Kent Police has opened a misconduct investigation into two officers after they handcuffed a 12-year-old boy in Sevenoaks on 25 May over suspicion he had stolen a roadworks sign. The boy, Reuben, was playing in a park off Buckhurst Lane when officers stopped him and four friends, searched the group and then let them go with no further action.
The case is drawing attention because it now sits inside a formal police conduct inquiry, with the officers expected to justify what they did. Reuben’s mother, Hilary Ibhagbemien, said her son was “absolutely traumatised” by what was his first interaction with the police. She said there was “just no need for it” and that the officers could have “just spoken to him like the child he is.”
Callum Reddish, who said he had already talked to Reuben about the possibility of being stopped and searched one day, said that conversation mattered because of his own experience and his father’s before him. He said no adult should deal with a child as though the child were an adult, “it’s that simple.” The family’s complaint has turned what might otherwise have been a brief street stop into a test of how police treat children when suspicion falls on them.
Kent Police says the force had responded to calls about a road sign being stolen from Dartford Road and that CCTV inquiries showed “a group of young people with it shortly after it was taken.” Ch Supt Neil Loudon said five individuals from mixed ethnicities were stopped, their parents or guardians were called, and the young people were given words of advice and allowed to move on. He said the force did not want “any young person” to be worried, concerned or scared by an interaction with police, but added that officers are also duty bound to deal with reports as they come in.
That leaves the handcuffing at the centre of the inquiry. Kent Police says handcuffs are allowed at any age, but the question now is whether the officers used them proportionately on a child who was later released without further action. For Reuben’s family, the answer is already clear. For the force, it will be decided by the misconduct process now under way.
