COOKING THE EVIDENCE
From Private Eye 1028 - 31 May 2001
ALLAN Cook was assaulted and badly beaten up for no reason by two officers from the
Metropolitan police. He was then charged with seriously assaulting the police who
beat him and subjected to a year's anxious delay on bail until the case came to court.
Once in court he was hurriedly acquitted after an embarrassing video came to light
making nonsense of the police story...
On 10 December 1997, Mr Cook was a promising
19-year-old student at Kingston University. As the term ended for Christmas, he and
a mate went out to celebrate. After a few drinks they left a nightclub in Kingston
and started to make their way home. They were larking about, wrestling playfully
with each other and making jokes, when two police officers swooped on them, separated
them and detained them in a tight grip.
Allan found himself on the ground, his face
shoved again and again on to the pavement, while he was handcuffed from behind. He
was forcibly thrown into a police van where he temporarily lost consciousness. He
was taken to Kingston police station and locked up in a cell all night. He was systematically
abused and insulted and told, to his surprise, “you fucker, you broke her arm”.
When
he finally got to Kingston magistrates' court, the police opposed bail on the unlikely
(and unsuccessful) ground that he would vanish. He was charged with affray and grievous
bodily harm, but the case did not come to Kingston crown court until 7 December 1998,
almost a year after the incident.
The first day's hearing was immensely embarrassing
for the Met. The woman police officer whose arm was meant to have been broken, was
shown to have merely damaged a bone in her hand making the violence she described
incredible. The worst moment for the prosecution though was the showing of a CCTV
video from a jeweller's shop near the scene of the assault. The video, covering almost
the whole event, showed Allan Cook nervously moving away from the police in exactly
the way he described. The prosecution tried to argue that his whole demeanour must
have changed in the seven seconds he did not appear on the video, but the game was
up and the charges were dropped.
The incident continued to haunt the young man, whose
performance at college slumped. He sued the police for malicious prosecution. His
father rang the Eye more than a year ago to seek advice. Eventually, last month the
case was settled out of court, with the Met agreeing to pay £17,500. (out of the
public purse - TW).
Addendum by Tom Watkins. The above story is not unusual. I recently picked up a man carrying trade vehicle licence plates as I drove onto the M1 motorway. He said he was on the way to London to pick up a lorry and then drive it back up north. I said I was on the way to visit a lady in prison, explaining about Portia. He said he had done jury service many years ago. The use he found for the exercise book they give to jurors was to note down the funny, odd things that happened during the trial. Like for instance - the judge who could not hear very well and kept misunderstanding what was said.
Later he told me his son was in prison. He had gone out for the night with two friends. The friends had got into a fight with other young men but his son did not take part. The reason for this was that his son just did not have the build - this would be obvious if I saw him. (To emphasis this he also recalled another event).
The police came along and arrested his son - who was only a spectator - and one of his friends. The other ran away. They were charged with a much more serious offence than necessary because neither would give the name of the man who had run away. Because of this the judge said they had shown no remorse and gave them each both four years imprisonment.
Pity this event was not on CCTV too!
These stories are not untypical of so called British Justice and the behaviour of some of our judges and police.
www.slimeylimeyjustice.org