What happened
In July 2019 Metropolitan Police officers asked Youness Bentahar to move a car in Poplar, east London. It was on a yellow line, displaying a blue badge, and officers said it was causing an obstruction. They asked several times. He did not move it, so they tried to arrest him. He resisted, and he was restrained on the ground in front of his family and members of the public.
During the restraint he appeared to have a seizure. The arrest was filmed by members of the public and shared widely. A support team of other officers arrived quickly, gave medical treatment and handed him to paramedics. He survived.
The outcome
The Crown Prosecution Service decided that no charges would be brought. The Independent Office for Police Conduct agreed with the Metropolitan Police that there was no case to answer for misconduct, on use of force or on discrimination. One officer was required to complete a reflective practice review, a process introduced in February 2020, covering how a minor traffic offence could have been handled without escalating into a restraint.
The case produced a national recommendation to the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council on recognising medical emergencies during arrest, and the national personal safety training manual was updated on identifying medical implications during an arrest.
What went wrong
The outcome does not say the officers were wrong to restrain him. The finding is narrower: some officers were unsure whether the seizure was real.
The IOPC also found that this did not affect the care he received, because the support team acted quickly. What concerned it was the reasoning. Officers need to understand the risk of dismissing how a person presents, and of treating a medical condition as something else.
The blue badge mattered twice. It was on the car at the start, and it was why more could have been done to identify whether reasonable adjustments around disability were needed before officers decided the car had to move.
Mr Bentahar said he felt he had been racially discriminated against. The investigation reviewed body-worn video, including samples of the officer’s earlier interactions, and interviewed independent witnesses.
What it teaches
A seizure during restraint is a medical emergency until it is proved otherwise. The person applying the hold does not decide whether it is real, and doubt is not a clinical finding.
The second lesson is escalation. This began as a parking matter on a public street. Communication steps exist to stop a minor offence becoming a ground restraint, and they only work if someone keeps count of how many times they have asked.
Third, what an officer sees has to survive the handover. The doubt belonged in the handover to the paramedic.
Questions for the room
- The car had a blue badge. What should the officers have asked before deciding it had to be moved?
- You are holding a man who has gone stiff and quiet. What do you do, and what do you tell the paramedic?
- The review found no misconduct and the case still changed national guidance. Where did the learning sit?
Evidence and limits
Confidence: probable. The account rests on one primary source, the IOPC news release of 11 August 2020, which records the decision not to charge, the reflective practice outcome and the national recommendation. No press report of the investigation outcome was read for this entry, so the details are as the regulator summarised them.
The IOPC does not state how long the restraint lasted or which positions were used, so this entry says only that he was restrained on the ground.
He survived. No officer was found to have a case to answer, and no member of staff is named.
Our [restraint reduction training](/training-solutions/restraint-reduction-rrn) covers positional risk, monitoring and the handover to ambulance crews.
Sources
Reviewed 20 October 2026.