Recommendation, Stop and search, Romford - Metropolitan Police, April 2019

On 22 April 2019, two plain clothed officers from the Metropolitan Police Service stopped two boys, one aged seventeen and one aged fourteen. The officers attempted to search the teenagers and one left the scene, followed by one of the officers.

The teenager ran home and entered his house. One officer followed him to his house and detained him a short time later.

The other teenager remained at the scene of the stop and struggled with the remaining police officer. Whilst the officer attempted to handcuff the teenager, he was unsuccessful and was only able to apply them to one wrist. The teenager continued to struggle with the officer, who was unable to control him.

The officer delivered a number of baton strikes to the teenager’s leg. This part of the incident was captured on video by a member of the public. The officer then handcuffed the teenager.

Both officers were interviewed in relation to their involvement in this incident. One officer was interviewed under criminal caution concerning his use of force on the teenager, namely the baton strikes.

The other officer was interviewed in relation to the decision to stop the teenagers and his actions at the first teenager’s house.

We spoke to witnesses and took statements as well as reviewing other evidence.

We finished our investigation in September 2019 and passed our report to the Crown Prosecution Service who decided to charge one officer with common assault by beating.

Following a trial at magistrate’s court, a District Judge found the officer not guilty of assault.

Our investigation found that the officer also had a case to answer for gross misconduct concerning his use of force. The MPS agreed with our findings.

Following the officer’s trial, the MPS reviewed the matter and, based on the evidence provided to the court, found that the officer no longer had a case to answer for his use of force and we agreed.

Our investigation also found that the officer had a case to answer for misconduct relating to unconscious bias in the original decision to stop the two boys. We found that the reflective practice route was appropriate to deal with this. The MPS agreed that the officer would now undertake the reflective practice review process, working with his supervisor to reflect on what happened, identify any actions required to put the issues right and learn from the incident to prevent reoccurrence.

This investigation was considered as part of a wider piece of work we did to study stop and search cases nationally.