Gatwick 2018 wrongful arrest follow-up

[worldtraveller]

I agree on the lack of evidence issue in this case, but that's not what you argued above - you argued that the arrest was wrongful because of the presumption of innocence.

And, more generally, you cannot (successfully) sue for wrongful arrest just because you are subsequently not charged - you have to show why reasonable suspicion didn't exist.

But in this case as there was no evidence of a crime comitted by the people in question then the police acted wrongly. I would also argue that breaking down a door to gain entry (and did I read that some of the police were armed?) would also constitute use of excessive and unreasonable force.
The people deserved a much higher payout than the court awarded them. The lawyers did ok though.

Jerry

 

[sar104]

But in this case as there was no evidence of a crime comitted by the people in question then the police acted wrongly. I would also argue that breaking down a door to gain entry (and did I read that some of the police were armed?) would also constitute use of excessive and unreasonable force.
The people deserved a much higher payout than the court awarded them. The lawyers did ok though.

Jerry

As I said - I agree with those points in this case - just not what you argued previously.

 

[SkyeHigh]

But the important point here is that the police cannot go around arresting innocent people when they do not have evidence. To arrest somebody there needs to be evidence, and in this case there was none. From what I read online, the people did not even own a drone and were at work at the time in question.

Clearly the police acted beyond their powers, and also wrongly. For this, I would hold the police fully accountable. The duty of the police is to uphold the law but whilst respecting the rights of people. The police did not do this in this case, and the court agreed.

The total lack of evidence was a key point. Any drone owner (or anybody else for that matter) who is arrested then released without charge should sue the police for wrongful arrest.

I certainly would.


Jerry

The police in the UK don’t have to have evidence prior to an arrest, just a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of guilt. In this situation it would appear an over reaction took place but there must have been sufficient suspicion

 

[i.kelly1963]

Apologies if someone has already posted this link...

It's a 43min talk about what happened at LGW and LHR, along with how near misses are recorded.

It's worth a watch!

 

[gnirtS]

The police in the UK don’t have to have evidence prior to an arrest, just a ‘reasonable suspicion’ of guilt. In this situation it would appear an over reaction took place but there must have been sufficient suspicion

It would appear there was not given it was known these people (i) did not own drones and (ii) had a rock solid alibi BEFORE arrest. You're going to struggle to justify a reasonable suspicion when there's an alibi. They seem to have skipped the questioning stage completely.
Looks more like they were desperate to get someone/anyone for some publicity to take the media pressure off them.

There are 2 major problems here - the arrest itself and the way it was done - armed police and forced entry etc.

 

[sar104]

There are 2 major problems here - the arrest itself and the way it was done - armed police and forced entry etc.

Agreed - that would never happen here in the US of A.

 

[SkyeHigh]

Same here too - it should not happen but there is always more to a story than gets fully published. I worked in broadcast TV news for over 20-years in the UK and saw plenty of cases covered where background information was either suppressed, screwed up or deliberate misguidance from the authorities.

There was one case where members of our crew were being watched by detectives in plain clothes including myself prior to an internal investigation. Foolish for them when I knew three of them from cases I had previously been involved in. Ultimately heads rolled at the highest level despite a big cover-up, a long court case and an apology to those involved. Years later the real truth finally came out.

I’m not saying in anyway that the people involved in the ‘drone’ incident were guilty or even involved in any way at all, alleged or otherwise but I can guarantee there is more to this story than has been made publicly available to date.

Either way what ‘appeared’ to happen appears overkill and not how we would expect the UK police force to operate.

 

[Steve_UK]

Just to correct the original post, which was the story in much of the press, there has been no award of damages or legal costs. The claim was settled out of court with the couple accepting 55,000 GBP. Their lawyers have also submitted a claim to Sussex Police for 145,000 GBP legal costs which has not, to date, been paid or accepted.

