A Met Police officer has been cleared at Southwark Crown Court of destroying property, common assault and possession of a blade after sawing and smashing his way through a suspect’s windscreen using a multi-tool.
PC Joshua Savage, 28, was prosecuted after a video of the incident appeared online last September.
Driver Leon Fontana told the Evening Standard at the time that he had been on the way to the shops when police stopped his Ford Zetec and mistook him for his cousin “even though I showed him my ID and took the keys out”.
Fontana said: “He was just aggressive from the get go and then it was just ‘smash, smash, smash’.”
“Even if I was someone who only had a provisional licence, that’s not the way an officer should conduct themselves.”
Following the jury’s verdict, Judge Christopher Hehir raised the issue of the £175 cost the complainant was forced to pay to have his windscreen repaired.
He said: “I am not seeking to go behind the jury’s verdict but it would seem to me that the decent thing for the Metropolitan Police to do would be to compensate Fontana for the damage to the windscreen of that vehicle.
“At the end of the day it was his car, he was entitled to drive it on a public road and he ended up having his windscreen smashed in, and that wasn’t his fault and I don’t think it’s fair that he should have to pay the cost of it.”