Pedestrian injured in collision during pursuit - Metropolitan Police Service, July 2017

On 20 July 2017 an automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) activation prompted Metropolitan Police Service officers to follow a vehicle that was wanted for an alleged offence of actual bodily harm the previous day. Police officers signalled for the vehicle to stop but it failed to do so. Two police cars followed and a pursuit was authorised.

The vehicles travelled on the pavement, the wrong way down a one-way street and on the wrong side of the road. Contact also occurred between the subject and one of the police cars on two occasions.

The pursued vehicle later lost control and hit a pedestrian walking along the footpath. The police officers carrying out the pursuit stopped to provide assistance to the injured pedestrian and called an ambulance. The pedestrian sustained life-threatening and life-changing injuries as a result of the collision.

During the investigation, investigators interviewed the officers in the primary pursuit vehicle and obtained statements from witnesses. They also reviewed dashboard-camera footage downloaded from the police vehicle along with body-worn video and local CCTV.

Evidence indicated that, at the point when the police driver made tactical contact with the pursued vehicle for the first time, the pursuit and the use of tactical contact had not been authorised by the control room; for an officer to self-authorise tactical contact in that case, they would need to consider the circumstances to be exceptional – which we believed was not the case. We were of the opinion that the officer was well intentioned and was trying to bring the pursuit to a safe conclusion, with no intentional disregard or breach of policy. We were of the opinion that the police driver may have a case to answer for misconduct.

We were also of the opinion that the other officer in the primary pursuit car should be reminded of the importance of communicating the route, speed and manner of driving to the control room, in order for them to make an informed risk assessment for continued authorisation for the pursuit. We recommended that this performance matter should be dealt with by way of management action.

We completed our investigation in October 2018.

After reviewing our report the MPS agreed that the police driver would attend a misconduct meeting and the second officer would receive management action.

At the misconduct meeting, held in May 2019, an independent panel concluded that misconduct was not proven. The chair was of the opinion that the police driver had fully risk assessed the pursuit and had used tactical contact in the belief that these were exceptional circumstances and that allowing the pursuit to continue may lead to loss of life. No further action was taken.