 

[Badgersurfer]

I spent the best part of four years working on the new Heathrow Terminal 2, during which time there were a few incidents that required either one or both runways to be closed, so I got to see a lot of this play out first hand. There was clearly a playbook, and things generally happened very quickly and smoothly when the need arose, although the knock-on effects would often last for the rest of the day, and sometimes even into the next day (the maintenance window at LHR is only a few hours each night). The overall disruption that results is, as the Gatwick video shows, pretty severe and spans a large geographical area, so closing a runway, or the entire airport is clearly a major decision with a LOT of knock-on implications. Especially so around London where the space available to hold aircraft is limited by the proximity of a number of other airfields (civillian and military).

That Gatwick was willing to shutdown their entire operation for several hours at a time because of a presumed sighting of a drone is certainly laudable from a safety perspective. However, from a practical one, especially given the mounting number of "sightings" without hard evidence steadily increasing, combined with incidents like the wrongful arrest, the distinct impression I got was a LOT of people, in multiple organizations, running around like headless chickens in full-on panic mode. If they'd planned for this kind of thing - and it wasn't the first time a drone has disrupted an airport - the plan certainly didn't survive contact with the "enemy", that might not even have existed in the first place.

Interesting what you say, the guy mentioned in the OP was related to a friend of ours and the effect on him and their family was devastating. I have experienced first hand, lies police are willing to concoct regarding my son many years ago. When I confronted the Inspector with the court they dropped all charges. I had e greatest respect for the police but it dwindled after then. There was a rumour at the time of the Gatwick incident that they had been hacked and needed a get-out. Who knows? Any bad publicity for drones is not good for us, even more so now the police are using them...soon we'll be having police drones with blue lights chasing ours and drone ANPR. "Stay Legal"... ?

 

[zocalo]

Interesting what you say, the guy mentioned in the OP was related to a friend of ours and the effect on him and their family was devastating. I have experienced first hand, lies police are willing to concoct regarding my son many years ago. When I confronted the Inspector with the court they dropped all charges. I had e greatest respect for the police but it dwindled after then.

I've had a couple of relatively minor cases where I've been forced to resort to the civil courts to gain redress. Even though I knew I was in the right and would almost certainly prevail in both cases (and did), they were still an disproportionately stressful periods that consumed a lot of my spare time. I can easily imagine that having to do that in relation to a criminal matter would be at least an order of magnitude worse, and that's before you factor in the media coverage and the out pourings of hate on social media that also occured. Sure, people were upset because holiday plans had been trashed, etc., but it's still shocking how fast "innocent until proven guilty" can go out of the window once the court of public opinion is in session.

On your second point, it's definitely the knock-on effects that matter, and this seems to be something that few in power seem to have a proper handle on. It's not just the Gait's that would have had their confidence in the police knocked from something like this; it's their family, friends, and work colleagues that were also drawn into it - likely dozens of people, from just one instance of heavy handedness. And that's before you factor in the irony of all that media coverage ultimately backfiring quite spectacularly once their coverage switched from the Gaits presumed guilt to just how incompetent the police handling of it all was. Things clearly need to change to regain some of that trust. Hopefully, the BLM protests will prompt a few significant changes into the way policing is undertaken, but I fear it'll all get lost in the noise of post-Covid-19 economic recovery efforts.

 

[JAW]

Agreed - that would never happen here in the US of A.

Said with tongue firmly planted in cheek.?

 

[chadCO]

£200,000 in compensation should be used to sue every cop involved into homelessness. Only by punishing those in authority personally will anything ever change.

 

[Drgnfli]

This aircraft ID list comes in handy:

 

[pross]

£200,000 in compensation should be used to sue every cop involved into homelessness. Only by punishing those in authority personally will anything ever change.

That would only work if they got 200k compensation.

 

[gnirtS]

Because having no police at all can't possibly go badly wrong within minutes......

 

[zocalo]

That would only work if they got 200k compensation.

Which they didn't. The original link I posted didn't get into the specifics, but as I made clear in my summary it claimed that they were awarded a total of £200k in compensation and legal costs - the latter would go usually directly to their lawyers, not the Gaits. Subsequent detail seems to imply that the Gait's have received £55k in compensation, with there being some doubt as to whether the remaining £145k of legal costs has been paid or not.

 

[pross]

Which they didn't.

I know, I read the thread.