Pc Stephen Smith and Pc Rachel Comotto are facing allegations of gross misconduct that they used inappropriate force against single-leg amputee in a car home in St Leonards-on-sea.<\/p>\n
Author: Anahita Hossein-Pour, PAPublished 42 minutes ago<\/p>\n
A police officer who tasered a 92-year-old wheelchair user in a care home has admitted \u201cit doesn\u2019t look good\u201d that she made a joke over it on Facebook hours later, a misconduct hearing has heard.<\/p>\n
Sussex Police officers Pc Stephen Smith and Pc Rachel Comotto are facing allegations of gross misconduct that they used inappropriate force against single-leg amputee Donald Burgess at Park Beck care home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, in June 2022. <\/p>\n
Pc Comotto is also facing an allegation of posting inappropriate comments over the incident on Facebook and told a misconduct hearing it was not intended to be disrespectful to Mr Burgess. <\/p>\n
Proceedings at Sussex Police headquarters heard that Pc Comotto replied to a Facebook comment to someone else which read: \u201cHappy birthday, the care home is getting closer and closer\u201d with wink and laugh emojis. <\/p>\n
Pc Comotto replied to them: \u201cWe all know what happens in care homes\u201d, ending with a lightning bolt emoji. <\/p>\n
The person then responded: \u201cI think you\u2019ll be banned from going to any care homes in future, all he wanted to do was butter his bread\u201d followed by two laughing emojis. <\/p>\n
Giving evidence at misconduct proceedings on Wednesday, Pc Comotto accepted writing the comment and that it was on the day of the care home incident. <\/p>\n
She said this was after colleagues were joking at her expense for firing her taser in a care home, which had spread throughout the office about a couple of hours before she wrote the Facebook comment. <\/p>\n
Her colleagues did not know any information about Mr Burgess, she added. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d like to clarify no humour was directed at Mr Burgess, it was a continuation of the joke I was subject to or the butt of,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith hindsight, without context it doesn\u2019t look good, I appreciate that. I want to extend my apologies to the family.\u201d <\/p>\n
Both officers were cleared of assault of Mr Burgess following a trial at Southwark Crown Court last year. <\/p>\n
Mr Burgess was taken to hospital after the incident and later contracted Covid. <\/p>\n
He died 22 days later aged 93. <\/p>\n
The misconduct hearing heard police were called to a dementia care home over reports a resident at the care home had a knife and was threatening to stab staff. <\/p>\n
Bodyworn footage from Pc Comotto played at the hearing shows Mr Burgess sitting in his wheelchair in his bedroom with a knife in his right hand, and the officers asking him repeatedly to put it on the floor. <\/p>\n
Pc Smith then sprays him with Pava and tries to flick away the knife with his baton which does not work, and Pc Comotto then tasers him. <\/p>\n
Pc Comotto told the hearing that after Pc Smith\u2019s strike with the baton towards the knife, she believed he was going to deploy a second strike and she believed \u201cit was safer to use taser as lower level of risk\u201d. <\/p>\n
She told the hearing: \u201cBaton strike is high level of force, for an older person to receive a strike from a baton it would have more impact than on a younger person.\u201d <\/p>\n
After Mr Burgess was tasered for five seconds, officers were able to remove the knife, the hearing heard. <\/p>\n
In cross examination, Pc Comotto denied exaggerating the risk posed by Mr Burgess and the knife, which was described as a \u201ctable knife with a rounded top\u201d by Sussex Police counsel Aaron Rathmell. <\/p>\n
Put to her it was not a particularly sharp knife, she said: \u201cI didn\u2019t know that.\u201d <\/p>\n
Asked if she was \u201creally suggesting\u201d she deployed the taser as a \u201ccalculated decision to intervene\u201d against Pc Smith carrying out a second strike, she replied: \u201cIt is not a reconstruction.\u201d <\/p>\n
Lawyer Denis Barry, representing Pc Smith, said it was Pc Smith\u2019s case that he was never going to use a second strike, and he used his baton towards the knife and not Mr Burgess himself. <\/p>\n
Mr Rathmell put to Pc Comotto that the best way to stop Pc Smith from what she believed was about to be a second strike was to shout \u2018stop, no\u2019 and that would be \u201cfar more proportionate than discharging a taser at a gentleman in a wheelchair\u201d. <\/p>\n
She replied: \u201cIt happened so quickly.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe what I did in the moment, I did was the correct outcome of resolving that safely.\u201d <\/p>\n
But she added: \u201cWith all the information I know now, I would take a different approach.\u201d <\/p>\n
Pc Comotto, who had been a police officer for seven years at the time of the incident, denied discharging her taser in panic. <\/p>\n
It was the first time she ever used it in a real incident, it was heard. <\/p>\n
The hearing continues.<\/p>\n