Ian Taylor
(Picture: Hodge Jones and Allen)A black man suffered a fatal asthma attack in police custody after an officer accused him of playing “poor me” and dismissed his pleas for help as “nonsense”, according to a coroner’s report.
Ian McDonald Taylor, a 54 year-old from Brixton, died in hospital after being detained on Coldharbour Lane in Brixton in June 2019.
Mr Taylor, an asthma sufferer, had been arrested after getting into a fight and was handcuffed as he lay on the pavement when he started breathing heavily.
A prevention of future deaths report suggests he repeatedly asked for his inhaler, which he said was in his pocket, and that he needed it.
Body-worn footage from an arresting officer played at an inquest into his death appears to show Mr Taylor saying something like “I’m fading” and then “I’m going to die now”.
The jury heard the unnamed PC telling his sergeant on the radio: “He’s currently on the floor playing the whole poor me poor me; he’s going to have to go to hospital though as a matter of course.”
Before adding: “He’s saying he has chest pains he can’t breathe blah blah; it’s a load of nonsense but there we go.”
Police did not find the inhaler but the coroner reported a broken inhaler found later at the scene might have been his.
His cause of death was recorded as cardiac arrest, acute asthma, situational stress, heart disease and dehydration.
Senior coroner Andrew Harris expressed surprise that police had not considered driving Mr Taylor to a nearby hospital themselves after calling for an ambulance and hearing of lengthy delays.
He added: “[The PC] was given an opportunity to make any other comment and could not bring himself to apologise to the family.”
Scotland Yard said they were aware that the report suggests that officers are more likely to believe a person is faking illness if they are black but believed that “nothing in the words or behaviour” indicated comments made were treating Mr Taylor differently because of his race.
Mr Taylor’s cousin, Michael Cooper, said: “Watching the video footage of Ian fighting for breath and desperately pleading for help, but being dismissed and even mocked by police officers, is utterly devastating.
“The police are trained to deal with situations like this, yet they did not do what anyone else would have done and drive him to a hospital that was three minutes away. No one in the UK should die from asthma and yet Ian did.
“How many more deaths will it take before the police take seriously a Black man who says he can’t breathe?”
The inquest was concluded on May 19.
A regional director for the police watchdog IOPC responded to the coroner to say there were no plans to suspend the officer despite his family’s wishes.
They wrote: “The distress that comments to his Sergeant, and the lack of insight and reflection shown in his evidence to the inquest, will have caused to Mr Taylor’s family, is a harm resulting from his behaviour which will also be capable of harming public confidence in the police service more widely.
“I agree that this behaviour does need appropriate intervention. Balanced against this, this appears to be a one off incident rather than a pattern of behaviour…”
The Metropolitan Police in their response conceded the “flippant” nature of the words used by the officer demonstrated a lack of professionalism.
One of the seven officers involved was made to undertake “a reflective practice review” over his comments, said Scotland Yard. This is not a form of disciplinary process.
The Met say they are yet to receive a formal complaint from the family.
The Met Police and IOPC both formally apologised to the family of Mr Taylor in their responses to the coroner.
