Introduction

Abstract

In May 1994, a police constable, Steve Guscott from the Somerset and Avon Constabulary, was brought before the magistrates’ court and pleaded guilty to common assault. He was alleged by the prosecution to have clipped the ear of a 14-year-old boy. The events seemed ordinary enough:

A gang of teenagers had been banging on the pensioners’ front door and kicking the cat flap. They shouted abuse and ran away when the officer approached them. Later that evening when PC Guscott came across one of the group in an unlit alleyway — the 14-year-old boy — he grabbed him and slapped him on the cheek with his open hand. The boy, according to the prosecution, suffered a nose bleed.

(Independent, 15 June 1994)