Lincolnshire Police said it ‘fell below the standards we set for ourselves’ after the dirty vehicle was spotted in Skegness.
Police in Lincolnshire have apologised after a “bit of banter” tweet highlighting a filthy squad car went viral.
Skegness man Stephen McGowan, 42, tweeted to the official Lincolnshire Police account on Friday to ask if he could be pulled over if his number plate was unreadable because of mud.
After receiving confirmation that he could, Mr McGowan posted a photo of a filthy police car with a rear number plate completely obscured by dirt.
“Oh dear, that’s what I thought,” he wrote alongside the picture he said was taken at Tesco in Skegness.
“I would give you the registration number but…”
His tweet had been liked more than three-and-a-half thousand times by Sunday afternoon.
“It was intended as a bit of banter but I also wanted them to be aware,” Mr McGowan told the Press Association.
“I was expecting a tweet saying something along the lines of ‘thanks for bringing it to our attention, we will get it sorted’ [as] I know the Lincolnshire roads can be muddy, dirty this time of year. But all they did was like the tweet.”
Chief Inspector Phil Vickers responded on Saturday morning, however, apologising for the delay and saying Mr McGowan was “absolutely correct” that police should not be using a car whose number plate was obscured.
“Cars are checked/washed at start of shift unless an urgent call comes in, same at the end of duties,” he wrote.
“Please accept my apology for this error.”
Members of the public can be fined for such an infraction if driving on a public road, CI Vickers added, and the picture showed police “fell below the standards we set for ourselves”.
Mr McGowan said he would like to thank Mr Vickers for his “openness and honesty”.
He said: “He seems to have a bit of criticism about wasting time on this matter, but as a member of the public I think it’s important that if you bring something to their attention, no matter how trivial it may seem, that you respond to that issue and his response was open and honest.”
Mr McGowan said he would “absolutely not, never” be making a formal complaint.
TOLEDO, Ohio (AP) — An Ohio man who was handcuffed and left facedown on the floor of a social club last week died in police custody, and the officers involved have been placed on paid administrative leave.
Police body-camera footage released Wednesday shows a Canton police officer responding to a report of a crash and finding Frank Tyson, a 53-year-old East Canton resident, by the bar in a nearby American Veterans, or AMVETS, post.
The crash at about 8 p.m. on April 18 had severed a utility pole. Officer Beau Schoenegge's body-camera footage shows that after a passing motorist directed police to the bar, a woman opened the door and said: "Please get him out of here, now.”
Police grabbed Tyson, and he resisted being handcuffed and said repeatedly, “They’re trying to kill me” and “Call the sheriff,” as he was taken to the floor.
They restrained him — including with a knee on his back — and he immediately told officers he could not breathe. A recent Associated Press investigation found those words — “I can't breathe” — had been disregarded in other cases of deaths in police custody.
Officers told Tyson he was fine, to calm down and to stop fighting as he was facedown with his legs crossed on the carpeted floor. Police were joking with bystanders and leafing through Tyson's wallet before realizing he was in a medical crisis.
Five minutes after the body-camera footage recorded Tyson saying "I can’t breathe,” one officer asked another if Tyson had calmed down. The other replied, “He might be out.”
Tyson telling officers he was unable to breathe echoes the events preceding the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020. Tyson was Black, according to the coroner’s office. Both Canton Police Department traffic bureau officers who were placed on leave, Schoenegge and Camden Burch, are white, according to the police department.
Tyson did not move when an officer told him to stand and tried to roll him over. They shook him and checked for a pulse.
Minutes later, an officer said medics needed to “step it up” because Tyson was not responding and the officer was unsure if he could feel a pulse. Officers began CPR.
The Canton police report about Tyson’s death that was issued Friday said that “shortly after securing him,” officers “recognized that Tyson had become unresponsive” and that CPR was performed. Doses of Narcan were also administered before medics arrived. Tyson was pronounced dead at a hospital less than an hour later.
Chief investigator Harry Campbell with the Stark County Coroner’s Office said Thursday an autopsy was conducted earlier in the week and Tyson’s remains were released to a funeral home.
His niece, Jasmine Tyson, called the video “nonsense” in an interview with WEWS-TV in Cleveland. “It just seemed like forever that they finally checked him,” Jasmine Tyson said.
Frank Tyson was released from state prison on April 6 after serving 24 years on a kidnapping and theft case and was almost immediately declared a post-release control supervision violator for failing to report to a parole officer, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.
A Tyson family member reached by phone Thursday declined immediate comment.
The Ohio Attorney General's Bureau of Criminal Investigation said in a statement Thursday that its probe will not determine if force was justified and that the prosecuting attorney or a grand jury will decide if charges related to the use of force are warranted.
Canton Mayor William V. Sherer II said he expressed his condolences to Frank Tyson's family in person.
“As we make it through this challenging time, my goal is to be as transparent with the community as possible,” Sherer said in a statement released Wednesday.
The U.S. Department of Justice has warned police officers since the mid-1990s to roll suspects off their stomachs as soon as they are handcuffed because of the danger of positional asphyxia.
Many policing experts agree that someone can stop breathing if pinned on their chest for too long or with too much weight because it can compress the lungs and put stress on the heart. But when done properly, putting someone on their stomach is not inherently life-threatening.
An investigation led by The Associated Press published in March found more than 1,000 people died over a decade after police subdued them through means not intended to be lethal, including prone restraint.
Scolforo reported from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
This image, taken from Canton Police body camera video, shows 53-year-old Frank E. Tyson on Thursday, April 18, 2024, in Canton, Ohio. Police say Tyson, a resident of East Canton, was arrested in a tavern after he crashed his car into a nearby utility pole. He died after being handcuffed by police. (Canton Police Department via AP)
