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The NLJ Column

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22 May 2008 / Dr Jon Robins
Issue: 7322 / Categories: Features , Local government , Public , Procedure & practice
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Justice and communities will suffer if public authorities refuse to accept their mistakes

One Saturday morning in November 2005, Nicola Dennis, a 27-year-old single mother, was in her ground-floor maisonette in Woolwich, south east London. She was with a friend showing her the Christmas presents she had bought for her three children when the doorbell rang.

Pandemonium broke out. Armed police officers ordered both women to put their hands in the air. Officers then grabbed Nicola, pushed her to the pavement face down by the bins, taped her hands with plastic strips behind her back, and detained her for 40 minutes.

Dennis had been caught up in the search for the killers of PC Sharon Beshenivsky, shot dead as she responded to an alarm at a travel agent's shop in Bradford. This happened a few weeks after the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes and only a few miles away.

IPCC (Mis)Conduct

Nicola's story was featured by the Legal Action Group (LAG) in a report into the beleaguered police watchdog, the Independent

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