£100K PAYOUT FOR DAD TASERED BY POLICE
GMP APOLOGISES AS VICTIM’S MUM SAYS HE WAS ‘TREATED WORSE THAN ANIMAL’
GREATER Manchester Police has apologised and paid out £100,000 to an autistic man Tasered multiple times in the street.
Dad-of-two Michael Gilchrist, 60, who has Asperger’s and bipolar disorder, was distressed and pacing up and down near his home in Wythenshawe when the incident happened in 2014.
His hands were bloodied after he cut them breaking his window.
Two officers responded to the scene and described Mr Gilchrist as being ‘aggressive and dangerous’.
He was Tasered ten times and twice subjected to CS spray during efforts to detain him.
Pc Samuel Schofield – who discharged his Taser for 72 seconds – told a civil court last year he felt ‘genuine fear’ that Mr Gilchrist may have attacked someone due to the blood on his hands.
But a High
Court judge ruled last year the officers had used ‘unreasonable and inappropriate’ force.
Mr Gilchrist was left with post-traumatic stress disorder and his family sued GMP for battery and negligence. Micha e l’s mum Novlyn, 83, who now looks after him, told the Sunday Mirror: “I can never forgive the police for what they’ve done. “They saw there was something wrong with Michael, but showed no care. They treated him worse than an animal.” Official police advice is not to use a Taser after CS spray has been deployed because it may be flammable.
Tasers should also not be used if they have already proved ineffective. Retired social worker Novlyn said: “He wasn’t able to communicate at all. It was horrendous.” Michael later gave up his gardening job and moved in with Novlyn. He started to receive treatment and medication but withdrew and ‘was lost in himself’, she said.
High Court judge Mrs Justice O’Farrell found that Pc Schofield’s use of the Taser was unjustified. She ordered Greater Manchester Police to pay £85,000 into a Personal Injuries Trust for Michael plus £15,000 to set it up and costs, amounting to a total £325,000. Chief Constable Ian Hopkins offered a ‘sincere and unreserved apology’. Assistant Chief Constable Nick Bailey said Michael’s experience was “a matter of sincere regret”. The Independent Office for Police Conduct has ordered GMP to reinvestigate its use of force and also Novlyn’s allegation her son was targeted due to his race - a claim GMP previously dismissed.
Novlyn said: “I believe they saw him as a black man and thought he must be aggressive. He never attacked anyone.”
GMP is currently facing another watchdog investigation after a man was Tasered in front of his child at a petrol station.
I believe they saw him as a black man and thought he must be aggressive Samuel Gilcrist’s mum Novlyn