UK’s second biggest police force facing inquiry over tasering of black men

The police watchdog has promised an investigation into allegations of “racially motivated brutality” by England’s second largest police force.

The Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) has confirmed that it is currently in the process of nine “full, fair and thorough” inquiries into officers at West Midlands police over use of force on black men, The Times says.

The investigations relate to six incidents in Birmingham and include allegations that black men were wrongly tasered by a “rogue officer”, the paper adds.

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The Times reports that investigations began in April after footage emerged of an officer appearing to knock a 15-year-old boy down with a punch. Video later emerged of the same officer tasering a man in Handsworth, Birmingham after a pursuit on 27 February.

Trevaile Wyse, 30, said that he had been a “bystander to a car crash but was ordered to get on the floor and tasered when he did not”, The Times reports.

“I was hit in the stomach and in the throat,” Wyse said. “I passed out... Being tasered in the throat is ten times worse. It’s disgraceful, there was no reason to do that whatsoever.”

IOPC is also investigating other officers after a man was tasered following a chase on foot.

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Derrick Campbell, the IOPC’s director in the region, said that the investigation would establish whether force was “justified and proportionate in each of these instances”.

Earlier this month, The Guardian reported that a police officer in London had been placed under criminal investigation after a man was shot with a Taser and left paralysed from the waist down.