Police station: Solicitor banned
A duty solicitor in his 80s who was banned from attending Coventry Police Station after he made a series of eccentric comments to two young female officers has been cleared of professional misconduct.
Anthony David Davis, 83 this year and qualified in 1980, appeared before a Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal (SDT) last month, facing six allegations of making inappropriate comments when he went to the station in August 2023 to represent a client in custody.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) told the SDT that what Mr Davis said at the police station had “shocked” the officers and “crossed professional boundaries”.
He denied his comments were inappropriate and claimed his “eccentric humour” had been twisted and taken out of context.
The officers – referred to as Person A and Person B – were described as “visibly young in service and experience.”
Person A escorted him to undertake disclosure in the interview room. “She considered that he appeared more interested in making light-hearted jokes than representing his client,” the SDT heard.
Mr Davis told her that he had four wives in Russia, two of who had died, and the police could not find them.
He also told her “his aim was to die in this job or at a police station” and she would “have to give him a kiss to keep him alive”.
Further, he recounted to her how police had breath-tested him 32 times, but he was teetotal and “just a liability on the roads”.
To Person B, who had spilt some water she was bringing in, he recounted that a waitress had spilt some potato soup on his crotch “and started using a cloth to rub the soup off this area”.
Then, in front of his client inside the custody suite, Mr Davis talked about “eating human flesh, especially women’s flesh”. When Person B told him that was illegal, Mr Davis carried on regardless.
At the end of the interview, he told Person B that “if your boyfriend becomes a violent alcoholic, then I will snap you up”.
Counsel for the SRA said there was “no justification” for these comments, which should not be seen as “jokes, banter, or ribaldry”.
“Referring to the kiss of life created the image of physical contact between Mr Davis and a young female police officer. As to his comments in relation to potato soup… it was inappropriate for Mr Davis to make reference to another female rubbing his crotch.
“It was alarming for Mr Davis to refer to the eating of flesh and the comments in relation to Person B’s boyfriend were an intrusion into her private life.”
Both parties agreed the comments were not “sexually motivated” but the SRA asked the SDT to accept they were inappropriate.
Representing himself, not only did Mr Davis deny his comments were inappropriate, but he also said he “took exception to the fact that informal discussions had with police officers at the police station were being noted and then used as evidence against him”.
Mr Davis submitted: “Police officers were employed to investigate criminal conduct. They were not noted for their hypersensitivity and were not shrinking violets. Nor did police officers have the prerogative of prescribing the moral high ground.”
The 83-year-old assured the SDT he had not intended to cause any offence with his “off the cuff” and “flippant remarks”, which were made in response to what others had said to him.
For example, Mr Davis said he only spoke about the kiss of life after an officer asked about his health. Any suggestion he had asked for a kiss of life was “misconstrued”. He also confirmed that none of his wives were dead – and denied saying they were.
The tribunal dismissed the allegations relating to the dead wives, the kiss of life and the 32 breath-tests, but found the comments about rubbing his crotch, eating flesh and “snapping up” the police officer to be inappropriate.
The SDT rejected the argument that this was “banter”. But while the comments were “inappropriate and ill-advised”, they did not individually or cumulatively cross the threshold of sufficient seriousness.
“Further, the tribunal was not satisfied that members of the profession would consider that Mr Davis’s comments were such as to amount to professional misconduct, nor did it find that public trust in the profession would be diminished by the comments made.”
The SDT made no order for costs, despite Mr Davis applying for £10,000 to cover his lost income following the ban from Coventry Police Station and his legal costs for getting advice on the ban.
The SRA said it would be “wholly inappropriate” to award costs to Mr Davis “as a punitive award or compensation”.
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