There was a time when discretion was considered a virtue in public service. When a policeman could resolve a dispute with a quiet word, when a nurse or care worker could rely on professional instinct, and when judgment wasn’t a liability but an expectation. Today, that era feels as distant as the gas lamp and the village bobby. We live now in a Britain where common sense has been systematically replaced with policy. And in the case of Donald Burgess, it ended with tragedy.
Burgess was in his 90s, frail, he had one leg, was wheelchair bound and suffering from advanced dementia. On top of this he had a severe Urinary Tract Infection and anyone with elderly relatives knows that infection can significantly impact mental functionality in the elderly. Aged relatives describe the impact of an infection on the geriatric mind: like being drunk without the fun, and also experiencing total amnesia whilst under the influence of the infection, a symptom of the elderly body shutting down all necessary activities, including memory, to fight it.
Mr Burgess was a resident was in a care home, confused, possibly frightened, and holding a table knife flicking food demanding to speak to the manager and apparently threatening that he would stab him.. with a stainless steel table knife suitable for spreading butter on a roll. Once, this would have been met with kindness, patience, or a gentle redirection. Today, in the age of “zero tolerance,” that butter knife became “a weapon,” and the police were summoned. To support their subsequent actions the police report described the knife as ‘serrated’ no doubt to invoke the public terror of ‘zombie knives’ and the serrated bayonets of popular WW1 memory, which were shunned by the actual soldiers because being caught with one by the enemy would result in swift retribution.
You can watch the incident here. Warning: it will outrage you and depress you:
The rest is now a matter of a criminal trial currently being held in Sussex. Officers arrived, immediately concluded that Mr Burgess was a dangerous threat and over the next 82 seconds used such violence to disarm him from this eating utensil that they used a whole canister of pepper spray, before the same officer, the 51 year old burly PC Stephen Smith deployed his telescopic truncheon, so nasty is what follows most news channels including the report for C4 News I link to below, blur out the events. But you can hear the whacks and the screams.
It doesn’t take much to imagine the effect of such a baton, which is such an effective weapon the general public are banned from owning them, at force, on the wrist of a frail old man. A 6 ft tall copper who uses such on violent rioters in their 20’s now applies it to the delicate and brittle bones and paper thin skin of the aged wrist, in a shattering break. So blinded with pepper spray Mr Burgess suffers the quite unique pain of a broken wrist. Now, whilst PC Smith was laying about Mr Burgess with his baton, his erstwhile colleague, PC Rachel Commotto decided to join in shouting ‘TASER! TASER! TASER! and shooting him in the chest delivering 1500 volts almost at the same time as as the baton smashes the bones of the wrist.
Mr Burgess was taken to hospital for his injuries where he passed away 22 days, we were assured by the authorities that his subsequent death had nothing to do with the assault and violence of two weeks earlier. Really? Rarely have I seen a more blatant example of semantics and cherry picking to justify not charging these two thugs with manslaughter. Anyone who has spent any time with the elderly and frail knows that an event like this in their lives can be utterly devastating, and at such age life is like dominoes, all it takes is a relatively minor fall or incident in the lives of those in their thirties to start the dominoes falling. These two Uniformed Civilians are currently on trial for the assault of Mr Burgess, the manslaughter charge clearly being too difficult to prove. Here the law showing its inadequacy, yes, Mr Burgess was in his 90s, yes, he was in poor health but the link is obvious.
Police Constable Stephen Smith, he of the enthusiastic baton use and pepper spray, told the court, in a remarkable revelation that observation is obviously no longer a criteria for recruitment that: “he did not see that (Donald Burgess, 92,) was disabled and in a wheelchair before he used Pava spray, and then a baton before making an arrest. Really? And what other chairs have ruddy great spoked wheels? Meanwhile PC Rachel Commoto blubbed on the stand as she tried to argue that she had used her taser on Mr Burgess because she was horrified that her colleague was about to clobber him with a baton and she decided it was the ‘best way to keep him (Mr Burgess) safe.’ An incredulous prosecutor asked her why she did’t simply tell PC Smith to stop his assault.
Segway – has anyone else noticed modern policing’s passion for ‘keeping people safe’ by subjecting them to their licensed state violence? This is how they justify the arresting of counter protestors and their violent arrests of Christian evagvelist and former Muslim, Hatun Tash at Speaker’s Corner of all places.
Now unless we have started actively recruiting psychopaths into our care homes and police forces, no one meant for this to happen. Not the care home staff. Not the officers even. But intent is beside the point. This tragedy wasn’t caused by malice; it was caused by systems. Systems that no longer permit discretion. Systems that value protocol over humanity. Systems that, unless you constantly challenge these protocols and test them for relevance, become systems of inhuman psychopathy.
