SPOT THE SUSPECT
He’d got no licence, no plates, no insurance and had a lady’s bag with him when his moped was intercepted by a brave PC – but was never charged ...and yet the officer was suspended for TWO YEARS and feared for his job while his actions were investigated.
During a career, spanning nearly 30 unblemished years, PC Edwin Sutton displayed — in the words of almost everyone who worked with him — ‘professionalism, courage and integrity’.
PC Sutton, 49, wasn’t interested in chasing promotion; he wanted to be at the sharp end. Most recently, that meant serving with the roads and Transport Policing Command (rTPC) in London; officers from the unit can find themselves in pursuit of dangerous criminals or simply be required to attend the scene of a minor collision.
it’s not a glamorous job compared with the more high-profile branches of The Met, but the role of the rTPC is vital in keeping the highways of the capital as safe as they can be.
Each day, officers like PC Sutton, make a difference to the lives of ordinary Londoners and others who work in or visit the city. One such day occurred on May 21, 2017.
What happened then, shortly after 5pm, tells us much about the kind of copper PC Sutton is but even more about the culture of modern policing where, so often, criminals are treated as victims and officers such as PC Sutton as criminals.
PC Sutton was stuck in rush-hour traffic on the north Circular road, East Finchley, when he noticed a group of moped riders in his rear-view mirror — and one in particular — because a ladies’ handbag was dangling from the handle-bar. He suspected that the bag had been stolen.
Of course, he could have simply done nothing; no one at the rTPC would have been any the wiser. But with PC Sutton being the officer he was, there was never any chance of that.
instead, he slowly manoeuvred his patrol car into the path of the moped, which speeded up in a bid to get through but ended up ‘grazing’ his vehicle and ricocheting into another car; the rider, 17, was hurt and admitted to hospital with leg injuries.
Those are the brief, bare facts of the events in question. BuT
two things should be borne in mind. One is that moped robbery gangs who target pedestrians have become the scourge of the capital; the other is that Scotland Yard has now authorised knocking suspects off their bikes in certain situations — ‘tactical contact’ — a policy which received the public support of Home Secretary Sajid Javid (‘exactly what we need’) and Prime Minister Theresa May (‘ i think it is absolutely right’).
The new tactics saw the number of moped- enabled crimes fall to 12,419 last year from 19,455 in 2017.
Still, PC Sutton’s decision to make a ‘pre-emptive stop’ on the north Circular, in East Finchley, was taken up by the independent Office for Police Conduct (iOPC) which ruled that he should face disciplinary proceedings.
PC Sutton, who joined The Met when he was 19, was consigned to desk duties and his health suffered.
For the past two years he has lived under the threat of losing his job (and pension) waiting for his case to be heard; hardened criminals have been treated no worse. The casual cruelty inflicted on him — and his family — finally ended this week when common sense, and natural justice, prevailed and PC Sutton was cleared of any wrongdoing.
The watchdog, run by civilians (such as a lawyer formerly with the general Dental Council) said that the action PC Sutton took was ‘disproportionate and unreasonable in the circumstances’ and constituted gross misconduct. The tribunal utterly rejected this — ruling that his ‘decision to block the rider was a reasonable one’ because he had spotted the bag and ‘formed the not unreasonable decision that it may have been part of a crime’.
The rider, not named because of his age but whose identity is known to the Mail, did not face any criminal charges.
But it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute him, given that the crucial evidence (the bag), clearly shown on official accident photos, mysteriously disappeared from the scene and was never recovered.
The inquiry, culminating in the hearing a few days ago and requiring two barristers (‘prosecution’ and ‘defence’), cost the taxpayer many thousands of pounds.
Can you think of a more shameful use of public money or a more morale- sapping message to send to rank and file officers than the way PC Sutton was treated? ‘He was
thrown to the wolves,’ said Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropoli-tan Police [staff] Federation. ‘the case sums up exactly what is wrong with the IOPC.’
Six other officers involved in three separate incidents of ‘tacti-cal contact’ are understood to be still under investigation, just as PC Sutton was, though the ‘suspects’ in these cases were later convicted of a range of offences including theft and dangerous driving.
Figures, provided under freedom of information laws, reveal that in the three years to last October — covering the period PC Sutton was being investi-gated — 48 gross midconduct cases, involving all manner of alleged misdemeanours, were pursued by the IOPC but 33 (two-thirds) were not proven, suggest-ing very strongly that the wrong officers are being targeted.
the repercussions for PC Sutton, in particular, who received glowing character references from colleagues working alongside him as well as senior officers, have been devastating.
He has been with the RtPC since 2002 and is a highly skilled officer on four and two wheels. ‘As a child he always wanted to be a police-man,’ says a close friend. ‘ He is someone who loves his job and is passionate about doing the right thing and helping others.
‘If he was a criminal and it took two years to get to court, it would have been an abuse of process. It is two years wasted and gone. the stress has taken a toll on his health.
‘I remember him being taken to hospital on one occasion with symptoms similar to a stroke. It was very frightening for his family.’
