A woman who was arrested by the police for being drunk and disorderly has lost her bid to Merseyside Police after she was changed out of her clothes which were covered in her own sick.
Complainant Cheryl Pile “empited the contents of her stomach all over herself” after she was arrested and taken back to Liverpool Police station back in April 2017
Pile was fined £60 for being drunk and disorderly, but she brought a claim against the police alleging that her ‘human rights’ had been breached because officers decided not to let her lay in her own vomit after they gave her a change of clothes.
However, a High Court judge rejected her case and said that the officers who had changed her vomit drenched clothes had done so as “an act of decency”.
Mr Justice Turner said the four female officers who helped Pile had “not used more force than necessary” and would have otherwise “left the vulnerable claimant to marinade overnight in her own bodily fluids”.
He described Pile as having been “too insensible with drink to have much idea of either where she was or what she was doing there”.
Dismissing Ms Pile’s appeal, the judge said her claim had been brought “to establish the liberty of inebriated English subjects to be allowed to lie undisturbed overnight in their own vomit-soaked clothing“.
In her attempt to try and sue the police for considerable damages, Pile also claimed that being monitored via the CCTV that was in her cell was a ‘breach of her privacy’.
Police cells are fitted with CCTV for a variety of reasons, including to protect detained persons from self-harming.
Individuals who have been arrested and who are under the influence of drink or drugs are also monitored to make sure that they do not choke on their vomit.
However, the judge said this monitoring had been “both lawful and necessary”, and it was “fortunate” she was being observed.
A feed from the camera located in Pile’s cell alerted officers when she later lost her balance, fell over, “banged her head on the floor” and was taken to hospital, he said.
Mr Justice Turner noted she had also “abused an innocent taxi driver and behaved aggressively to police officers trying to do their job.”
He said many would have found it to be a “grotesque result” if she had been awarded compensation “because those same officers, as an act of decency, had then changed her into clean and dry clothing at a time when she was too drunk to know or care”.
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Some common sense prevails at last