EXCLUSIVE: When does reasonable force by police become Actual Bodily Harm?

These are the injuries Mr Josh Pallace suffered at the hands of Essex police after they arrested him in his own home.

There is little doubt that the police PACE Code G necessity criteria for an arrest may have been correct, as they had acted upon a phone call, and would argue they had ‘reasonable suspicion, but the fact is, Mr Pallace had committed no offence.

Mr Pallace, 24, had recently returned home from a friends house where he had been drinking.

Sometime after arriving home, and without any prior warning, EIGHT police officers burst into his bedroom and tried to arrest him.

Mr Pallace knew without a doubt that he committed no offences and believed the police had entered the wrong house. He, therefore, quite rightly so, resisted their attempts to arrest him.

Rather than the police use ‘reasonable force’ to detain him (a force that arguably Mr Pallace was still, in law, able to use self-defence against), the police went on to serious assault him.

Mr Pallace says;

the punches came whilst one officer was sitting on by back with handcuffs and a leg belt on.They told me to shut up and repeatedly punched me.

The alleged charges they had arrested him for have been dropped, however, they now have brought charges against him for ‘assault’ of 8 emergency workers, when Mr Pallace would maintain he used reasonable force in a situation where he was attacked in his own home and used self-defence, and that it was the police that assaulted him occasioning Actual Bodily Harm.