Now, I don’t know the exact policies in place at that care home. But as an HR professional who has worked extensively in the care sector, I can say with confidence that what happened is consistent with the norm: zero-tolerance policies, strict safeguarding frameworks, and employee training that stresses box-ticking over judgment. If there’s even a theoretical risk, staff are instructed to escalate. So when an elderly man flicks food with a butter knife, procedure inevitably dictates: call the police. Add on that the weaponisation of victimhood in employee/employer relations. Now no one deserves to have food flicked at them at work but when caring for the vulnerable such scenarios are inevitable. It goes with the job. We don’t hold the very young or the insane responsible for crimes because they are unable to take responsibility for their actions.
And the police? They follow their own strict protocols. When Harry Miller won his Court of Appeal case over the Orwellian concept of a “non-crime hate incident” (NCHI), he visited the Chief Constable of Humberside Police. There, he was told the quiet part out loud: The last thing we want is common sense in the field or words to that effect. Let that sink in. The police, as a matter of institutional culture, are trained not to assess, but to apply rules mechanically. Tick the box. Follow the flowchart. Don’t think. Don’t feel. Just comply.
This bureaucratic religion is not confined to policing or care. It pervades every institution. Consider the case of the man fined for rescuing a drowning child in lockdown because he had breached Covid regulations. Or the pensioner charged with criminal damage for trimming a hedge that blocked a road sign. Or the countless teachers suspended not for misconduct, but for momentarily exercising professional instinct in a system that no longer trusts professionals.
In this culture, the rules must be followed to the letter, not the spirit. Why? Because no one wants to be blamed. Bureaucracy is a fortress against accountability. And common sense? That’s a risk. It can’t be audited. It doesn’t produce a paper trail. Worse still, it suggests personal responsibility. So instead of empowering people, we infantilise them. We turn professionals into clerks, carers into call handlers, and police officers into protocol bots. When something goes wrong, the institution will say, “We followed procedure.” But who will ask if the procedure made any sense?
Britain used to be rather good at this. We didn’t need to be told how to deal with a butter knife and a confused old man. The bobby on the beat would have known what to do. So would the matron or the orderly. But they have all been replaced—not by people, but by systems. Systems that are cold, performative, and, in cases like Donald Burgess’s, fatal.
We do not need more regulation. We need more judgment. More courage to empower front-line workers. More trust in the experience of those who deal with real human beings. Because systems without sense are not safe. They are dangerous.
So a man dies, a life of 92 years, a life of memories from childhood, memories of love, friends, partners, children, the highs and lows of a life life, of grief, of stress but of joy and happiness. Until he encountered two people we pay to keep The King’s peace. The tragedy of Donald Burgess should remind us all what happens when we forget that.
C.J. Strachan is the pseudonym of a concerned Scot who worked for 30 years as a Human Resources executive in some of the UK’s leading organisations. Subscribe to his Substack page.
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The people who follow rules
versus
The people who think
It’s timeless, my friends.
Educators say, we teach students to think, but they teach them to disagree, especially the norm, which is subtly different from encouraging them to question, intelligently.
Also, when everyone’s view is valid, and to be said, out loud, there’s little chance of hearing any pearls of wisdom.
Let’s just get this straight…
A specialist firearms officer, cleared by a jury of murdering a hardened criminal posing a threat to the lives of fellow officers, nevertheless “faces a misconduct probe:”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czrvjprm1vro
Whereas in the ongoing trial for assault of one of the officers in the case outlined by C.J.Strachan, “a police use-of-force adviser testified the officer’s actions were generally in accordance with his training”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c1ldj8635vvo
Take a look at the accompanying images of the two deceased and draw whatever conclusion you see fit.
Police Officers who can act like this are probably also capable of putting people in gas chambers, and afterwords claiming, “only following orders”. Or in this case, “in accrdance with their training”.
We need to be truly worried that the Police can recruit and train Officers who have such low standards of common decency that they can carry out such an act, in accordance with their training or otherwise.
Just read the book “Ordinary Men” the first death squads were police and they weren’t compelled. They were permitted to opt out, no questions asked, but very few did so. Then it became routine.
“ “a police use-of-force adviser testified the officer’s actions were generally in accordance with his training”:”
So were the actions of the camp guards at Auschwitz.
And therein lies the problem. It’s ideology and politics.
I hope they’re very proud of themselves. Absolute disgrace to their uniform and this Country.
