police patrol car of the apprehension of a motorist driving a Range Rover in Monmouthshire.
His vehicle was followed by a patrol car for seventeen minutes until it was finally stopped when a ‘stinger’ device to puncture its tyres was deployed on a country road leading to Usk. Two police officers then ran to the car; one jumped on his bonnet and tried to kick in the front windscreen, and the other smashed the driver’s side window with his baton fifteen times before the driver was pulled out of his vehicle and roughly handcuffed.
On the face of it, you’d have thought that the driver was a very dangerous criminal to be followed by a police car, to be stopped by a stinger and then have his car and himself treated so very violently.
But no, he was a 70-year-old disabled man with a heart condition who had previously been stopped by police when they saw he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. During the seventeen-minute ‘chase’ afterwards the confused man kept within the speed limit under the impression that the following police car was escorting him to his home.
The incident was a disgrace to Gwent police and it is right that the two officers have been suspended pending an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There can be only one conclusion to this sorry saga and it should serve as a warning to other police officers that violent treatment of this sort has no part to play in modern policing in such circumstances.
I hope also that the terrified driver of this vehicle receives a substantial amount in damages to compensate him for repairs to his car as well as the rough and unnecessary treatment he received at the hands of two officers who appeared to be totally out of control.
.
I am a great supporter of the police who I know from my work with them do a difficult job under difficult circumstances, often hampered by unnecessary regulation, political correctness and too much paperwork. But now and again, like people in any other walk of life, some of them seem to go off the rails.
Witness the video, widely shown on television, taken by the camera in a police patrol car of the apprehension of a motorist driving a Range Rover in Monmouthshire.
His vehicle was followed by a patrol car for seventeen minutes until it was finally stopped when a ‘stinger’ device to puncture its tyres was deployed on a country road leading to Usk. Two police officers then ran to the car; one jumped on his bonnet and tried to kick in the front windscreen, and the other smashed the driver’s side window with his baton fifteen times before the driver was pulled out of his vehicle and roughly handcuffed.
On the face of it, you’d have thought that the driver was a very dangerous criminal to be followed by a police car, to be stopped by a stinger and then have his car and himself treated so very violently.
But no, he was a 70-year-old disabled man with a heart condition who had previously been stopped by police when they saw he wasn’t wearing a seat belt. During the seventeen-minute ‘chase’ afterwards the confused man kept within the speed limit under the impression that the following police car was escorting him to his home.
The incident was a disgrace to Gwent police and it is right that the two officers have been suspended pending an investigation by the Independent Police Complaints Commission. There can be only one conclusion to this sorry saga and it should serve as a warning to other police officers that violent treatment of this sort has no part to play in modern policing in such circumstances.
I hope also that the terrified driver of this vehicle receives a substantial amount in damages to compensate him for repairs to his car as well as the rough and unnecessary treatment he received at the hands of two officers who appeared to be totally out of control.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment