Our Thin (Skinned) Blue Line, Again…

The incident happened on Boxing Day last year when Ms St Phorose was travelling through Shepherd's Bush, west London with her fiance Russell Shrimplin and their son Oliver, eight.

Mr Shrimplin, 51, a TV cameraman, was driving their Audi A6 when the couple say a man ignored a red light at a pedestrian crossing and stepped in front of them with a buggy.

Mr Shrimplin was forced to make an emergency stop and Oliver was thrown forward and hurt his neck. Ms St Phorose shouted 't**t' at the man through her open window and her comments were overheard by two policemen standing nearby.

Who then arrested said twat for endangering a child (since jaywalking is sadly not illegal), right? Wrong.

Ms St Phorose was taken to Hammersmith Police Station in a van where she says she was left outside for 20 minutes.

After finally seeing the custody sergeant, Ms St Phorose was given a £90 fine but refused to pay it and instead was charged with a Section 5 public order offence of causing alarm or distress.

Hmmm. Did the idiot jaywalker not cause ‘alarm and distress’ to Ms St Phorose? Or was he from an established identity group, so the police felt they’d be better off tackling a mother with child instead?

Pc Richard Harvey told the court he arrested Ms St Phorose because she refused to give him her details, but she and her fiancé dispute that.

Pc Harvey said: 'She was very angry and kept saying she called the man a t**t because he was pushing a child into the road and repeatedly said the word t**t very loudly and there were pedestrians around.

All of whom were probably wondering just why the twat of a policeman was arresting a mother for using language they wouldn’t even blink at…

'I asked Ms St Phorose for her name and address because I thought it could be dealt with sensibly but she refused.

'In the end, I arrested her and explained why - saying it was for a section 5 public order act because she was causing distress and alarm to passersby. I put her in handcuffs because of our failure to communicate.'

No, you didn’t.

You arrested her and put her in handcuffs because you picked on a target who wouldn’t back down and toe the line you had arbitrarily drawn, and who made you look like the sort of uniformed bullyboy you clearly are.

All in front of an audience of the public who, if they were ‘distressed and alarmed’, certainly weren’t made so by Ms St Phorose’s salty language, but by yet another example of lazy, overbearing policing.

Six months later, the case has now been thrown out by City of London Magistrates, who ruled that she had not caused alarm or distress.

And she’ll now pursue a complaint against the Met, which I hope she wins.

Because there’s no place in a modern police force for people like PC Harvey.