What uniform? They all dress like slobs and members of a street gang.
There was no need for the police to be called in the first place. It’d be a different story if he was tearing up and down the corridors on his mobility scooter, slashing his cutlery knife at people. 100% unlawful and disproportionate reaction by the police. Surely any decent member of staff, who should have excellent communication skills and patience anyway, working with elderly and demented people, could have used their experience and just sat on the bed and talked him round and I’ll bet he’d have given up the knife. Either that or just leave him alone to calm down and he’d probably have nodded off.
If that were my granda I’d be livid and heads would roll, but these were Scamdemic times, and we know the sort of consideration and compassion elderly folk were shown around then. Totally callous and badly mishandled.
Meanwhile, totally off-topic, but are you guys seeing this? These clips will probably end up behind a sensitivity window soon. It’s of somebody mowing down loads of Liverpool fans. Just happened. No description of the driver as yet;
”Liverpool fans out celebrating winning the Premier League saw a man drive into numerous people. It seems there are serious injuries.”
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1927062875312398626
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1927064881578099043
The police decked a bystander and pepper sprayed him. Driver already in van, apparently;
https://x.com/DaveAtherton20/status/1927067861865955418
The Police and the BBC are happy to point out that the man arrested is “White British”. So every time there is an incident like this and the race of the perpetrator is not mentioned, we’ll know they are not “White British”.
Horrible scenes but heartening to see that the car he was driving was mobbed by fans as soon as they were able to.
Which of the two people is white British? The driver or the bloke decked and pepper-sprayed.
Ah, so it seems that the 53 yo white British man was not the driver, that was a much younger non-white bloke who might be less British.
The man arrested apparently
Perhaps the Police and the BBC have been selective in which information they release in which order
That went so well for them last time
Lol, yes. I think what we’re seeing here is a deliberate attempt at deflection so that the public get crossed wires, by misinterpreting what’s been reported, and the police can say they didn’t outright lie, just lied by omission. They’re leading us to believe the driver was white, British and 53yrs old, but even people online are twigging what’s going on. That’s the description of the guy on the ground in the clip I shared.
They’ve not released a description of the driver yet. Playing for time. We’re being “managed” again. It’s why they’re saying not to speculate. Surely nobody would be speculating if this was the driver’s description they’d so swiftly shared;
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cn5xnlkegz0t
Just prior to him driving into crowd. How was a car able to even gain access to this area? Should it not have been cordoned off?
https://x.com/col_b1/status/1927100562635464774
Looks like this is another balls up with only the heat-of-battle defence being available to plod. You can clearly see someone is pushed into the van and the door closed. Next you see people being pushed back towards the nearer side of the road and then you see an older white man on the ground with one or more plod holding him down.
The driver is clearly not the white man arrested, he has darker skin and a black trimmed beard and moustache.
True. But didn’t we know that already?
Arrested – but the driver? Not stated.
And how clever of the police to ascertain his age – 53 – within minutes. It must have been their first questions as they wrestled him out of the car and into the police van – of which curiously there are no video clips.
Isn’t that odd? So many video clips of the scene but the only one of the driver is through the side window which depicts a face that appears to be a young man maybe late 20s or early 30s.
And with so many people around the car, nobody appears to know what the driver looked like – nobody is giving a description.
I’m sure there is a good explanation for all these anomalies because the “authorities” wouldn’t hide anything from us would they?
And British? Is that what it says in his passport or is that his heritage? Ghandi was British.
Will be interesting to see where this ends up. Seems fishy to me, but then you’d think that some of the crowd there will have had a better look and will speak up.
In a sensible world the home would be taken off the Council list of approved homes, the management would be suspended pending likely disqualification and the police officers would be charged with assault.
There.
Have I written anything to qualify for a visit from the plod. I do live in Essex, after all.
Yes, if there were any justice in the world then this is exactly what should happen.
This is him just before he ploughs into the crowd of fans. Regardless of ethnicity, only a pure psychopath would plan on doing something like this. And how the police got him from the car to the van ( all while nobody managed to film that part, strangely ) without the fans tearing him to shreds is anyone’s guess;
”Footage of the car and driver seconds before it ploughed into Liverpool supporters today
A 53-year-old man has been arrested.”
https://x.com/ActivePatriotUK/status/1927082701548314631
The face seen through briefly open door doesn’t look 53. I’d also guess not of British descent, even if born here.
Remember the Welsh choirboy.
