Client charged with police assault receives caution

Case study summary

Our client was accused of assaulting a police officer. He explained that, at the time, he had just been trying to look after his friend and that he never intended to cause any harm. We ensured that the case did not proceed to court.

Case study

Our client was charged with a police assault after he had pushed an officer outside of a fast food restaurant.

The police had arrived on the scene in response to a fight that had taken place and wrongly assumed our client had been involved.

Officers confronted our client and he was understandably scared, given that he had never been involved with police before. After they attempted to restrain him, he pushed one officer, causing her to take a few steps backwards. He was then arrested for assaulting an officer.

Our client accepted that he had pushed the officer but explained he had done this because he was scared and confused about why they were trying to restrain him. He explained that he had even apologised to the police when he was placed into a police van.

If our client received a criminal conviction, he would lose his job. This understandably resulted in additional anxiety for him and meant that we had to do everything we could to ensure this case did not go to court.

We reviewed the prosecution evidence and could see there was no benefit to further prosecution. On the facts of the police case, our client had committed an assault on a police officer, however, we could see that there was no public interest in him being convicted for this due to how minor the offence was.

At court, our expert lawyer was able to persuade the prosecutor to refer this case back to the police for a caution.

Our client was especially happy with this outcome because it meant he would be able to continue his work without a full conviction on his record.