Gatwick 2018 wrongful arrest follow-up

zocalo · Jun 14, 2020

Spotted this story following up on the Gatwick drone incident from December 2018. Apparently the drone enthusiast and his partner that were wrongfully arrested over it have been awarded £200,000 in compensation and legal costs, and have also received an apology. No one else has been charged yet, either.

Worth noting that according to the linked story the arrest entailed a dozen police, at least some of which were armed, which I don't recall being mentioned at the time. This seems like an *awfully* heavy-handed approach since it was merely based on an allegation (that was later shown to be completely unfounded), but unless there's more to it than it seems "possible possession of drone" is now apparently sufficient cause to justify an armed response in the UK. Seriously: WTF!?

Something to keep in mind if you're thinking of pushing the limits of the Drone Code, that's for sure!

gnirtS · Jun 14, 2020

Just saw this.

Gatwick drone arrests: Sussex Police pays out £200,000

Paul and Elaine Gait say they are "delighted to be vindicated" after a long fight for justice.

www.bbc.co.uk

At the time it looked desperate from the police (they arrested others who just owned drones with no suspicion of offences too).

And after all that there is no evidence at all there WAS a drone at all.

Armed police smashing down the door of a house looking for people who dont even own a drone who they thought might fly one.

The entire Gatwick thing is a farce, some heads should roll over it.

worldtraveller · Jun 14, 2020

I hope all the other drone owners who were arrested also start a private prosecution against the police for wrongful arrest. There USED to be a principal of 'innocent until proven guilty' but this shows that it is the opposite. Owning a drone is not a criminal offence, nor does it warrant armed police smashing an entry.

And the police even say that it might have been one of their own craft.

There should be a LOT of sackings of police over this.

Jerry

gnirtS · Jun 14, 2020

There should be sackings but i suspect not.
Ultimately its a terrible investigation - there's still no evidence of an actual drone at all despite literally using top end military gear.
The only confirmed drone sightings were police drones looking for the other drone.

And anyone in the area visited or arrested for simple owning a drone (perfectly legally). The police were in panic, desperate for a result and just fishing.

Then to arrest people who don't even own one is crazy.

Normally i dont go for compensation after arrests etc but in this case, completely justified.
The press also smeared some of the suspects whos names "leaked" were it turned out were also totally innocent.

Chip · Jun 14, 2020

gnirtS said:
The police were in panic, desperate for a result and just fishing.

Who set off the panic?

sar104 · Jun 14, 2020

worldtraveller said:
I hope all the other drone owners who were arrested also start a private prosecution against the police for wrongful arrest. There USED to be a principal of 'innocent until proven guilty' but this shows that it is the opposite. Owning a drone is not a criminal offence, nor does it warrant armed police smashing an entry.

And the police even say that it might have been one of their own craft.

There should be a LOT of sackings of police over this.

Jerry

Since arresting someone is not a judgement of guilt, but just suspicion, the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is completely irrelevant here unless you are going to argue that no one should ever be arrested until after they have been accused, tried and convicted in a court of law.

zocalo · Jun 15, 2020

Chip said:
Who set off the panic?

Debatable. In theory, it ought to be those who claimed they saw a drone - whether they actually did or not is beside they point - although it should be noted that the UK's official AirProx reports are littered with instances of pilots claiming they saw "an unidentifiable object on approach" that is reported to the public as "there was a drone in the flightpath! People nearly DIED!". If you're apportioning blame though then, IMHO, I think you've got to hand a slice to the media for their multiple days of often hysterical frontpage coverage claiming things that later turned out to be highly suspect, but the largest slice goes to the authorities. Gatwick Airport, Sussex Police, and government all undertook a lot of very heavy-handed actions, albeit under a great deal of pressure (especially given there does not appear to be a single confirmed sighting in any of the available info), that almost certainly blew things out of all proportion.

To be clear, I agree 100% that, verified or not, *some* action needs to be taken in response to sightings near airports, and that pausing flight operations in the event of a plausible potential sighting at an airport is the safest cause of action and as such is the one that would have to be taken. What actually happened though was farcial at best, involved a LOT of over-reaction to the flimsiest of evidence and, more seriously, put a couple of innocent people through ~18 months of legal hell despite them not owning a drone and having cast iron alibis, rather than de-arresting them and cutting them loose as soon as they had verified their alibis and failed to located their non-existant drone.

The only light at the tunnel is that there was almost certainly some serious navel gazing at the end of this. One would hope, albeit perhaps over-optimistically, that all those concerned have learnt some hard lessons and now have a much more measured response planned out for the next time something this happens (or appears to). Which, unfortunately, I'm sure it will.

gnirtS · Jun 15, 2020

sar104 said:
Since arresting someone is not a judgement of guilt, but just suspicion, the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is completely irrelevant here unless you are going to argue that no one should ever be arrested until after they have been accused, tried and convicted in a court of law.

Its not the arrest, its the methods, way it was done and actions after the event.

Its the fact that the people had a rock solid alibi which was known and verified before hand, was known about, checked and then ignored.

Then the fact that *ARMED* police raided the house. A ridiculous overreaction. This isnt the US - you dont send armed police on routine arrests. Those are specialised units reserved for safety-of-life incidents no regular police.

You also dont kick down doors for offences like this.

Then there was the 36 hours of holding with as it transpired absolutely no evidence combined with a rock solid alibi.

The entire thing seems to be a driven by a desire to get someone for it regardless of guilt or whether an offence was actually committed at all. Complete tunnel vision by the commanding officers.

In a normal operation they'd have knocked on the door, questioned them, cautioned if needed, MAYBE taken them to the station whilst the story was checked out and that'd be the end of it. And if that had happened there would have been no court case or compensation as that is normal policing.

The lead theory now and at the time is the whole drone thing was made up by a disgruntled employee.

Deleted member 114292 · Jun 15, 2020

Here is the best part:
"This was despite the fact they did not possess any drones and had been at work during the reported sightings."

AVInteractive · Jun 15, 2020

Sadly this incident has done immeasurable damage to the drone industry. I have personally always doubted this was a drone issue primarily by the length of time it went on for. I think it more likely a cover up for some other error at the airport and seemed like a good excuse at the time without thinking through the consequences, but hey I'm guessing too !

sar104 · Jun 15, 2020

gnirtS said:
Its not the arrest, its the methods, way it was done and actions after the event.

Its the fact that the people had a rock solid alibi which was known and verified before hand, was known about, checked and then ignored.

Then the fact that *ARMED* police raided the house. A ridiculous overreaction. This isnt the US - you dont send armed police on routine arrests. Those are specialised units reserved for safety-of-life incidents no regular police.

You also dont kick down doors for offences like this.

Then there was the 36 hours of holding with as it transpired absolutely no evidence combined with a rock solid alibi.

The entire thing seems to be a driven by a desire to get someone for it regardless of guilt or whether an offence was actually committed at all. Complete tunnel vision by the commanding officers.

In a normal operation they'd have knocked on the door, questioned them, cautioned if needed, MAYBE taken them to the station whilst the story was checked out and that'd be the end of it. And if that had happened there would have been no court case or compensation as that is normal policing.

The lead theory now and at the time is the whole drone thing was made up by a disgruntled employee.

I wasn't commenting on whether the arrest methods were reasonable - I was responding the assertion that they should not have been arrested because of a basic presumption of innocence.

Chip · Jun 15, 2020

zocalo said:
Debatable. In theory, it ought to be those who claimed they saw a drone - whether they actually did or not is beside they point - although it should be noted that the UK's official AirProx reports are littered with instances of pilots claiming they saw "an unidentifiable object on approach" that is reported to the public as "there was a drone in the flightpath! People nearly DIED!". If you're apportioning blame though then, IMHO, I think you've got to hand a slice to the media for their multiple days of often hysterical frontpage coverage claiming things that later turned out to be highly suspect, but the largest slice goes to the authorities. Gatwick Airport, Sussex Police, and government all undertook a lot of very heavy-handed actions, albeit under a great deal of pressure (especially given there does not appear to be a single confirmed sighting in any of the available info), that almost certainly blew things out of all proportion.

To be clear, I agree 100% that, verified or not, *some* action needs to be taken in response to sightings near airports, and that pausing flight operations in the event of a plausible potential sighting at an airport is the safest cause of action and as such is the one that would have to be taken. What actually happened though was farcial at best, involved a LOT of over-reaction to the flimsiest of evidence and, more seriously, put a couple of innocent people through ~18 months of legal hell despite them not owning a drone and having cast iron alibis, rather than de-arresting them and cutting them loose as soon as they had verified their alibis and failed to located their non-existant drone.

The only light at the tunnel is that there was almost certainly some serious navel gazing at the end of this. One would hope, albeit perhaps over-optimistically, that all those concerned have learnt some hard lessons and now have a much more measured response planned out for the next time something this happens (or appears to). Which, unfortunately, I'm sure it will.

Interesting. I am sure you have seen this but its worth posting and everyone watching again in light of your comments. NATS used the opportunity to make a slick a little propaganda video.

zocalo · Jun 15, 2020

Chip said:
Interesting. I am sure you have seen this but its worth posting and everyone watching again in light of your comments. NATS used the opportunity to make a slick a little propaganda video.