Has anyone else noticed that novel crimes committed by ideological fanatics tend to get copied by ordinary nutters and criminals? Driving cars into crowds only became a thing when Islamists adopted it, as also trying to behead people in the street.
Identifying him as white British doesn’t help at all with the “why?’ I want to know if there was a religious or cultural motivation behind his actions.
From what I have pieced together from the links Mogwai provided the white British description is not of the driver but instead a bystander pepper-sprayed and arrested for a different reason.
I agree that I want to know what the bearded driver’s motivation was.
The driver was clean shaven. I think the guy you’re referring to is this one. Just an innocent bloke taking advantage of an empty police car and messing about.
https://x.com/GoldingBF/status/1927106617218072854
Check out the clip on the right-hand side for comparison. It’s very brief. People saying it’s just someone who took a wrong turn, panicked when people started attacking his car and floored it;
https://x.com/JournoJones05/status/1927097135842931153
Totally agree and a very sad story.
I like to skate, sometimes indoors in rinks. The contrast between rinks that take a reasonably laissez faire attitude and those with nit picking idiots “enforcing rules” they don’t understand the reasons for, written by people who have never skated, is vast. I’ve simply stopped going to rinks that refuse to exercise professional judgement. I am lucky that I have a choice.
I keep having arguments with morons who complain that some country lanes are SIMPLY NOT SAFE to drive at 60mph on. They can’t fathom that the idea is that you drive according to the conditions presented to you, and if you are incapable of doing that, you should not be driving. I can only assume they want the speed limit to be 20 everywhere, or for a trillion £s to be spent on speed limit assessments and the subsequent signage for every national speed limit road in the UK. It’s staggering how conditioned people have become to being told what to do.
This, precisely this. Not much point in holding a driving licence, perhaps that’s why so many people stopped for driving offences don’t possess one.
The more I think about it the more I realise that the reason more things are not micro regulated by the state is nothing much to do with any respect for freedom but simply because of the logistical challenges involved.
And computer technology makes the logistics easier as time goes on.
I think that’s the big danger
We’ve always had tyranny and control freaks trying to boss people around, but it gets easier with technology
Sorry CJ me old fruit that ship has sailed.
This case reminds me of two patients I saw as a GP. One was an elderly paranoid schizophrenic, whom I visited with a social worker to section. I ended up holding the front door open with my foot as the guy stabbed at me with a bread knife, the police having decided half an hour was short enough for them to eventually roll up to restrain him. A few days of medication sorted him out, and I suffered no bread knife trauma, being younger and more agile than the patient.
The second was a call from the police, to another old guy holed up in his bedroom after making some threat or other. A few plods were outside the bedroom, and cheerfully told me, “He’s in there.” I went in alone to find a totally confused and threatening, but quite tractable man wearing a floral bath hat and not much else. After a bit I persuaded him that it was by far the best thing to take a trip to the hospital, even after he identified me as some kind of persecuting demon, and we walked out peaceably past the thin blue line cowering in the hallway. The man paused only to collect his hat from the coat rack and put it on top of his bath hat. It later emerged that he was suffering from an acute metabolic problem, which responded magically to treatment.
It’s sobering to think that nowadays there’s a good chance both of these sweet old guys would have died violently at the hands of the public services following protocols.
Thanks for sharing this- anecdotes like this are part of the reason I come back to this place
Just to add – more routinely, an old person suddenly being confused or violent is usually going to be toxic confusion from a urine or chest infection. I don’t know if this chap’s UTI was diagnosed before or after, but quite clearly the default position is that he is acutely ill, not criminal.
If the police were too green to know that, the care staff should have been on top of it, as it happens several times a year in any care home.
Thanks for that useful insider insight – I had no idea that infections could cause that.
Part of the problem is that the officer on the scene is subject to constant oversight via Comms that didn’t exist in the past, so they are unused to exercising judgement because they’re taught to refer all decisions up the chain.
Old fashioned bobbies had no such technical kit, just a notebook and pencil and possibly a truncheon for extremis. I don’t think every officer carried handcuffs until more recently.
I wasn’t there, but I can say with 100% certainty that there was no need to pepper spray him or to taser him.
I despair for the modern police service. The police service we did have and should still have is lost – and it isn’t coming back.
Yes, pathetic and cringe, for most of the time. Supporting the wrong people;
”These people are not going into policing because they want to keep the streets safe. They are going into policing to protect those of their deranged clan and enable such mental illness further.”
https://x.com/theworldofmomus/status/1926998545342595369
It beggars belief that any police officer would think it appropriate to show allegiance with such an attitude, never mind to be photographed in such a situation.
