The killing of Leon Briggs at the hands of Luton police on 4 November 2013 was brutal and carried out with shocking impunity.
The inquest into his death after interaction with police while experiencing a mental health episode has found that the police restraint “more than minimally” contributed to his death.
Leon was pinned faced down in the street for at least three minutes in scenes reminiscent of the murder of George Floyd in the US.
Although police deny it, witnesses say that Leon was pinned face down in the street. The only video of the incident shows the police taking Leon to a partly concealed position on the pavement, in front of a shop.
Police then forcibly transferred Leon to a police station and not to a hospital where he should have been taken.
Laughing as they pinned him down in a cell with the same techniques, the officers involved killed Leon – his heart stopped.
But even after he was dead they left him lifeless in the cell, only later realising that they had killed him.
Outragegously as part of their cover up, the police claimed that Leon had been involved in a “dirty protest”, when he had in fact urinated himself as he was dying, again in echoes of the murder of George Floyd.
It has take the family seven years to get the case to an inquest, but even now all the police officers that were a party to his death are still employed with Luton police. Not a single officer has been disciplined in any way whatsoever.