Taxi Driver Online

Met Police dog handler who resigned over alleged attack on Brentwood taxi driver has conviction quashed at Court of Appeal

A Metropolitan Police officer who was convicted of attacking a taxi driver in Essex has had the conviction quashed at an appeal hearing. PC Gareth Head had stood trial over a charge of causing actual bodily harm following an alleged incident in Brentwood.

Former PC Head had stood trial at Basildon Crown Court for two counts of racially aggravated actual bodily harm and actual bodily harm following a complaint made to police by a taxi driver in Brentwood in 2018. During Mr Head's first trial he was acquitted of the racially aggravated charge but no verdict was reached on the ABH count. A second trial saw a jury find him guilty of that charge on March 1 this year.

The charges followed an investigation by the Independent Office of Police Conduct (IOPC) who were then authorised by the Crown Prosecution Service to charge Mr Head. However, an appeal was made against the conviction at the Court of Appeal this summer, and the IOPC has now confirmed that appeal was successful and Mr Head has now been formally acquitted of the criminal charge.

A spokesman for the IOPC said: "Following an IOPC investigation, PC Gareth Head – who was then a serving Metropolitan Police Service officer - was found guilty by a jury at Basildon Crown Court on 1 March of causing actual bodily harm.

"He was sentenced to a 12-month community order and ordered to pay the victim surcharge of £85 and £1750 towards prosecution costs. His conviction was subsequently quashed by the Court of Appeal on August 10."

Following the initial conviction, the Met Police held a misconduct hearing on April 13 into Mr Head, who was attached to the Dog Support Unit, where it was heard he had resigned prior to the hearing and ceased to be an officer as of April 9. The force said he would have been dismissed if he was still an officer at the time.

_________________
IDFIMH

methinks Justice has not been done on this occasion.

_________________
lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector

So can anyone find the original thread on this, which I seem to recall contained several different articles?

Should be easy enough to find with the search function, but I've looked high and low, and via Google, but can't find it

Also seem to recall the driver's jaw being broken, and something odd about the driver's response - he carried on working, or something like that, or wasn't even really working in the first place

So either I'm losing it, or there's a technical glitch, or it's been removed by admin for, er, legal reasons

There certainly seems to be plenty of 'legals' going on with this case. However, there are still plenty of articles online about the original IOPC decision in the likes of the local press, PHTM, Taxi-Point etc.

Sometimes stuff is removed by admin if they are asked nicely and there is merit to the stuff being removed.

I think this must have been one of those cases, but I can't remember why it was removed.

I even spent time trying to find the original articles.

_________________
IDFIMH

Interesting, and it would be even more interesting to know the rationale

And, more generally, a lot of stuff posted on here probably pretty close to the bone as regards certain legal stuff. But in terms of proportionality, I take the view that because there's relatively few readers on here (as compared to a newspaper's website, say, and particularly with regard to the below the line comments on such sites) then it's not much of an issue for this website.

It will be interesting to find out why the sentence was quashed, and if there is to be a retrial.

_________________
IDFIMH