I spent the best part of four years working on the new Heathrow Terminal 2, during which time there were a few incidents that required either one or both runways to be closed, so I got to see a lot of this play out first hand. There was clearly a playbook, and things generally happened very quickly and smoothly when the need arose, although the knock-on effects would often last for the rest of the day, and sometimes even into the next day (the maintenance window at LHR is only a few hours each night). The overall disruption that results is, as the Gatwick video shows, pretty severe and spans a large geographical area, so closing a runway, or the entire airport is clearly a major decision with a LOT of knock-on implications. Especially so around London where the space available to hold aircraft is limited by the proximity of a number of other airfields (civillian and military).

That Gatwick was willing to shutdown their entire operation for several hours at a time because of a presumed sighting of a drone is certainly laudable from a safety perspective. However, from a practical one, especially given the mounting number of "sightings" without hard evidence steadily increasing, combined with incidents like the wrongful arrest, the distinct impression I got was a LOT of people, in multiple organizations, running around like headless chickens in full-on panic mode. If they'd planned for this kind of thing - and it wasn't the first time a drone has disrupted an airport - the plan certainly didn't survive contact with the "enemy", that might not even have existed in the first place.

pross · Jun 15, 2020

Its kind of coincidental that they sold the airport to a french company the same week, probably got a nice discount.

gnirtS · Jun 15, 2020

sar104 said:
I wasn't commenting on whether the arrest methods were reasonable - I was responding the assertion that they should not have been arrested because of a basic presumption of innocence.

I'd agree in the main but in this particular case the alibi was known (and fact they had no drone) before they were arrested.
Normally after those were established an arrest would not have happened.
The police did a lot wrong here.

JimCanada · Jun 15, 2020

Follow the money. Who sold services to the airport for drones ? Look at them first. Money curupts .

LeRoytheBoy · Jun 15, 2020

It is so typical of the Police these days.

Guilty until proven Innocent.

freefaller500 · Jun 16, 2020

zocalo said:
Spotted this story following up on the Gatwick drone incident from December 2018. Apparently the drone enthusiast and his partner that were wrongfully arrested over it have been awarded £200,000 in compensation and legal costs, and have also received an apology. No one else has been charged yet, either.

Worth noting that according to the linked story the arrest entailed a dozen police, at least some of which were armed, which I don't recall being mentioned at the time. This seems like an *awfully* heavy-handed approach since it was merely based on an allegation (that was later shown to be completely unfounded), but unless there's more to it than it seems "possible possession of drone" is now apparently sufficient cause to justify an armed response in the UK. Seriously: WTF!?

Something to keep in mind if you're thinking of pushing the limits of the Drone Code, that's for sure!

Still no airport video, they have a choice of some 200 CCTV cameras, but not one second footage of a uav over the airfields.

worldtraveller · Jun 17, 2020

sar104 said:
Since arresting someone is not a judgement of guilt, but just suspicion, the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is completely irrelevant here unless you are going to argue that no one should ever be arrested until after they have been accused, tried and convicted in a court of law.

But the important point here is that the police cannot go around arresting innocent people when they do not have evidence. To arrest somebody there needs to be evidence, and in this case there was none. From what I read online, the people did not even own a drone and were at work at the time in question.

Clearly the police acted beyond their powers, and also wrongly. For this, I would hold the police fully accountable. The duty of the police is to uphold the law but whilst respecting the rights of people. The police did not do this in this case, and the court agreed.

The total lack of evidence was a key point. Any drone owner (or anybody else for that matter) who is arrested then released without charge should sue the police for wrongful arrest.

I certainly would.

Jerry

sar104 · Jun 17, 2020

worldtraveller said:
But the important point here is that the police cannot go around arresting innocent people when they do not have evidence. To arrest somebody there needs to be evidence, and in this case there was none. From what I read online, the people did not even own a drone and were at work at the time in question.

Clearly the police acted beyond their powers, and also wrongly. For this, I would hold the police fully accountable. The duty of the police is to uphold the law but whilst respecting the rights of people. The police did not do this in this case, and the court agreed.

The total lack of evidence was a key point. Any drone owner (or anybody else for that matter) who is arrested then released without charge should sue the police for wrongful arrest.

I certainly would.

Jerry

I agree on the lack of evidence issue in this case, but that's not what you argued above - you argued that the arrest was wrongful because of the presumption of innocence.

And, more generally, you cannot (successfully) sue for wrongful arrest just because you are subsequently not charged - you have to show why reasonable suspicion didn't exist.