Our Actions Against the Police team are happy to confirm settlement of a claim verses the Metropolitan Police. Our client was arrested upon police attendance at a domestic incident. The other party had called police and then put the phone down. Police had called back, at which point our client had answered and asked for officers to attend.
Upon officers’ attendance, client presented calmly and his ex-partner had completely lost her composure. She made an allegation of a technical assault. Our client played the attending officers audio from his phone illustrating that the respective parties’ behaviour when police arrived was consistent with how it had been during the course of the argument.
The Met Police’s decision
The police officers elected to arrest our client. They relied in part on the fact that the children of the relationship (asleep upstairs) would “probably prefer to wake up to their mother than their father” (or words to that effect). Our client was so placid the officers did not handcuff him. The arresting officers then failed to mention the audio recording in their handover to the investigating officer.
We threatened to sue for false imprisonment on the basis that the arrest lacked reasonable grounds and / or was unreasonable. It was also contended that even if the arrest was lawful, our client ought to have been released on street-bail with conditions (as he was living at an alternate address). We also contended that the length of detention was not reasonable.
Our client was detained for 14 ½ hours and the claim has settled with compensation of £7,500 + legal costs.
One of those claims where arguably there was a gender discrimination claim. This would however not have taken the case any further, as the arrest was not lawful anyway.
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