CPS admits Ian Tomlinson report mistakes
Updated on 23 July 2010
The Crown Prosecution Service has admitted to Channel 4 News it made a mistake about the locations involved in Ian Tomlinson's death during yesterday's announcement that no charges were being brought against the police officer in the case, writes Home Affairs producer Marcus Edwards.
In a televised statement, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, said Mr Tomlinson had collapsed in Threadneedle Street, a short time after being struck with a baton and pushed over by a Metropolitan Police officer.
Mr Starmer said: "Although Mr Tomlinson was able to get back to his feet with the assistance of bystanders and walk a short distance to Threadneedle Street, he then collapsed to the floor."
Ian Tomlinson actually collapsed close to the Co-operative Bank on Cornhill, a different road several hundred feet from Threadneedle Street.
The error is particularly embarrassing for the CPS, not just because of the high-profile nature of the case, but because one of the main reasons it gave for the length of time it has taken to reach a decision on charges was the need to pinpoint where key individuals were around the time of the incident.
In his statement yesterday, Mr Starmer said he was satisfied the CPS had acted as quickly as possible given the need to thoroughly and carefully review the evidence. "That review," he said, "entailed…the painstaking exercise of mapping the movements of all concerned over many hours."
The mistake is repeated in the detailed document published by the CPS explaining why it was not prosecuting the officer. In it, the CPS appears to confuse Cornhill and Threadneedle Street.
The Tomlinson family seek 'justice'
The DPP decision's not to charge results from events going all way the back to 2 April last year and the decision by the coroner for the city of London to call in Dr Freddie Patel, a forensic pathologist who no longer had a contract with any police force, who's performance had been investigated in the early part of this decade and found to be wanting, writes Home Affairs Correspondent Simon Israel.
He received words of advice and carried on practising, even though the Metropolitan Police had decided not to use him any more in suspicious deaths.
When he was asked to perform the post mortem on Mr Tomlinson he was under investigation by the General Medical Council (GMC) concerning four cases. The GMC hearing where he's accused of deficient professional performance began this week and scheduled to carry on until September. But all this is too late for Mr Tomlinson's family.
The sad fact is that the images of him being struck with a baton by a policeman and shoved to the ground will never be defined as a criminal act.
Now that the DPP has defined this as assault it is quite possible that the officer will face an internal misconduct hearing where the ultimate penalty would be the sack.
But it's difficult to see even if an inquest at a later date was too return a verdict of unlawful killing that the family will ever get what they see rightfully as justice.
The document, which was published on the CPS website, sets out the chronology of events leading up to Mr Tomlinson's death on 1 April last year. One extract describes how a group of police officers in a cordon moved along Royal Exchange, a pedestrianised street connecting Cornhill and Threadneedle Street.
The document says the officer who pushed Mr Tomlinson "was part of this cordon as it made its way down Royal Exchange to Threadneedle Street".
Video footage shows the officers were in fact moving through Royal Exchange in the opposite direction – away from Threadneedle Street and towards Cornhill. It was close to the junction with Cornhill that Mr Tomlinson was pushed over.
The CPS document says that after being helped up "he then left Royal Exchange and walked a short distance into Threadneedle Street. He was seen by members of the public to walk up the street and then appeared to bump into a building and slowly collapsed to the floor."
Later, the document sets out the circumstances of the first post mortem, which was carried out by Dr Freddy Patel. It states: "Because Mr Tomlinson had walked some distance from the incident in Royal Exchange before collapsing in Threadneedle Street, the two events were not immediately linked and, when he carried out his post mortem, Dr Patel was not aware of the incident involving PC 'A'.
The CPS has acknowledged today that the streets used were wrong.
A spokeswoman for the CPS told Channel 4 News: "Our statement was incorrect in that Mr Tomlinson died on Cornhill and not on the adjoining Threadneedle Street. We are ensuring that all our documentation is being amended accordingly."
Yesterday's decision by the CPS not to bring charges against the officer was greeted with dismay by Mr Tomlinson's family, who have had to wait 15 months for the news.
The Director of Public Prosecutions said that although there was sufficient evidence to bring a charge of common assault, the six-month deadline for bringing such a prosecution had passed.
The CPS also said there was no realistic prospect of bringing a manslaughter charge because of contradictory medical evidence about the cause of Mr Tomlinson's death. Dr Patel, who carried out the first post mortem, concluded Mr Tomlinson had died from coronary artery disease, whereas pathologists who conducted two subsequent post mortems believed the cause of death was internal bleeding, caused by blunt force trauma to the abdomen.
Although a criminal prosecution has been ruled out, the police officer involved, PC Simon Harwood, of the Metropolitan Police's territorial support group, still faces an internal misconduct hearing. The circumstances surrounding Mr Tomlinson’s death will also be scrutinised at an inquest.
