What happened
On 21 August 2008 Sean Rigg, 40, was detained by four Metropolitan Police officers from Brixton Police Station while experiencing mental ill health.
He was restrained and held face down for between seven and eight minutes, chest and face to the ground, arms cuffed behind his back, with officers applying pressure to his back, arms and legs to keep him there.
He was taken to Brixton in the back of a caged police van. CCTV shows that about ten minutes later he was brought, heavily assisted, into the cage at the suite entrance, where he slumped to the floor with his eyes shut. Officers can be heard saying he was faking or feigning unconsciousness. They did not seek medical help immediately. He never entered the custody suite. He died at 20.24 of a cardiac arrest following restraint in the prone position.
The outcome
The IOPC’s background statement records a seven-week inquest and more than 60 witnesses. On 1 August 2012 the jury returned a narrative verdict. It found he had been placed in a V-shaped position in the well of the cage, that the length of the prone restraint and the officers’ actions at the station were unnecessary and unsuitable, and that this more than minimally contributed to his death.
Coroner Andrew Harris said the level of force was unsuitable and that there was “an absence of leadership”.
In September 2016 the Crown Prosecution Service found insufficient evidence to prosecute. After a six-week misconduct hearing ending on 1 March 2019, none of the charges against five officers was proven. The IPCC’s first investigation, concluded in February 2010, recommended no disciplinary action.
What went wrong
The hold ran far past the point the independent review later identified as dangerous: after one minute, it concluded, pressure on the lungs put serious damage at risk, and after four minutes there was serious and significant damage and risk of death. The restraint lasted seven to eight minutes.
At the station, a slumped and unconscious man was read as feigning, and nobody called an ambulance. The coroner called the gap an absence of leadership: several officers present, none of them in charge of the airway.
What it teaches
Eight minutes of prone restraint was enough to kill a man in a custody suite. Duration turns a recognised position into a fatal one, and the thresholds are known: one minute, then four.
The second lesson is interpretation. A man on the floor with his eyes shut was judged to be acting, and that judgement stood in place of a medical one. When a detainee will not stand, ask not whether he is performing but whether he is breathing, and who is answering that.
Questions for the room
- Officers said he was faking. What would you have needed to see, in that doorway, to know he was not?
- You are the officer in charge at the van. What is the first thing you do when a detainee will not stand, and who calls the ambulance?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: confirmed. The verdict, the position and duration of the restraint, and the coroner’s remarks are carried from the IOPC’s background statement of September 2023 and the IPCC investigation report of 2012, both read in the archive.
Proceedings are not closed. When the IOPC published its statement, misconduct and accountability matters were still live: it apologised to the family and disclosed that a civil claim by three officers had been settled without notifying them. This page rests on the 2012 inquest verdict. It makes no finding about any individual, and no officer is named.
Our restraint reduction training covers duration, position and the review that has to run alongside a hold.
Sources
- IOPC, background statement on the death of Sean Rigg, September 2023
- IPCC, independent investigation into the death of Sean Rigg, 2012 (archive)
- Casale review of the IPCC investigation, 2012 (archive)
Reviewed 20 October 2026.