UK Met chief apologizes for CS gas use

Britain’s Metropolitan Police commissioner has been forced to apologize to a group of protesters for the use of excessive force by one of his officers.

Bernard Hogan-Howe, the country’s most senior police officer, gave the apology on Wednesday after admitting that police constable (PC) James Kiddie unlawfully sprayed CS gas into six protesters faces at close range during a demonstration.
 
Hogan-Howe also admitted that the CS spray caused the protesters intense pain, fear and panic.

Furthermore, the police commissioner apologized to the demonstrators for preventing them from “exercising their fundamental right to protest” and announced that the protesters would receive compensation.

The group’s lawyer, Lochlinn Parker responded to the delayed apology, criticizing the police force for taking more than three years to admit that “this shameful episode of excessive policing should never have happened.”

The developments come after the six protesters sued the Metropolitan police over the use of CS spray during a protest against the chemist company Boots over tax avoidance in 2011.

During the demonstration police officers, including Kiddie, arrested a woman after she pushed a protest leaflet through a gap in the closed door of a Boots store.

Kiddie had reported that he used the spray to disperse the protesters as he feared for his and other officers’ safety.

However, a probe into the protest by the police watchdog found that there were no evidence from obtained footage of the incident that “any of the protesters had attempted to physically attack any of the officers.”

The police watchdog also ruled that Kiddie had unlawfully sprayed the protesters and that the police officers at the scene had failed to monitor the health of the sprayed protesters, as required under police rules.

CAH/AB