Rod Charles believes deaths involving restraint such as that of his great-nephew will only rise

Rod Charles understands the issue of police constraint more than most. He is a retired chief inspector, having served for 30 years. He is also the great-uncle of Rashan Charles, 20, who died in an incident involving restraint by a police officer last July.

He describes the revelation that 23 people died during or after a period in police custody in England and Wales 2017 – the highest number for a decade – as “sad but not shocking”.

Police custody deaths in England and Wales highest for decade Read more

“I know that there will be circumstances when police officers and other law enforcement must use the highest levels of force and sometimes it will culminate in death ... but there have been too many cases where people died and none of them merited the highest levels of force. There was Sean Rigg, Roger Sylvester, Edson Da Costa, Rashan Charles ... I could go on,” he says.

He also raises doubts over the impartiality of the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which compiled the report. “I am not sceptical about the figures but I am worried as to the manner [in which] those cases were investigated ... It’s not yet been proven whether the IOPC can function as a separate independent investigative body.”

More than anything, Charles fears that without drastic change such deaths will continue to happen. “Deaths in custody are going to rise. I am not being melodramatic, I don’t want to be proven right, but know I am going to be,” he says.

The reason for this, he believes, is that officers are not being held to account for gross mistakes. “It’s as simple as that ... what must take place is to scrutinise the actions of law enforcement officers and hold them to account.”

The former chief inspector agreed with the assessment of the IOPC that the crisis in mental health care provision had made the problem worse, though he stressed that it failed to account for the circumstances of many of the deaths.

He said: “The responsibility for care and management of people suffering poor mental health should sit with health care specialists. However, for decades this has been shifted on to police, who do not have the depth or breath of specialist training needed for this caring role.

“These risks have been obvious for several years now. It is not fair on those that are unwell who require support for mental health, neither is it fair to foist this responsibility on to the police service.

“However, austerity and a crisis in mental health do not explain many other cases where otherwise sound and fit people are reported as becoming ‘unwell’ following police contact, and a short time later, life is pronounced extinct.”



Last month an inquest determined Rashan Charles’s death was an accident. It also identified mistakes by the police officer, referred to as BX47, but concluded they were not significant and Rashan’s life was not salvageable in any event.

His great-uncle does not accept the verdict and findings. “Before the inquest sat, before the coroner and jury were sworn in, I went on the record to make clear that this case is going to be a farce and the outcome was already predetermined,” he says.

“The reason I made those statements was that I was patently aware that in the 10 to 11 months preceding it there were significant flaws with the standard of investigation identified and raised with the lead investigator in the IPCC/IOPC,” he says, in reference to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, the IOPC’s predecessor.

Play Video 3:56 Rashan Charles death: CCTV footage shows moment of arrest – video

“The key issue in Rashan’s case is the question of: was the restraint appropriate for the circumstances and was it justified? But the investigation and the inquest skirted over that issue and focused instead on Rashan’s lifestyle. They wanted to characterise him as an organised major criminal,” says Charles.

“The experts that they brought in are competent trainers ... I had worked with them both, but they were not objective and impartial ... one still employed in the Met police, how can this be independent?” he says.

When he first heard about what happened to his great-nephew he was distressed on a personal level but his policing instincts kicked in. “I thought that maybe the officer had no choice but to restrain Rashan,” he says.

Then he received a phone call from his niece: “She told me to look on YouTube at CCTV footage that was circulating about the incident. What I saw changed everything.”

He adds: “I am an advocate for police for obvious reasons but not an advocate for misconduct and poor policing.”

In the footage a young man runs into a shop, is swiftly brought to the ground by a police officer and later pronounced dead after failed resuscitation attempts. Charles watched the footage with an expert eye, as a trainer of officers such as the one who restrained his nephew. Pursuing suspects is a routine activity for police and there is very clear guidance on what officers should do.

Met officer faces no charges over death of Rashan Charles Read more

“The footage shows a number of tactics which would be appropriate in some circumstances but not in the circumstances BX47 found himself in,” says Charles. “That’s not the view of a biased uncle but of an experienced police officer.”

He says the impact of such deaths and the unanswered questions is huge. “I was at a community meeting and I was speaking to young people in Hackney ... many of them I spoke to would not dream of joining the police service ... It’s almost taboo. Young, capable people in communities do not support police officers in patrol but also don’t want to join their ranks and that saddens me a lot and tells me community relationships have regressed rather than progressed.”

He adds: “I have no time for people anti-police and reject those pro-police. These are both extremes ... I am in the middle ground of fairness, that’s where I find myself ... I do not question the reported numbers of 23 deaths, I am more concerned that the numbers show there are numbers of law enforcement officers moving around with impunity and that is a damn shame.”