Met police officers investigated after death of man who was restrained

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/may/08/met-police-officers-investigated-after-man-dies-after-being-restrained

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Nine Metropolitan police officers are under investigation in connection with the death of a man with mental health problems after he was restrained by police.

Kevin Clarke, 35, was pronounced dead at Lewisham hospital in south London on 9 March after being restrained in the grounds of St Dunstan’s College in Lewisham.

A postmortem was carried out on 20 March but the cause of Clarke’s death remains under investigation, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) said.

The police watchdog said on Tuesday that its investigation was making good progress and that it had informed nine officers who attended the incident that their conduct was under investigation.

Jonathan Green, the IOPC’s regional director, said: “We have established that the decisions made and actions taken to restrain Mr Clarke may be in breach of police professional standards and may amount to gross misconduct. This position will be kept under review as the investigation develops and it is important to stress that this does not necessarily mean that misconduct proceedings will follow.”

Officers have told the IOPC that Clarke appeared to be having a mental health crisis. They said they called the London ambulance service and restrained him.

Green said that the Met had been called earlier in the day by staff at the assisted living accommodation where Clarke was living, who were concerned about his welfare. That previous contact will also form part of the investigation, Green said.

The IOPC has established that there is no CCTV footage of the area where the incident occurred but said that most of the officers involved had activated their body-worn cameras. The film from those cameras has been analysed by IOPC investigators, it said.

Clarke’s family described him as a gifted footballer who coached young people, and as a much-loved member of the community who had gone through “difficult times”.

In a statement released through their solicitor, the family, who are being supported by campaign group Inquest, said they were “shocked to the core to learn that the police felt it necessary to use the force of nine officers to restrain one unwell man”.

The statement said: “The very fact that the police called an ambulance to provide medical assistance for Kevin tells us that they knew he was unwell and potentially experiencing a mental health episode so we’re struggling to understand the reason for such an excessive response. Kevin must have been petrified in his final minutes and it is agony for us to even think about this.”

They welcomed the prospect of charges and expressed hope that the IOPC investigation would change the way officers treated vulnerable people.

Deborah Coles, the executive director of Inquest, said the serious risks of restraint on people with mental ill health were well recognised.