John Wadham, director of Liberty, says:

"The police must only ever use the minimum necessary force - anything more is totally unacceptable. Incidents like this seriously damage people's confidence in the police: they have to be fully, openly and independently investigated and any necessary action taken if that damage is not to be worsened.

"The government is busy giving the police more powers and suspects less rights: there has to be a counterbalance to this trend. The police urgently need a totally separate watchdog, a genuinely independent police complaints commission, to investigate and act on all serious complaints. And they need it soon".