Indeed, the more we learn about PC Sutton, a family man and pillar of his local community where he is chairman of the residents’ associa-tion, the more unjust this story seems to get. the moped rider, now 19, did not have licence plates at the time, standard practice for criminals wanting to avoid detection, nor did he have insurance or a driving licence.
A few weeks earlier, a lime green Gilera moped was featured on the twitter feed of Kensal Green Police.
It is still there and reads: ‘#Moped with no plate failed to stop for police. Recognised by . . . SNt [Safer Neighbourhood team] & visited at home. Reported for seven offences & bike # seized.’
Although the whereabouts of this moped are not known, the rider knocked off his bike by PC Sutton also owned a lime green Gilera moped and lives in Kensal Green, North-West London. Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?
We cannot tell you any more about the ‘offences’ highlighted on the twitter feed because the Met has not yet responded to our request for more information.
What we can say, is that in a video posted online, he performs reckless high-speed ‘wheelies’ on his lime green Gilera, with L-plates, on the A406 North Circular — the scene of the crash with PC Sutton.
On social media, the teenager can also be seen riding his bike erratically, and dangerously at speed, along the road, performing (more) ‘wheelies’, and standing upright on the back through several sets of traffic lights.
In several pictures, he is smoking what appear to be (cannabis) ‘spliffs’ as well as clutching a bottle of vodka with his mates, and boasting that he is ‘Youngest in Charge’, adding ‘All About Bikes. Not Your Average Work’.
Does this posting have more sinister connotations?
He certainly seems flushed with cash, judging by his brash ward-robe of jackets, jewellery and designer trainers (the shelves of his bedroom are laden with simi-larly expensive footwear); a life-style summed up perhaps by a selfie of him on a Gilera moped (orange this time, not lime green) with his face hidden by a smiley face emoji with dollar signs. EItHER
way, his antics, when he is showboating on two wheels — it’s a small miracle no one has been seriously hurt — typifies a growing sense of lawlessness.
And moped gangs are in the thick of it. Sajid Javid revealed he had even been mugged himself by motor scooter thieves who stole his mobile phone, shortly after he became Home Secretary last year.
the culprits, dubbed ‘21st-century highwaymen’, used to deliberately remove their helmets as they fled the scenes of crimes because they knew officers risked being disciplined if they were hurt.
the new guidelines, rolled out more than a year ago, allowing officers to ram bikes, drastically reduced moped crime in the capital. Scotland Yard released dramatic dashcam footage of fleeing moped thugs sent sprawling in the road.
But Ken Marsh, chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, warned at the time, that officers were ‘risking livelihood and liberty’ by employing such tactics.
‘thankfully, in all examples we have seen so far, there has not been a serious injury to a suspect.
‘We need the senior management of the Metropolitan Police and the IOPC to please explain when this happens — and it will — what position my colleagues will find themselves in.’
Yet, even as he spoke, PC Sutton was being moved to desk duties — for a decision that could not have been less gung-ho.
the paucity of the case against him became evident at this week’s hearing. ‘they [the youths on mopeds] were stationary when he looked in the mirror,’ PC Sutton said in evidence.
‘the idea was to try to restrict the gap between lanes two and three for me to get out of the police car in time to get him to stop. I wanted to be able to stop the rider on the bike and find out what was in the bag and possibly arrest him . . . but he came through too quickly.’ WItNESSES
said the bike deliberately accelerated to try to squeeze through the gap. It took 1.6 seconds for the impact to occur; in the blink of an eye, in other words. those 1.6 seconds resulted in ‘two years of hell’ for PC Sutton.
‘What happened to this police officer is an absolute farce,’ said Hansel Andrayas, 51, who was working as a shop assistant in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, in 2015, when she was mugged by two moped thugs who mounted the kerb and stole her bag; her arm became entangled in the straps of the bag and she was dragged along the pavement, leaving her badly bruised, cut and traumatised.
‘these moped attacks are rife because those responsible feel they are untouchable,’ she contin-ued. ‘What’s the point of training officers to do a job and then disci-plining them when they do it? He was just trying to protect the public. How could they penalise him for that? It’s absolutely wrong.’
Surely, there can be few, aside from the guardians at the IOPC, who would disagree. the watch-dog defended its approach to enforcing police conduct and the cases it has brought.
An IOPC spokesman said: ‘ We know the case to answer test is low [ie lower than burden of proof required for a criminal prosecu-tion] but it has been repeatedly tested through judicial reviews and found to be appropriate.’
He stressed that, while a miscon-duct panel may rule at tribunal an officer had not committed miscon-duct, the IOPC was required to say when it believed there was a case to answer.
Jonathan Green, a qualified law-yer, is deputy director general of the IOPC who has spoken loftily about the role of his organisation.
‘Ultimately no police tactic can ever be used with impunity in a country where we police by con-sent — be that tactical contact, the use of firearms, or the use of restraint,’ he pronounced, after joining the IOPC, from the General Dental Council, last year.
‘It is always a matter of whether it’s reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances.’
Does he, with hindsight, believe what happened to PC Sutton was ‘reasonable and proportionate’?
Or, for that matter, that it sends the right message to police officers who do not have the luxury of doing their job from behind a desk?