Our Actions against the Police team have recently settled a claim against Hampshire Police on behalf of our 73-year-old Black client. He was wrongly arrested in connection with a criminal investigation in his small rural village — a village in which he was one of only a handful of Black residents.

The arrest was not only baseless, but deeply troubling. It raises fundamental questions about racial profiling, institutional bias, and the quality of decision-making within police forces. At its heart is a question we should no longer have to ask in 2025:

👉 Do some officers genuinely believe that all Black people look the same?

The facts: A startling mismatch

Let’s compare the suspect’s description with our client’s actual profile:

Characteristic	Description of Suspect	Our Client
Gender	Male	Male
Ethnicity	Black	Black
Height	5’9″	5’5½”
Hair	Bald	Close-cropped hair
Build	Muscular	Slight build
Age	30–40	73 years old
Accent	Foreign / unrecognisable	British
Wears glasses?	No	Wears glasses all the time

The only things our client had in common with the suspect were his gender and ethnicity. Despite this, police identified him as a possible suspect and authorised his arrest.

Internal review: No clear justification

In the investigation log, even the reviewing officers expressed doubt. One comment from the internal complaint report states:

“It is not clear, based on the information available to officers at the time, why our client was arrested.”

The arrest was authorised by a Detective Sergeant — a senior officer. This wasn’t a simple street-level mistake. It was a systemic failure.

A vulnerable man, treated with force

At the time of the incident, our client was living with:

• Dementia

• Type 1 diabetes

• Asthma

• High blood pressure

• Recent recovery from prostate cancer

Despite his age and vulnerability, officers used force and even confiscated his inhaler while he was held in custody.

The legal outcome

We pursued legal proceedings for false imprisonment and assault. Hampshire Police have now accepted our offer to settle the case for £7,250.

While compensation offers some form of redress, it does not erase the trauma or the sense of injustice. Nor does it fix the systemic issues that allow something like this to happen in the first place.

Duncan Burtwell observed

I am very pleased that we were able to achieve this outcome for our client, who undoubtedly had an extremely distressing experience. While this was clearly a case where our client was discriminated against on the basis of his ethnicity, we were not in a position to sue for discrimination. We were approached by our client about the case over 6 months after the incident. A claim for discrimination under Equality Act must be issued in court within 6 months of the incident. However, in any case, we just did not need to prove that he had been discriminated against.  His arrest was clearly unlawful in any case, both as it lacked reasonable grounds for suspicion and also for lack of necessity. For obvious reasons, the police in any case are significantly less willing to settle claims for discrimination, so there were good strategic reasons for approaching the claim this way. We have been able to achieve satisfaction for our client in a way that avoided protracted and stressful court proceedings.”

The bigger picture: Is this institutional racism?

This case forces us to confront an uncomfortable reality. When a person can be arrested almost solely on the basis of being Black, we are no longer talking about an isolated error. We are looking at a pattern — and patterns suggest something deeper.

👉 Is this just sloppy policing, or is it an example of institutional racism in action?

When race becomes a proxy for suspicion, when physical descriptions are ignored in favour of ethnicity, and when accountability is avoided through silent settlements — we all lose faith in the justice system.

We must keep asking questions

This case is about more than one man’s experience. It’s a warning that racial bias — whether conscious or unconscious — is still alive in our systems. And unless we confront it, call it out, and demand better, it will continue to harm the most vulnerable.

We are committed to justice, accountability, and standing up for those who are wronged by the very institutions meant to protect them.