An officer who was falsely accused of assault waited nearly three years to clear his name in a case which raises serious doubts about the police watchdog.

PC Adrian Daly was part of a Metropolitan Police covert armed unit sent to arrest a suspect at a block of flats in East London in September 2015. They put the door in and four occupants were brought out and passed to officers on a lower floor for questioning. All were released, but one of the men later complained that he had been assaulted by the officers.

PC Daly was blamed by the then Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC), even though CCTV evidence suggested it wasn’t him and his clothes and accent did not match the description given by the complainant.

PC Daly said: "My solicitor told me the case was absolute rubbish and obviously a mistaken identity – he predicted it would quickly be dropped. But it wasn’t."

The IPCC ignored discrepancies and chose not chose not interview PC Daly’s colleagues. They refused to listen to warnings from the Metropolitan Police that convicting PC Daly would amount to a miscarriage of justice.

PC Daly stood trial two years after the alleged assault and was cleared by a jury in just 21 minutes. The IPCC responded by announcing they would direct a misconduct hearing against PC Daly. This took place in February 2018 and he was again exonerated.

PC Daly said: "The IPCC was either corrupt or inept. Any police officer who had carried out the kind of shambolic investigation they did would have lost their job. They haven’t been held to account for anything. This was a horrific experience for me and my family. We were all convinced I was going to end up in jail despite doing nothing wrong. My name was all over the internet, and those headlines are still out there with no coverage given to my acquittal. I served the country in the armed forces and the police for 30 years but I feel really let down."

PC Adrian Daly
Metropolitan Police