Four police officers are being investigated by a police watchdog after a man died following his arrest in Portsmouth, according to Sky News. The Independent Office for Police Conduct, the body that examines the conduct of officers in England and Wales, is now looking into potential gross misconduct at the Hampshire and Isle of Wight constabulary. The case centres on the death of a man who had been detained by officers before being taken to hospital.
The man was named as Nigel Lawrence, a 23-year-old. In June this year, he was walking down a busy road in Portsmouth when he approached a police car that had been parked up at the roadside. Lawrence opened the rear door of the vehicle, and inside were two officers who had detained a suspect and were planning to take that person to custody.
According to the account, Lawrence appeared very distressed at that moment. He was foaming at the mouth and was not making an awful lot of sense when he was speaking, signs that pointed to a man in some kind of crisis. The encounter, which began with him opening the door of a police car already occupied by officers and a detained suspect, quickly turned into a situation the officers had to deal with directly.
Lawrence was ultimately searched and found to have drugs on his person. He was then arrested and detained. Given his obvious distress, the officers took him from that location to hospital rather than straight to custody. It was clear, according to the account, that he was in distress and needed medical attention rather than simply being processed as a routine arrest.
The journey to hospital did not pass without incident. En route, the officers had to stop and give Lawrence first aid, an indication of how serious his condition had become while in their care. Despite being taken to hospital, his condition did not recover, and he ultimately died there the following day, turning the arrest into a death that now falls under formal scrutiny.
The reason the watchdog is investigating four officers is that it wants to examine both the care that Lawrence received from those officers and the decision to arrest him in the way that he was. In a statement, the IOPC said it was important that there is a thorough and independent investigation to establish the full circumstances surrounding the incident, underlining that the inquiry is at an early stage.
The case comes at a difficult moment for Hampshire constabulary. The incident happened in June, the same month a separate watchdog investigation was launched into the force over the case of Henry Novak, a young man who died after being stabbed in Southampton. In that case, officers were said to have disbelieved that Novak had been injured by the perpetrator, instead accepting the attacker's account that he himself had been the victim of a racist attack. The two investigations leave the constabulary facing scrutiny on more than one front.