Two police officers who arrested two women at Leeds Pride found guilty of misconduct

Two police officers who arrested two women during Gay Pride have been found guilty of misconduct.
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The officers attended an incident during Gay Pride on August 2, 2015.

They placed two women in handcuffs and put them in the back of their police car before pursuing a robbery suspect, with the women in the back of the car.

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The officers then stopped the car as the women were arguing.

Gay Pride LeedsGay Pride Leeds
Gay Pride Leeds

They took one of the women out of the car and removed her handcuffs.

At approximately midnight the officers set off in the police car, leaving the woman at the side of the road, and her wife still inside the car.

According to the officers, the woman in the police car lunged towards them.

They stopped the car and removed her from the back seat.

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One of the officers took her to the ground using a leg sweep and restrained her there, using his left hand to restrain her head. At some point during the restraint, the woman sustained injuries to her face, which later required stitches.

The other officer sat on her legs and the woman accused him of using homophobic language.

The officers called for assistance and two more officers transported her to the local custody suite, where she was detained and questioned for the offence of assaulting a police officer.

Both women later complained to WYP, who conducted two local investigations into the matters.

The women appealed the outcome.

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The IOPC upheld their appeal and on 27 April 2018, determined it should be independently re-investigated.

The IOPC investigators obtained copies of all the documents collated during the previous investigations into the matter and reviewed them.

They collected the incident logs, CCTV evidence and audio recordings, and produced transcripts of these. In addition, they spoke to a range of witnesses, obtained detailed accounts from each of the two women, interviewed the two officers and took witness statements from the other officers involved in this incident.

At the conclusion of the investigation the IOPC believed the evidence indicated that the two officers had a case to answer for gross misconduct.

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The case was referred to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), who considered an offence of assault occasioning actual bodily harm.

The CPS declined to prosecute either officer as they did not consider there to be a realistic prospect of conviction.

The investigation was completed in June 2019.

The IOPC shared their report with WYP, who believed a case to answer for misconduct rather than gross misconduct was appropriate.

The IOPC said they considered the force’s rationale for this opinion and agreed that the officers should attend a misconduct meeting for the following alleged breaches of the Standards of Professional Behaviour:

The two officers attended a misconduct meeting in January 2020, where a finding of misconduct was determined for both of them.