Banbury police officer disciplined for striking boy across the face

A former police sergeant acted in "anger and frustration" in hitting a vulnerable child who was in custody, a disciplinary hearing has found.

Matthew Myers hit the 16-year-old boy and made him strip naked when he was a custody sergeant with Thames Valley Police in Banbury, Oxfordshire.

He was convicted of battery earlier this year.

A police disciplinary hearing found he would have been dismissed from the force, had he not already resigned.

The hearing was told the teenage Iranian national had been taken into custody at Banbury police station on 4 January 2020.

It heard Myers struck the boy - who was in care and did not speak English as a first language - across the face, which was audible on CCTV, and forcibly removed his clothing, leaving him naked in the cell.

Chief constable John Campbell found Myers, who had been a police officer for 16 years, acted "inappropriately in anger and frustration".

Myers was found to have breached the force's standards of professional behaviour.

Mr Campbell ruled Myers would have been dismissed from the force with immediate effect, were he still a serving officer.

Myers, who resigned from the force on Wednesday, denied the charge of gross misconduct, but admitted stripping the boy had been a "poor decision".

He said he was "sorry for the actions I took" and in mitigation said the boy had been self harming.

He said he had been "honestly and instinctively trying to do the right thing in difficult circumstances" and there should be "organisational learning" for the force's custody staff in dealing with similar situations.

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