Toni Comer

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Toni Comer (b. 1987) is a woman from Arbourthorne, a district of Sheffield, South Yorkshire, who in March 2007 hit the news when it was suggested that she had been subject to inappropriate force during her arrest for vandalising cars following her drunken ejection from a nightclub.^[1] It was further alleged that as Ms. Comer is of mixed-race, the incident was racially motivated.

1 Incident
2 Alleged Racial Motiviation
3 Police Reaction
4 References

[edit] Incident

Ms. Comer was arrested in July 2006, where she was vandalising a car outside the Niche nightclub in Sheffield, causing £3000 of damage, subsequently pleading guilty to criminal damage at trial. The arresting officer PC Anthony Mulhall, an experienced firearms officer,^[2] said that he "struck her as hard as I was physically able with my right fist in an attempt to subdue her. There was no apparent effect so I did this twice more.", and that Ms. Comer "tried to grab handfuls of my genitals" and that he punched her two further times in self-defence.

CCTV footage of the incident showed an officer strike Ms Comer five times, before being dragged to a police van.^[3]

The incident footage was passed to Ruggie Johnson, of Monitoring Group North,^[4] a Sheffield group for ethnic minorities. Ms. Comer had no memory of the incident, but after seeing CCTV footage passed to her by Mr. Johnson, said she wanted compensation and an apology, claiming that she had been having an epileptic fit during the arrest, although according to the Sunday Mirror, she has not been diagnosed with epilepsy, and two scans showed no evidence of epilepsy.^[5] PC Mulhall said following her arrest "Her eyes were extremely wide and she had froth around her mouth. Her pupils were dilated and she had the appearance of being drunk, but I couldn't smell intoxicant on her breath".

[edit] Alleged Racial Motiviation

Ms. Comer has not claimed that she was subject to a racist incident, saying "I don't think this was a racial attack. I think it is just a case of the police going over the top.",^[6] while her father, Leroy Walcott, adding "I do not want to make this into a race issue". However, Mr. Johnson, who it emerged has a conviction for using racially-aggravated threatening, abusive or insulting words against two white traffic wardens,^[7] claimed that the policeman was racist and likened the incident to Rodney King saying, "It's like something out of the Deep South, not South Yorkshire". Mr. Johnson said of the parking wardens incident that ethnic minority, rather than white, parking wardens would be better suited to black majority areas,^[8] saying of the white men's presence "This is our patch, not yours. You'll not stick a ticket on my car."

Several British newspapers have rejected the race angle, with the Sunday Mirror saying "She got what she deserved"^[9] and The Sun saying the officer had behaved reasonably, pointing out Ms. Comer needed no medical attention. However, the allegation that it was a racist incident has been pursued by The Guardian, which compared it to Rodney King^[10], and claimed that black women are treated differently by the police.^[11] The BBC's Newsnight also covered the incident, reporting, though not endorsing, the suggestion that the incident was racially motivated.^[12]

[edit] Police Reaction

Intially the police service backed the officer, although later it was announced that the IPCC would launch an investigation, while the officer is suspended from front-line duty.^[13] Meredydd Hughes, South Yorkshire's Chief Constable, stated that the officers removal from front line duty was in the interests of protecting his welfare when dealing with the public ^[14] .