A Cheshire police constable, who assaulted a 15-year-old detainee by ‘smashing his face to the ground’ after the teenager made a homophobic slur against another officer, has kept his job, despite being convicted in criminal court and found guilty of gross misconduct.
The incident took place on 25th October 2024 while PC Samuel Clarke was on duty in the North Cheshire Custody Suite. The 15-year-old male, referred to as ‘X’, had been brought into custody on drug-related charges. He was placed in a holding cell, seated, with his hands handcuffed behind his back. A verbal altercation then took place between the teenager and another officer, during which the teenager referred to the officer as ‘a queer’. In response, PC Clarke grabbed the teenager from his seat, dragged him out of the cell, and threw him to the floor, where the boy smashed his head against it.
Clarke was subsequently charged with common assault and, on 17th September 2025, found guilty at Sefton Magistrates’ Court. He received an 18-month community order, unpaid work, rehabilitation activity requirements, and was ordered to pay compensation and costs.
The misconduct hearing, held under the accelerated procedure, accepted Clarke’s admission that his behaviour amounted to gross misconduct. By regulation, a finding of gross misconduct normally results in immediate dismissal unless exceptional circumstances exist. Exceptions are so rare that the Chief Constable, Mark Roberts, noted he had only once before imposed a lesser sanction in four years of conducting such hearings.
However, Roberts took the unusual step of moderating the officer’s culpability, by stating:
‘PC Clarke accepts the force he used was excessive, but I also note the officer states that his actions were a response to a repeated course of homophobic abuse from X towards one of his colleagues. I note that PC Clarke did not intend to seriously injure X.’
Roberts went on to suggest that the injuries sustained by the victim were likely caused by the teenager ‘banging his head on a wall and the floor whilst his mother was present’ – a defence rejected by Sefton Magistrates’ Court during Clarke’s trial. Because of this evidential conflict, the panel concluded that the extent of harm directly attributable to Clarke was unclear.
Roberts also noted that Clarke ‘spoke with honesty and dignity and, at the earliest opportunity, fully accepted responsibility for his actions,’ despite the fact that Clarke pleaded not guilty during criminal proceedings. Roberts further accepted that Clarke had been trained in certain physical techniques intended to ‘reset’ a subject’s behaviour, although he stopped short of suggesting that such a ‘technique’ was justified in this situation.
Despite the gravity of the misconduct, the Chief Constable concluded that dismissal was not necessary to maintain public confidence or uphold professional standards. The misconduct regime, he said, is not designed to punish officers beyond criminal sanctions, but to protect the reputation of policing. Citing Clarke’s record, supposed remorse, and what he characterised as a ‘momentary’ lapse, Roberts determined that a final written warning lasting five years was the proportionate outcome.
OP-ED
Regardless of Chief Constable Mark Roberts’s attempts to reduce the officer’s culpability on the basis that a homophobic slur prompted the assault, there is absolutely no justification for inflicting violence upon another person simply because they used ‘hurtful words’. Least of all when those words are directed at a police officer, who should be hardened to that sort of childish taunting.
Yet this kind of rationale – that physical violence is an acceptable response to homophobic, racial, religious, or sexist remarks – is increasingly prevalent among the fashionable elites of the ruling class, and it is clear that Roberts edges towards that camp. The Magistrates clearly disagreed however. Had Clarke’s motives been a genuine defence, he would have been acquitted. This sits alongside the equally ridiculous claim made by Chief Constable Roberts that the detainee’s injuries were self-inflicted: the sort of tepid defence that was wheeled out in violent custody suites during the 70s and 80s.
Bear in mind that the courts tend to give police officers an extremely wide latitude when it comes to inflicting abuses against the general public. So for Clarke to have been found guilty, the evidence must have been overwhelming and the assault particularly egregious.
It doesn’t matter that the victim was, in the eyes of many members of the public, a ‘low-life criminal’. The police do not have a licence to mete out summary justice whenever it suits them, no matter how much the public may think a prisoner ‘deserves it’. If you are content to allow the police to assault suspects simply because ‘they deserve it’, then don’t be surprised if you one day find yourself being assaulted at the roadside by an officer who takes issue with your supposedly dangerous driving. After all, they will be the sole arbiters of who deserves an on-the-spot beating – not you.
In any event, it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that Clarke did not assault this boy because he was a criminal or a drug dealer. He assaulted him because he called another officer ‘a queer’. So Clarke is a public official wholly indoctrinated into believing that hurtful words justify physical retaliation – no doubt encouraged by the ‘progressive’ attitudes of senior officers who have created an environment where such reactions might even be applauded rather than condemned.
Roberts final words in the report are telling: ‘I further remind myself that the police misconduct regime is not designed to punish police officers – it is about the reputation and confidence in the profession as a whole.’
He completely fails to mention the fact that it is also designed to protect the public (see s2.3 of Guidance on Outcomes in Police Misconduct Proceedings). Something Chief Constable Mark Roberts clearly doesn’t regard as relevant.
