Appeal judges have rejected a bid to overturn a damages award made to an autistic teenager restrained by police after jumping into a swimming pool.
Last year a judge said Metropolitan Police officers had falsely imprisoned and discriminated against the boy, and awarded him £28,250. He was placed in handcuffs and leg restraints and put in a police van. The Met appealed last month saying the ruling could affect operational effectiveness.
Full details of the case and the appeal may be found on the BBC News website and the Guardian.
The BBC’s Home Affairs Correspondent observes:
This is a major legal defeat for the Met Police and its desire to ensure officers should have a wide discretion over how they get things done.
The force had argued that operational decision-making in difficult situations may be damaged by this judgement. But the courts were having none of it.
Policing by consent, the bedrock of the British system, means officers must take into account all the available facts before acting.
In this case, that duty meant pausing to ask the right questions. There will still be times when officers will be able to justifiably restrain a vulnerable adult or child – the question will always be whether it was proportionate at the time.
But the sad thing about this case is that there was no emergency – just someone who needed time and space and the patience of others.
Amanda Batten, of the National Autistic Society, said the Court of Appeal confirmed the Met “lacked the necessary understanding and flexibility to adapt to a person’s autism”.
She said: “A better understanding of autism by the police will go a long way towards ensuring that disturbing cases like this never happen again.”