A police chief constable has been found guilty of contempt of court with judges set to consider whether he should be punished by imprisonment or a fine.How about both?
The court of appeal ruled on Tuesday that Northamptonshire police were in contempt and had been “willfully disobedient” for repeatedly failing to obey rulings to hand over video to a woman who complained she had been wrongly arrested by three officers.
Dumb, really dumb, since the one thing guaranteed to provoke today's oh-so-sympathetic-to-the-criminal-classes bewigged social workers to get their Judge Dredd on is people cocking a snook at the might apparatus of the law....
Nadine Buzzard-Quashie was arrested by Northamptonshire police in September 2021, triggering a four-year saga. She was taken into custody but prosecutors soon dropped the case. The judgment said: “Her account of her arrest … was that she was physically assaulted by the officers who arrested her, she was physically thrown to the ground and had her face pushed into stinging nettles.”
I'm guessing by the name, she wasn't one of the favoured classes, and so assaulting her was of course not considered a problem?
She wanted video footage of her arrest, including from police body-worn cameras, which the force did not provide. She complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office which made an order that all video should be handed over, which the force ignored, then a county court judge made another order, which the force failed to obey again. The force told courts it did not have any more video to hand over, then reversed its position at a hearing in October. The court of appeal judgment said: “This means that all the statements made to the court on behalf of the police force prior to mid-October 2025 were false.”
Ooops!
On Tuesday three appeal court judges issued a blistering and unanimous ruling. Lady Justice Asplin, Lord Justice Coulson, and Lord Justice Fraser said “misleading and untrue statements … have been made to the court on behalf of the chief constable, both to the county court … and also to the court of appeal in relation to the application for permission to appeal and the appeal itself. To list every single statement made on behalf of the chief constable that has proved to be inaccurate over this lengthy period would lengthen this judgment considerably.”
Ouch!
Ivan Balhatchet has been Northamptonshire’s chief constable since October 2023 and could face up to two years’ imprisonment or a fine. The previous chief constable was Nick Adderley, who now faces wholly separate criminal charges.
The whole force is clearly rotten from the very top - maybe disbandment should be considered?
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