Fifteen seconds on the floor
You have been a prison officer for 14 months. During a cell extraction at 19:20 you and three colleagues remove a 26-year-old prisoner who had barricaded his door. Once he is prone on the floor and handcuffed, a senior officer with 12 years' service - popular with the team, and the officer who trained you - presses a knee into the prisoner's upper back and holds his head against the floor while the prisoner says he cannot breathe. It lasts perhaps 15 seconds. The prisoner later has a graze to his cheek. After lock-down the senior officer says, 'That bit doesn't go in the report. He was resisting. We back each other up.' Your sergeant is on leave. The acting supervisor on shift is a close friend of the senior officer. Body-worn cameras are not issued at your site.
1. What do you do in the moment and in the ten minutes after the extraction, before you leave the unit?
Read the worked answer
The prisoner's airway outranks the awkwardness.
- Stop the force the moment resistance ends. He is handcuffed and prone; a knee in the back of a handcuffed man saying he cannot breathe is the classic positional asphyxia picture. Say it as a safety need, not an accusation: 'He's saying he can't breathe - let's get him up.'
- Move him to a seated or recovery position, check breathing and responsiveness, and call for the nurse. Stay until he is assessed.
- Note the injury. The graze to his cheek is now a documented fact whether or not anyone writes it down; get it recorded and photographed through the correct process.
- Write your own contemporaneous notes - times, words, who did what - as soon as you are clear of the unit. Memory reshapes itself within hours, especially after an adrenaline event.
- Do not discuss the sequence in the corridor with the team, and do not agree to any version of events.
Why: use of force must be necessary, proportionate and no more than required, and the duty of care continues after the restraint. If the injury surfaces later through a medical report or a complaint, an accurate account written now is the only thing that protects the prisoner, you and the service - including the senior officer, if the force turns out to have been defensible.
2. What goes into your use-of-force report, and how do you handle the instruction that the knee 'doesn't go in'?
Read the worked answer
In the report: your role and position, the resistance up to the point of restraint, the techniques used, the knee and its duration, the prisoner's words, the medical response, the injury observed, and the times. Facts and observations - not conclusions about his character or the senior officer's.
The report must be accurate, not tactical. A report that omits the mechanism of an injury does not protect the team; it converts a defensible restraint into an apparent cover-up. The force may well be arguable; the false report never is.
Handling the instruction: privately, without an audience: 'I'll be writing what I saw - I'm not going to leave it out. I'll describe it straight, and I'm not accusing anyone. You can put your own account in.' Give him the chance to do exactly that.
If pressure continues, or the report is altered or blocked: escalate to the officer in charge, then professional standards, and for serious misconduct the independent anti-corruption body. Keep a copy of what you submitted.
Name the difference to yourself: backing each other up means accurate reports and support through the process afterwards. It has never meant agreeing on a story. The officer who asks you to omit is asking you to carry his risk with your career.
3. Two days later the acting supervisor, who is close to the senior officer, asks you to sign a statement that matches the senior officer's account. What do you do?
Read the worked answer
Sign only what you saw, in your own words. Decline politely and without drama: 'I'll do my own statement today - I've already written my notes, so I'll stick to those.'
Why this is the line: a witness statement is evidence. Signing someone else's account makes you the author of statements you cannot verify and exposes you to a misconduct finding far more serious than the original restraint. It also removes the one thing that would let an independent investigation reach the truth.
Practical steps:
- Ask to make your own statement, promptly, and keep a copy through the proper channel.
- If asked again or told it is 'just procedure', say you are not comfortable and ask for it in writing.
- Raise it with someone outside the immediate chain - the sergeant on return, professional standards, or your union or association representative for advice on process.
- Record the request and the date, factually.
Consider the emotional pull honestly. You are 14 months in, the acting supervisor controls your roster, and the senior officer trained you. That pressure is real and it is exactly why the rules are written the way they are. The test is not whether refusing is comfortable; it is whether your statement would survive being read out in a coroner's court or by an investigator who has never met any of you.