I wouldn’t last a month in today’s police service. For comparison, however, today’s police officers wouldn’t last a month in the police service I joined in 1989.
I’d imagine many wouldn’t even be accepted into the force to start with. Presumably standards ( and entry requirements ) have slipped over the decades?
What a very long story when a few sentences would do. You cannot get a cop out for property theft, rampant shop theft, unruly feral kids rampaging through towns. But an old confused male in a nursing home brandishing a butter knife, warrants a cop with a taser.
folks, britain is decaying right in front of your eyes. Led by incompetents. Is everyone in this country powerless? How did you reach this point?
I blame American lawyers. Probably back in 80’s was when it started. Before that nobody ever sued anybody, we accepted responsibility for our own errors, apologised and moved on. Then enter the ambulance chasing culture imported from across the pond and everything changed, where suddenly any mistake was worth big bucks to someone. That has completely changed our culture and our attitude to responsibility for our or anybody else’s mistakes.
It gives them the Nuremberg Excuse: “I was following Orders.”
This is sickening.
A perfect example of our cowardly police. Assaulting an old disabled wheelchair bound man with lethal force, but will give criminals a wide berth for fear of getting hurt.
An excellent article, Thank you. I address precisely this problem – the historical and philosophical origins of this folly – in The Bug in our Thinking : https://www.hughwillbourn.com/book – see Amazon also for reviews….
Thanks for that, Hugh. I will “bookmark” the page for when I don’t have a pile of books by my bedside awaiting reading!
Fully agree.
Swiss cheese model:
First slice (law) you find a hole (loophole) that need fixing so you make an additional law/rule.
Then the next slice finds more holes, so more rules and laws.
In the meantime judgement and common sense is taken out of the system.
That is where we currently are.
Too much regulation.
The carers who attended my mother told me that their rules said they had to ask permission from their frail and elderly clients.
Like they are in a position to make decisions for themselves regarding cleanliness and what is best for them?
having spent 51 years in health and social care, a clinical career in ‘rehabilitation medicine’ aka geriatrics in both acute and mental health institutions this sort of incident is an almost daily occurrence, you’d need a permanent Police force in every department if this approach was always used, every Nurse and House Officer has been in this situation and the last thing you do is use force – even in high and medium secure forensic psychiatry de-escalation techniques are ‘the norm’ and bringing in the stormtroopers is an admission of failure – the sheer stupidity of the Care Home staff to escalate this is beyond parody, we should despair at the idiocy
It would be nice to know if the US government is also monitoring this alleged assault and its outcome.
Take away the TASERS and pepper spray. The tradition in Britain is an unarmed police-force… TASERS and pepper spray are weapons of assault, allegedly as a last resort for protection in extremis, but as this and other cases show they are clearly weapons of first resort and attack.
Without pepper spray and TASERS police would have to use tact, persuasion and their ingenuity. For example, place a pillow over the hand with the knife.
We do not have a police force whose members are suitable for the job, nor are they properly trained and supervised. This is a failure of selection and management.
Unfortunately those responsible for selection and management are poor quality and not themselves suitable. This is a direct result of the politicisation of policing away from maintaining law and order, deterrence, detection of crime, towards social engineering and promoting fashionable ideology.
Add to the mix laziness and cowardice.
I agree with all of these police officers’ actions except the taser, and think they should have been able to easily get the knife away from him by whacking his hand till he dropped it in pain.
It was the woman who overreacted by deciding to taser him, even though he could not move from the chair.
I wish the police would be more ready to taser dogs attacking people, instead of being so hesitant and worrying about the dog as it rips someone to pieces.
Common sense and give & take are being eroded away to be replaced by legislative boundaries. You cannot legislate human behaviour like this. It’s a fools errand.
Further information: It wasn’t a “butter knife”. It was a “SERRATED KNIFE”. And he didn’t die from the taser, he died 3 weeks later “from Covid” in hospital.
“Mr Cooper (care home manager) also described how Mr Burgess jabbed the knife towards him and told him: “I’M GOING TO MURDER YOU, AND I’LL ENJOY IT”
Mr Barry (lawyer) told jurors: “If he (Pc Smith) had spoken to Mr Cooper before they went in, Mr Cooper would have said when he was in that room he felt as though he was going to be stabbed.
“He couldn’t believe how quickly he (Mr Burgess) was able to move.
“Donna Gardner would have told them they tried all different ways and tactics of persuasion.
“They both tried to reason with him and they called the police because they are not trained in restraint.”
Amputee, 92, sprayed and tasered by police was ‘suffering delirium’, jurors told