Sussex police officers cleared of assault against one-legged 92-year-old man

Two police officers who used a Taser and synthetic pepper spray on a one-legged 92-year-old man in a care home have been cleared of assault but will now face gross misconduct hearings.
PC Stephen Smith, 51, and PC Rachel Comotto, 36, were found not guilty of assaulting Donald Burgess during a confrontation at Park Beck care home in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, in June 2022.
Jurors returned their unanimous verdicts at Southwark crown court after around two hours of deliberations on Wednesday.
Speaking outside court afterwards, Sussex police's assistant chief constable, Paul Court, said the officers will face gross misconduct proceedings.
'I recognise and understand the impact that this case has had on public confidence. It is with profound regret this happened,' Court said. 'The officers in this case have been held accountable to a criminal threshold and we respect the jury's decision. While this concludes the criminal investigation, both officers will now face gross misconduct proceedings.'
Jurors found Smith not guilty of two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for his use of Pava spray and for using a baton, while Comotto was found not guilty of one count for deploying her Taser.
The care home called 999 after Burgess, a single-leg amputee and wheelchair user, reportedly grabbed a knife he was given to cut his food and threatened to stab staff.
The court previously heard this was 'out of character' for Burgess. 'The reason for his behaviour that day, we now know, is that he was delirious as a result of a urinary tract infection,' Judge Hehir told jurors.
Smith sprayed synthetic Pava pepper spray into Burgess's face and used his baton to try to knock the knife out of Burgess's hand, with Comotto deploying her Taser, all within a minute and 23 seconds of entering the pensioner's room, the court heard.
Burgess was taken to hospital after the incident and later contracted Covid, dying 22 days later aged 93.
The court heard both Smith and Comotto repeatedly asked Burgess to drop the knife. Smith told jurors he did not see that Burgess was disabled and using a wheelchair until after the incident as he was focused on the knife the pensioner was holding in his hand. He added he believed Burgess 'could clearly understand what we were saying to him'.
Comotto said she believed using the Taser was the safest way to 'protect' Burgess as she feared her colleague using the baton again would cause more harm. 'I'm not a trigger-happy officer,' she told the court. 'It's the first time I've fired my Taser.'
The Independent Office for Police Conduct said it would liaise with Sussex police about the misconduct hearings now criminal proceedings are over.
It said both officers should face a gross misconduct hearing for potential breaches of the police standards of professional behaviour relating to use of force, and authority, respect and courtesy, with Comotto facing a further misconduct allegation relating to comments she made on social media after the incident.

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It showed how officials had attempted to dismiss the issue of ethnicity out of hand, uncomfortable with the implications for Britain's multicultural success story, terrified of 'community tensions'. It all but accused the Home Office of fabricating data to maintain there was no particular problem with men from Pakistani backgrounds. Worse still, in doing so it told us very little we didn't already know. We knew that officials were tacitly or actively complicit in what unfolded. We knew that they had effectively deemed it better for society if children were raped and government covered it up, than to risk 'tensions' by intervening. We knew that they had arrested parents who had tried to save their children. News reports and official reviews had laid this story bare for over a decade. Yet even with the failures visible to all, Westminster has proved utterly unwilling to look closely at the extent of offending across Britain, to learn the lessons necessary to fight ongoing abuse, and to deliver justice to those who were wronged. It was more important to protect what was left of the narrative of a diverse nation united than to look honestly at the consequences of previous waves of migration. This is still going on. Casey's review highlighted that 'a significant proportion' of the live police cases she examined involved foreign nationals and asylum seekers. Examining the extent of criminal activity by these groups is hard, given that the Government refuses regularly to publish data on the subject. But data from Freedom of Information requests has shown that a quarter of all sex assaults on women successfully prosecuted in Britain are carried out by foreign nationals, with another 8 per cent by offenders of 'unknown' nationalities. 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There's nothing wrong with having some merit in your meritocracy, but when people are drawn from the same backgrounds, they will tend to think in the same ways. In the political system, this manifests as a blindness to the idea that the values of politicians can drift from those held by voters, an unwillingness to deliver what the population want; self-centred governance by an establishment class propped up by its hold on the traditional party duopoly and the major institutional organs of British life. One manifestation of this group's beliefs is a form of pathological compassion driven by insulation from its effects: an unwillingness to jail prisoners, turn away illegal migrants or crack down on benefits cheats because to do so would be cruel. The end result of this 'kindness' is often to kill the system that provided for those who were genuinely in need. In toxic combination with these