April 2012 – Police Actions Team Successes

The police actions team has recently been successful in obtaining a settlement from the Independent Police Complaints Commission of a judicial review application before the High Court. The application concerned the failure of the IPCC to uphold our client's complaint regarding the lawfulness of his arrest and the use of stop and search.

We are pleased that the IPCC have reviewed their decision and upheld our client's complaint. In particular, the IPCC stated that once the police had searched our client on the street and not found any suspicious items, there was no reason for a further search; the force used by the police to conduct a further search was not justified; there was no reason for our client to be arrested or detained; and there was no reason for him to be subjected to a strip search.

The IPCC stated that the police should not use section 5 of the Public Order Act as justification for an arrest when the matter could be appropriately dealt with by a Fixed Penalty Notice.

The Civil Actions team have also obtained a number of successful settlements of damages in cases against the Metropolitan Police. One such settlement involved a claim for breaches of the Data Protection Act and Article 8 of the Human Rights Act concerning the unlawful disclosure by police officers of details of a client's arrest to members of the general public, which caused our client a great deal of stress and damage to his reputation.

A successful result was also obtained in a claim for misfeasance in public office by a prisoner who was re-categorised from a category D to a category B. Our client had worked hard to earn his category D status and privileges yet this was all ruined on the basis of false and malicious allegations provided by the police to the prison service.