unfair cop

It is a year since Mr Justice Bean made the judgement that a policeman, who dragged an innocent woman to a cell and then threw her down on to the floor causing her a cut eye and other facial injuries that needed hospital treatment, ..... didn't.

This despite the evidence of CCTV clearly showing him dragging her to a cell and throwing her down, but the appeal court decided that she just let go of a door frame and the force of the letting go sent her to the floor. Well of course it can't, can it. The laws of physics tell us that there must have been a force pushing on her equal to the one she hypothetically might have been applying to the door frame. And I don't mean gravity. The CCTV shows that the door frame is an innocent bystander and the force came from Sergeant Andrews. Why was the 57 year old woman, against whom no charge was sustained, being pushed at all ? For a fellow police officer to have reported the incident (he was her supervisor), it must have been a serious lapse in the proper treatment of a person in custody.

Anyway, Andrews was released from his 6 month sentence for ABH after a few days, long before the date of appeal. Well alright, we can live with that even though some might get the impression that an injustice was done and that the appeal court wouldn’t have been so accommodating to a civilian. No jury, having seen the CCTV, would have acquitted, even though Andrews said in court that he didn't think he had done anything wrong.

But the natural consequence is that Andrews is innocent (loosely speaking) and so the Independent (sic) Police Appeals Tribunal ordered that he gets his job back despite agreeing that the officer's conduct was "intolerant and discreditable". Much more creditable is the Wiltshire Police Authority which has deplored the sergeant's behaviour and confirmed that his intolerance cannot be tolerated. They will challenge the decision. That in itself tells a story. Meanwhile Andrews will get back all the pay that he didn't receive whilst he was being rested. It's all worked out rather well for him. So far.