This incident caught my attention when it was first reported and I have waited a few days after the conclusion of the trial, as I wanted to speak to a few of the faithful followers off-air, before writing this post. Their input has been gratefully received…
I have always felt that being targeted by defence barristers every time you take to the dock as a prosecution witness in Magistrates and Crown Court is pretty frustrating, sometimes demoralising and rarely enjoyable. All you are doing is trying to put a criminal behind bars, right?
I can’t possibly imagine how it must feel to be in that same dock, but be there as a defendant as the result of a decision made by others in your organisation simply because you did your job and they have something to prove.
PC James Holden from Hampshire Police has just had that very thing happen to him. Following the pursuit of a prolific burglar through the streets of Portsmouth he was summoned to appear at Guildford Crown Court on a charge of Dangerous Driving after his in-car footage was reviewed by the forces Pursuit Review Group.
This group always includes the head of Driver Standards, Kevin Fripp, (who a local paper, The Portsmouth News, state is a retired Road Policing Unit Sergeant), with the remainder of its number being made up of one of the senior management team from the control room (presumably someone of the rank of Inspector or above) as well as representatives from the Police Federation and the Complaints and Discipline team.
On the recommendation of these people the evidence of PC Holden’s allegedly poor standard of driving was then passed to the CPS. I assume that the Review Group were actively seeking authorisation to prosecute as there would be no need for CPS consultation if they believed there was no case to answer.
Having watched the entire clip a number of times (nearly 11 minutes in length and available here if you want to watch it yourself) and I can see no reason why the driving shown attracted a prosecution – especially for an offense of Dangerous Driving.
Although I appreciate the clip shows the offender and Police Officer driving passing through city center streets and the offending vehicle using the wrong side of dual-carriageways and roundabouts, the considered driving of PC Holden is obvious, his reactions to hazards and the varying conditions are text-book and his decision to call off the pursuit at the time and place that he did (shown above) is exactly what I would expect.
Let’s not forget what was going on here…
The driver of the offending vehicle, Louis Bibby, 19, who was on bail at the time, had 145 previous convictions and was arrested nearby after abandoning the vehicle. He later admitted a string of offences at Portsmouth Crown Court including dangerous driving, driving while disqualified and without insurance, aggravated vehicle taking causing damage and two counts of burglary with intent to steal and was sentenced to four years in a Young Offenders Institution.
PC Holden should have been commended for his part in the apprehension of Bibby and for securing the evidence of his driving whilst preserving his own safety and that of other road users!
I have been authorised to take part in the initial stages of pursuits for seven years and have held the highest level of pursuit authorisation in my force, involving additional tactical options, for more than four. While this does not make me as experienced as many drivers out there, and I expect that includes PC Holden, I do believe that it gives me sufficient experience to make my own judgment on the driving shown.
The decision of the Review Group in this case could have had an irreversible and catastrophic effect on this officer, ending his professional career as well as dramatically altering his personal life and the lives of his family (if he has one). The Review Group decision would have been based, I believe, purely on the footage from the in-car camera, any black-box data from the car (I believe that most forces have such systems in their response vehicles these days), the reports of the officers involved and then finally the opinion of a small number of people.
None of these elements are even close to providing a real-life experience of what was going on.
Further to that, there was no accident directly involving Holden’s Police vehicle, there are no reported injuries caused to members of the public by the way in which his Police vehicle was driven and from what I have seen, there were no substantive grounds for complaint regarding the manner of driving in itself.
My only criticism of the actions of PC Holden would be that the damaged crossing was left unattended while he took an alternative route to rejoin the pursuit. Having said that, I do not know how close other officers were at the time of the damage that could have been deployed to close the road at that point. PC Holden does, however, return to the crossing after the pursuit finishes.
Had the Police vehicle become involved in a serious or fatal crash, or a member of the public been injured as an indirect result of the actions of PC Holden, then I fully support a review of the footage. With none of these elements present, this appears to have been a bit of a high-stakes fishing trip – a point of view that was obviously also held by the jury at Guildford Crown Court who found the officer ‘Not Guilty’ of the offense with which he was charged after only 1 hour and 10 minutes! Shame it took nearly a year to get to that point!
There have been many examples in my force (which I won’t go into here as I will just get angry and say something that gives too much away) where officers appear to have been singled out by risk averse managers for doing what they are paid (and very well trained) to do. This example-making practice has to stop before any more officers have to go through the trauma of an unnecessary court case. The only lesson we are being taught by this type of situation is not to trust that the establishment will back you up…even when you do a damn good job!
The justification in the mind of the officer behind the wheel has, apparently, been universally superseded by the opinion of a miniature jury such as the Pursuit Review Group. In circumstances where there is no issue other than the driving itself, I believe that this is a dangerous situation as the mindset of that group is, by its very nature, focussed on being hyper-critical.
Offences, as we have seen in this case, can be created from a mixture of over-intrusive supervision and excessive use of the ‘what-if’ card. A court will always be critical of the judgment of an officer if it all goes wrong – we KNOW that. But if those that hold authority over the car keys continually throw a virtual casualty under the wheels of every response car, the officers making good decisions based on sound judgment will eventually stop going after the bad guys for fear of finding themselves in the dock.
And finally. To PC Holden….good job sir! Keep locking ‘em up!
