Four police officers involved in an incident which left a man brain damaged and paralysed have been found guilty of wrongdoing by a misconduct panel.
Julian Cole was involved in a scuffle with police officers outside the former Elements nightclub in Bedford in 2013.
PCs Hannah Ross, Sanjeev Kalyan and Nicholas Oates were found guilty of gross misconduct, while Sgt Andrew Withey was guilty of misconduct.
The allegations do not relate to the injuries sustained by Mr Cole.
The PCs were found to have breached standards of honestly, while all four were found by the misconduct panel in Stevenage to have breached standards of duties and responsibilities.
The allegations were regarding the officers’ actions surrounding the incident at the nightclub on 6 May 2013, when police were called at about 01:30 GMT.
Sports science student Mr Cole, then aged 20, had been ejected from the venue and had been refused a refund by door staff, so kept trying to get back in.
Mr Cole was “taken to the ground” by PC Ross, PC Oates and PC Kalyan at 01:48. He was then cuffed with “his face down on the ground”.
Three officers lifted him from the ground and he was taken to the police van.
At 02:02 PC Ross called an ambulance, and paramedics arrived and commenced CPR on Mr Cole, who was not breathing. Thirty minutes later he was taken to hospital where a broken vertebrae was discovered.
Mark Ley-Morgan, counsel for Bedfordshire Police Professional Standards, accused PC Ross of deliberately writing a short account of what happened that night.
The hearing was also told that PC Kalyan tried to “shift responsibility” over what happened to the student.
The panel found that PC Oates had made statements which he knew were not true regarding Mr Cole’s transport to the police van.
It said that Sgt Withey failed to make “any enquiry” when PC Ross asked whether Mr Cole should go to hospital or custody and failed to “react” to hearing Mr Cole say his neck hurt.
The Independent Office for Police Conduct referred its findings of an earlier investigation to the Crown Prosecution Service, which decided that no criminal conduct had occurred.
Source: bbc.co.uk
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