Police set to launch probe after boy, 13, with water pistol rammed off bike and arrested
Police set to launch probe after boy, 13, with water pistol rammed off bike and arrested
The incident occurred last year in Hackney
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The independent police watchdog is to investigate an incident in which armed police rammed a 13-year-old boy with a water pistol off his bike and arrested him.
The IOPC had originally left it to the Met Police to carry out its own internal investigation into the arrest which happened in July in Hackney, East London.
The boy was subsequently de-arrested after it became clear that he was a child with a toy and the Met has apologised to the family.
The watchdog’s decision to investigate follows the boy’s mother raising concerns that the incident would not have occurred had her son “been a white 13-year-old boy”.
IOPC Regional Director for London Charmaine Arbouin said: “This was clearly a distressing incident for this boy, his sister and mother and it is right that the complaint is investigated.
“We don’t have the resources to investigate all complaints that are sent to us by the police so when they make a referral we decide if the force should investigate it themselves or if we should take it on.
“Those decisions can sometimes be very finely balanced and that is what happened in this case. When the referral came to us initially, we took into account a number of factors when we decided the Met should investigate.
“This included doing what we believed was right for the family as we understood that their preference was to get it resolved with the force itself without involving us, and that the Met were comfortable with this. We were also confident, and remain confident, that the Met were taking the complaint seriously.”
