Complaint regarding use of force and discriminatory language - West Yorkshire Police, April 2018

On 2 August 2015, two West Yorkshire Police (WYP) officers attended an incident during Gay Pride. They placed two women in handcuffs and put them in the back of their police car. They then pursued a robbery suspect, with the women in the back of the car, and then stopped the car, as the women were arguing. They took one of the women out of the car and removed her handcuffs. At approximately midnight the officers set off in the police car, leaving the woman at the side of the road, and her wife still inside the car.

According to the officers, the woman in the police car lunged towards them. They stopped the car and removed her from the back seat. One of the officers took her to the ground using a leg sweep and restrained her there, using his left hand to restrain her head. At some point during the restraint, the woman sustained injuries to her face, which later required stitches. The other officer sat on her legs and the woman accused him of using homophobic language. The officers called for assistance and two more officers transported her to the local custody suite, where she was detained and questioned for the offence of assaulting a police officer.

Both women later complained to WYP, who conducted two local investigations into the matters. The women appealed the outcome. We upheld their appeal and on 27 April 2018, and determined it should be independently re-investigated by us.

Our investigators obtained copies of all the documents collated during the previous investigations into the matter and reviewed them. They collected the incident logs, CCTV evidence and audio recordings, and produced transcripts of these. In addition, they spoke to a range of witnesses, obtained detailed accounts from each of the two women, interviewed the two officers and took witness statements from the other officers involved in this incident.

At the conclusion of the investigation we believed the evidence indicated that the two officers had a case to answer for gross misconduct. We also referred the case to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who considered an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The CPS declined to prosecute either officer as they did not consider there to be a realistic prospect of conviction. We completed our investigation in June 2019.

We shared our report with WYP, who believed a case to answer for misconduct rather than gross misconduct was appropriate. We considered the force’s rationale for this opinion and agreed that the officers should attend a misconduct meeting for the following alleged breaches of the Standards of Professional Behaviour:

• Authority, respect and courtesy
• Duties and responsibilities
• Use of force
• Discreditable conduct

The two officers attended a misconduct meeting in January 2020, where a finding of misconduct was determined for both of them.