The Metropolitan police has apologised to a black man who was detained by an officer who has faced three misconduct proceedings for excessive force within the past two years.
Jason Matthews, 54, a well-known community leader, was attending Hackney carnival in 2019 when he was detained, and stopped and searched by PC Connor Jones.
Matthews, a retired boxer who now works with children with special needs, alleges that Jones had used unnecessary force on him – twisting his arm, breaking his phone, and pushing him to the ground – and that he was wrongfully arrested, and falsely accused of being aggressive.
In a letter sent to Matthews, the Met apologised to him “for the distress” he had suffered as a result of its officer’s action.
Jones has faced three misconduct proceedings since 2023.
The officer was given some reflective practice as a result of his 18 May 2023 disciplinary meeting arising from Matthews’ complaints. He was then given a written warning after a misconduct meeting on 24 July 2023 and a final written notice after a misconduct hearing on 20 September 2024.
During his misconduct hearing, Jones was found guilty of gross misconduct after he put a Taser to the neck of a 16-year-old black boy, Jamar Powell. The panel had placed “limited weight” on Jones’s account. He had denied pressing the stun gun to Powell’s neck and accused the child of being aggressive.
When Powell submitted his complaint against Jones on 30 October 2020, the officer had already been served gross misconduct papers in a separate complaint brought by someone else and had been placed on restricted duties.
Matthews spoke of his struggle to accept what he described as a “qualified apology” from the Met police. “It feels impossible for my community to build trust back with police when the ramifications for police officers who behave in this way to people in our community remain so inconsequential,” he said.
He asked: “Why is this officer still working and what message does that send to our community about how much you care? I reported this matter because I felt strongly that it is likely to have happened because of my skin colour.”
Matthews said he was deeply frustrated with how the Met handled the different complaints against Jones.
Matthews had submitted his original complaint on 12 September 2019. On 8 January, an investigating officer sent an email to another officer about Matthews’ complaint asking for an account of the interaction they had with him so they could “shut down his allegations, specifically the first interaction with him as there is no BWV [body-worn video] for this one”.
It took three years for Jones to face a misconduct meeting in relation to Matthews’ complaints.
“The delay in the police looking into this sends the message that the police don’t care. There is no situation where this simple several minutes incident should have taken five years for the police to respond on and apologising for that delay, that should have been a fundamental part of the letter,” Matthews said.
The apology letter notes Matthews successfully settled his civil claim against the force.
Matthew believes the delays in recording and concluding complaints across all three disciplinary processes was manipulated in such a way as to improve Jones’s prospects of retaining his job.
A wide-ranging investigation by Louise Casey last year found that the Met was institutionally racist, homophobic and misogynistic.
The report expressed concern that “the misconduct process does not find and discipline officers with repeated or patterns of unacceptable behaviour”. Lady Casey noted that although 20% of officers and staff in the misconduct system between 2013 and 2022 had been involved in two or more misconduct cases, less than 1% of these had been dismissed.
Matthews said: “I want my kids if they have a problem to feel comfortable to call the police; not to feel the kind of anxiety I always have around the police and I want the police to understand and work with our community.”
A spokesperson for the Met said: “We are sorry for the distress that Mr Matthews suffered as a result of the officer’s actions. We recognise that this incident has had a lasting impact. As we expressed to Mr Matthews in our letter, we hope that the final settlement of the claim and our apology goes some way to repairing the damage in confidence and trust he is able to have in the police.”
