Man injured during arrest and complaint of excessive force - West Yorkshire Police, November 2017 and August 2018

At 1.05pm on 23 November 2017, two West Yorkshire Police (WYP) officers responded to an automated number plate recognition camera activation in Leeds by a car displaying cloned vehicle registration plates. The officers located the car and identified themselves as police officers to the driver of the car. He ran off and the officers pursued him on foot. They caught up to him as he started to climb a metal fence. Both officers maintain that they took hold of the man’s clothing and pulled him to the ground. One of the officers arrested him on suspicion of theft of a motor vehicle and, as he attempted to place the handcuffs on the man, noticed one of his fingers had been severed. The officers provided him with medical attention and arranged for him to be transported to hospital.

Our investigators conducted a CCTV trawl of the area in which the incident occurred, reviewed the Airwave communications and obtained statements from the two officers involved in the arrest of the man. The man did not engage with our investigation and did not provide a statement.

After a thorough examination of all the evidence, the Investigator concluded that the officers could not reasonably have foreseen that, by taking the action they did in order to arrest the man, he would have sustained the injury to his hand.

Throughout the investigation, the Investigator did not consider there to be an indication either police officer may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence. We completed our investigation in February 2018.

In August 2018, the man complained that one of the officers had used ‘unreasonable, excessive and disproportionate’ force during his arrest and we investigated this specific complaint.

Our investigators obtained a statement from the man, in which he claimed one of the officers had deliberately struck his hand while he was holding on to a metal spike on a fence, which caused his finger to be amputated.

We also obtained expert medical evidence from a consultant plastic surgeon who examined the man’s medical records. He concluded that the man’s injury was consistent with being pulled from the fence, as described by the police officers, rather than by being struck, as the man claimed.

Throughout the investigation into the man’s complaint, the Investigator did not consider there to be an indication either police officer may have behaved in a manner that would justify the bringing of disciplinary proceedings or committed a criminal offence.

We did not uphold the man’s complaint and, after reviewing our report WYP, agreed with our findings.