beliefs is a political structure that works actively to evade accountability, with decision-makers rarely facing serious consequences for their failures; so long as they follow process, scrutiny is generally evaded. The crisis of competence Alongside the problem of willingness is the problem of ability. Public fury with politicians is not helped at all by their willingness to make grandiose claims that they fail to live up to. In the words of political strategist James Frayne, 'politicians of all parties have created a toxic climate by assuring voters they can solve practically any problem regardless of size and complexity, while permanently under-delivering'. This has 'fuelled immense public cynicism because voters assume failure derives from incompetence and corruption – always moral corruption, sometimes even financial corruption. This cynicism has become one of the most defining and corrosive aspects of modern electoral politics. 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Or, is the disconnect between reality and the signals reaching politicians (through the ideological predisposition of their civil servants) so great that many MPs and ministers are no longer capable of reaching sane evaluations? Reforming the state In Nigel Farage's view, 'everything the British state touches collapses, regardless of colour'. With his party surging in the polls – the beneficiary of two decades of failed red and blue governance – he has every right to pin the blame for these failures on the selection into government of a certain cadre of establishment true believer. 'There are two types of people in politics; those who want to be something, and those who want to do something', Farage says. 'And the be-something's have dominated for decades: Oxbridge kids who want to be PM, cabinet minister, MP – not driven by thoughts about how to make the country better.' The resulting consensus is stifling. 'Everyone wants to be nice. If you're nice, you're liked and socially acceptable. And anyone with a different opinion is unacceptable'. But this doesn't work when the state is failing: 'When Starmer u-turns on rhetoric, don't believe it will lead to reality because it won't. He's saying it to fend off Reform. He has no intention of acting on it.' Competence, too comes in for a blast. 'As a result, we get cabinets full of people lacking in real life experience. They haven't run businesses. They haven't achieved anything. It's mediocrity – we're governed by people who are unqualified to be a middle manager in an Asda in Birmingham'. For Farage, there is only one way left out. 'This country needs political surgery through every single sector of public life. We need a very gentle, British, political revolution. I'm the moderate. If I don't succeed, watch what comes after me.' The canonisation of Saint Luigi The appearance of a new piece of graffiti under a paint-spattered archway in east London would normally draw no more attention than the tagged scrawl it overwrote. In February, however, a new painting briefly drew attention from segments of the world's press. The artwork shows Luigi Mangione, in his green hoodie, framed by the yellow painted bricks of the arch – a halo against a black background. In December 2024, Mangione was arrested on suspicion of the murder of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare who was gunned down in the street. And almost overnight, he became a cult hero for an extraordinary number of disaffected Americans, who described him as 'Saint Luigi' – a description that images of Mangione bearing a red sacred heart, right hand raised in blessing, make almost literal. Whatever else we might think about Mangione, on this specific and narrow point, it is probably not a good signal of the health of society when its elite class is widely despised. In Britain, this has thankfully achieved expression primarily through political means, although last year's Southport riots were a warning sign about what might come if failures continue. King's College Professor David Betz made headlines with his prediction that Britain could fall into civil war without a change of course. Yet his concerns are shared by some of those on the ground. In the words of one former police officer, in the aftermath of recent public disorder police forces set about working out what to do in response, handling 'resourcing, moving people around the country, calling in the Armed Forces if needed. What they've never really thought about is what they would do if officers decided the risk was too great, and simply didn't come to work. Policing might be able to fill gaps by cancelling days off and extending shifts, but that tempo can't be maintained for long.' More ominously still, 'they've never really considered what would happen in a conflict where officers identified with one side enough to join it. Police officers are vetted, but not with that in mind. And police equipment already goes missing at rather an alarming rate. It's not unlikely that if serious violence started officers might start disappearing to defend their homes and families with their issued weapons – including firearms – if they lose faith in the state's ability to do so.' One more roll for the ballot box Adam Smith's remark that there is 'a great deal of ruin in a nation' was not meant to be an invitation to politicians to attempt to quantify the exact degree. Regrettably, generations of British leaders seem to have acted as if things will probably be fine whether they succeed or fail. The last year of British politics has given every indication of a system under intolerable strain. With the establishment facade beginning to crack, Westminster has a short window in which to change course voluntarily. If that passes, revolution – whether in the form of Prime Minister Nigel Farage, or something more dramatic – could be the result.