Complaint regarding force used during arrest - Nottinghamshire Police, November 2017

In November 2017 Nottinghamshire Police officers stopped a vehicle in Nottingham as they believed it was travelling in excess of the speed limit. Officers found a number of weapons in the vehicle and searched each of the occupants. Following the searches, one of the occupants was asked to get on to the floor by one officer. A struggle ensued, in which officers used force to bring the man under control.

The man made a complaint that officers had used excessive force and discriminated against him because of his ethnicity.

During the investigation, we served misconduct notices on three officers and obtained accounts from all three of them. We also obtained a statement from the complainant and examined footage from body-worn cameras of two of the officers.

The evidence obtained by the investigation indicated that the force used by Nottinghamshire Police had been reasonable when detaining the man, as they had located weapons in the vehicle which they had stopped. However, the investigation found that one of the officers had not properly exhausted tactical communication options before using force. We recommended that this should be addressed by way of management action. The investigation did not find any evidence indicating that the complainant had been discriminated against. We concluded our investigation in September 2018.

After reviewing our report Nottinghamshire Police agreed that the officer would receive management action.