Complaints regarding stop and search - Kent Police, May 2016

In May 2016 a Kent Police officer conducted a stop and search on a young black man, drawing but not firing his Taser. The man subsequently complained that the officer had stopped him for no reason and threatened him with a Taser, and that he had been stopped because of his race.

The officer gave his reasons for the stop and search as the man behaving furtively, suspicions about addresses he had visited, and him meeting another person in the street.

During the investigation, investigators interviewed the officer, the complainant and a number of witnesses. No CCTV or body-worn video was available of either the stop or the chain of events immediately prior to them. The complainant and the officer gave markedly different accounts around the level of aggression used in the stop.

Our investigation revealed that the officer had not actually seen the man enter or leave any of these addresses.

The investigator concluded that there was sufficient evidence upon which a reasonable tribunal could conclude that the officer had a case to answer for misconduct for stopping the man without sufficient reasons, drawing his Taser before stopping the man, for putting the man on the floor and handcuffing him, and for gross misconduct for recording observations on his stop and search record and Taser deployment form that he had not made.

The investigator was also of the opinion there was insufficient evidence on which a reasonable tribunal properly directed could find the officer had breached the standards of professional behaviour (equality and diversity) by making a decision to stop the man purely based on his ethnicity.

After reviewing our report Kent Police agreed that the officer should attend a gross misconduct hearing in respect of his grounds for stopping the man, the disparities in the officer’s and the man’s accounts regarding the use of force, and for recording information on his stop and search form that he hadn’t actually observed.

At the gross misconduct hearing the panel found that the officer had used reasonable force and had good reasons for stopping the man, but found that he had been dishonest when recording his reasons for the stop. They considered this to be misconduct and not gross misconduct. The officer received management advice.