by In a large office somewhere in Bristol, a police officer is looking at body camera footage of two of his colleagues arresting a woman for causing a public nuisance on the Clifton suspension bridge. Viewers of To Catch a Copper have just seen the same video and, if we had any doubts that we had the right answer, the policeman who reviews the tape is right at home with us. He sits there open-mouthed.
Four years ago, Avon and Somerset Police approved surveillance cameras to track the work of their Anti-Corruption Unit. That’s the equivalent of AC-12 in the Line of Duty, but this unit’s brief covers any wrongdoing on the job, not just bent cops. So far, To Catch a Copper doesn’t offer dark conspiracies or organized crime infiltration. Instead, in the first installment of the abuse of vulnerable citizens, it reveals the shameful behavior of some individuals, and the inadequate responses of the relevant authorities, which are quite shocking.
There are more than 147,000 police officers in the UK; even a well-run institution would have some bullies and abusers
The terrifying footage begins when female officers arrive at Clifton Bridge, having been called out to intercept a woman who was threatening to jump off. Where one might expect careful sympathy, there is coarse contempt: the woman is restrained against the squad car with a hand pressed to her throat, fitted with a “spit hood” after she tries and failure to spit on one of the officers, then pepper-sprayed in response to being kicked out. Back at the station, the woman – who has been belittled and dismissed from her job throughout – is pinned to the floor and searched, hands around the back and front of her trousers while she screams and screams. “I’m embarrassed,” says the investigator watching the recording.
Another not so bad clip where two male officers assist hospital staff in preventing a female patient from escaping. Again, she is clearly in crisis (“I want to die!”), but is mocked by the officers, who laugh that she might wet herself, and is heard at one point using the phrase “fucking shit”.
It’s surprising, perhaps even more so because all the officers knew they were wearing body-mounted cameras. But halfway through the episode, there is not much to talk about in the opinion that we as British citizens have lost our trust in the police in general. There are more than 147,000 police officers in the UK; even a well-run institution would have some bullies and abusers. Systemic problems are a rotten law enforcement apparatus, not one-off incidents, even scary and disturbing ones.
When the program moves on to wider phenomena, the first one put forward is going towards freeing the officers caught on film. Being a police officer means meeting a succession of people having the worst day of their lives: one harrowing encounter with a desperate person is followed by another. Documentaries such as the BBC’s Ambulance have shown how the destruction of social care and mental health services in Britain has placed unreasonable burdens on paramedics, forcing them to deal with problems that should have been tackled elsewhere. This also applies to the police. One of the officers who attended the hospital says that his working day is “all about protection, vulnerability and mental health”.
But this would release with cold detachment, not with grotesque mockery or fearful violence – so, in the cases we have seen, surely those officers were at least summarily fired? The potential systemic problem is this: neither the Clifton Bridge case nor the events at the hospital resulted in any disciplinary sanction. It is reported that the Independent Office for Police Conduct estimated in 2022 that less than 1% of complaints referred to it resulted in formal misconduct proceedings.
The program adds a third already well-known case study: that of Sergeant Lee Cocking, who volunteered to rescue a member of the public house in Weston-super-Mare who was incarcerated on Christmas Eve 2017. driving. in a public office, Sergeant Cocking convinced the jury that post-traumatic stress disorder brought on by a previous bad work experience left him psychologically unable to stop the woman pulling into a dark parkway, at climb it in the driver’s college. seat and have sex with him. His police misconduct hearing agreed with the court’s verdict. On the programme, a police officer describes Cocking’s defense as a “farcical” defence, but the case may be an outlier, its usefulness here complicated by Cocking’s medical condition and a jury having agreed with the police’s internal disciplinary process .
Returning to that process in relation to all the concerns raised by the programme, Avon and Somerset chief constable Sarah Crew expresses her own frustration, going so far as to say “I hope the program will this information case” for amendments. Hopefully, in the following episodes, he will be more focused.
• To Catch a Copper is on Channel 4.
