Guard accused of racism & false imprisonment is cleared of all expenses

A private security guard who was accused of racism and false imprisonment for detaining a 15-year-old boy at Superdrug was today cleared of all charges after just 30 minutes of jury deliberations.

Jake De-Geus and his colleague Edwin Hirst, who were employed to patrol a high street in Chichester, West Sussex, had been accused of tackling the teen in an ‘unlawful’ and ‘unjustified’ manner.

De-Geus, 30, who wept as he told jurors he wasn’t racist, insisted they had been ‘justified’ in deciding to detain the schoolboy, who had refused to leave the store when asked, pretended to steal shampoo and then head-butted him.

Hirst, 40, was also accused of assault by beating having punched another teenager in the testicles.

But now, a jury has unanimously cleared the pair of all charges after a week-long trial at at Portsmouth Crown Court, Hants, and jury deliberations of just half an hour.

De-Geus said he had suffered a backlash after a video of the ‘almighty struggle’ was posted online, the court heard. 

The ‘town ranger’ told jurors there was ‘not a chance’ he had head-butted the boy – who cannot be named for legal reasons – first and also denied that they had knelt on the teen’s back or neck.

The pair were accused of ‘over-stepping’ their powers by acting ‘unlawfully and injuriously’ as De-Geus is said to have ‘swung’ the schoolboy into a stand before handcuffing him.

Jury members today delivered unanimous ‘not guilty’ verdicts to charges of false imprisonment and assault by beating following the incident.

During his evidence, the court was shown body worn footage of the incident, for which the teenage boy apologised for the ‘vile language’ he used.

In it, he could be heard telling the rangers to ‘turn me around so I can spit in your face’.

It was heard he had been banned from Greggs and Sports Direct and admitted he had ‘probably’ behaved badly at Boots in a previous incident.

He also admitted he was ‘not proud’ of stealing potato wedges from Greggs on a previous occasion.

When giving evidence himself, De-Geus cried as he revealed he has not worked since the incident after his private security licence was suspended and said his mental health ‘got too much’ as a result of social media backlash.

‘I was accused of being racist and it just weren’t true,’ he said.

‘We were justified in why we detained him and called the police.’

The court heard one of his three children is black when asked if it had been ‘racially motivated’.

He said he had been working for two years as a ‘town ranger’ in Chichester Business Improvement District (BID).

‘We started hearing people behind sniggering and making comments,’ he said of the day in question. ‘I start walking near them and approach them and ask what they were up to.’

De-Geus said he told the teens in a ‘very calm and collected manner’ that they would be watching them and that by doing so he wasn’t trying to wind them up ‘at all’.

‘They started laughing and making silly, abusive comments towards me – throwing abuse at us,’ he continued.

The court heard this included swear words and ‘name-calling’ from several of the teenagers.

‘They were out to try and be silly and wind us up,’ he added. ‘[They] were seeing what they could get away with and started putting items in their pockets.’

The court heard previously it was ‘completely obvious’ this was a joke.

However, De-Geus responded: ‘It wasn’t – I didn’t treat it as a joke. We get a lot of kids coming in and taking stuff so I take anything like that as serious.’

He said he put the shampoo from one of the teen’s pockets, back onto the shelf but wasn’t angry ‘at all’ when doing so, as has been alleged.

De-Geus said he asked them to leave the store.

‘[The complainant] got quite irate,’ he said, ‘he wasn’t happy about being asked to leave the store.’

He said the boy was refusing to leave.

‘I stepped forward and grabbed hold of my radio and said we were going to call the police,’ he said.

De-Geus said this was done as a ‘use of force’ to show they needed to leave the store ‘without having to lay hands on’.

On what happened next, he said: ‘[He] stepped up to me and where he’s shorter than me I’m looking down on him.

‘He cheekily laid his head on mine – a quick tap and then backed off. It was more to see how far he could push it, not to head-butt me hard.’

He admitted the boy had made contact with his cap, as opposed to his skin. Asked if he had done it back, he said: ‘No, I did not head-butt him.

‘Not a chance, my cap doesn’t even rise off my head so I don’t think it would be physically possible.’

While talking through CCTV footage of the event, he said: ‘You can see his head flick forwards and then he steps back.

‘I then step forward to detain him after to seconds to compose after what happened.’

On why he thought he had a right to detain him, he added: ‘Because of everything that had occurred – being asked to leave, the anti social behaviour and because of the assault

‘I grabbed hold of his arm and I was waiting for my colleague to grab his other arm.’

Due to the narrow aisles in the ‘almighty struggle’, De-Geus said products were ‘bound’ to be knocked from shelves and denied having ‘swung’ the boy into them.

On the eventual use of handcuffs – which only Hirst had a licence to use – he said: ‘It was necessary to use because of the way he was swinging out and we didn’t want to cause any more injuries to him or ourselves.’

He denied kneeling on the detained teen and said his legs were ‘firmly on the floor’.

Judge William Ashworth ordered De-Geus, from Chichester, and Hirst, from Fareham, Hants to leave the dock, following the trial.

He thanked the jurors for their ‘careful consideration’ of the case.