If the Crown Prosecution Service does not act, the footage of an officer kicking and stamping on the head of a 19-year-old man as he and his 25-year-old brother were restrained by officers, of course went viral. But then we saw a few days later some other footage of what had happened before that took place.

Reform UK say failure to charge the man, is evidence of two tier policing. In a moment, David Spencer head of crime and justice at the policy exchange. First, Chris Daw KC, broadcaster and barrister is with us, how are you doing Chris? Afternoon. I’m in good shape. Thank you.

What I was almost, that we could have booked you today for the British men being overweight, but that would be unkind. But because of course you are in time for a bit, but you just doubted me. Listen, I know you’re in good nick, which is why I was able to very casually make that remark. So, what’s happening? Firstly, I mean a private prosecution, can anyone do this?

If they want to theoretically anyone can do it, but it’s not quite as simple as that. Theoretically anyone could do it and but it’s not quite as simple as that. That anyone can go along and accuse someone of a crime, but the Court ultimately has the power to say yes, or no, to allowing the case to go forward and so, the Court would want to be satisfied that the prosecution, whoever the private prosecutor was, was bringing it for proper legal reasons, that fitted the overall aims and demands of the criminal justice system and not simply for political reasons or to try make a publicity point.

So, it’s not as straightforward as simply turning up and saying, I’m going to accuse this person of a crime and then lo and behold, there’s a jury trial. There are quite a lot of steps to go through and of course unsurprising the defendants charged in private prosecutions do have the right to challenge that prosecution in the courts and say that it’s been brought for the wrong reasons or that the evidence is simply insufficient for the case to go forward to trial.

But yes, in theory we as citizens in this country somewhat unusually internationally do have the right to use the criminal courts for private purposes. I think a lot of us are now looking at that, I’m making a bit of a wish list here Chris because there’s a whole lot of stuff, I quite like to take legal, I think is the frail go legal. With this particular case and look, I’m not a barrister as you might know, but I did think at the time bearing in mind what we were looking at, I thought as it stands and we are here today where the IOPC also investigating what happened.

I looked at that back in July and thought we aren’t going to hear anything until they’ve decided what happens with the investigation to the police and that turns out to be absolutely the case. Does that sound about right to you or could we not when there appears to be, and again we have to be careful there are ramifications to all of this. There appears to be a clear-cut case of at least arresting and charging somebody for an assault of a police officer. Is the chronology that we are seeing, the one you would expect to happen in a case such as this?

Well sadly yes, the chronology in the sense of the enormous delay that is evolved from an incident which on the face of it should be relatively straightforward to pin down in terms of the video evidence at least, I don’t know about eyewitnesses and people who were present because of course video does tell you some of the story, but it doesn’t always tell you the whole story such as what was being said or what may have happened out of sight of the cameras.

So there’s a whole range of reasons why situation just because it might look clear cut from one particular camera, a camera angle may not be as good as all but nevertheless you would expect an incident that as I understand it was over and done within a matter of minutes, you know a competent professional investigation team are the IOPC, or the police or both should really be able to address the bottom of these things in a matter of weeks.

I think it’s in the public interest if things were to be speeded up but sadly this kind of delay is what really causes the public to become angry and cause these politicians perhaps unsurprisingly to say well nothing’s being done so we’re going to have to do something about it ourselves through a private prosecution now that would even really happen if we could get decision making speed it up and where there are criminal charges, let’s get them in front of the courts in a matter of weeks rather than months or years for an incident that on its face is fairly straightforward and I mean the allegations of two tier policing it’s always interesting.

I do defend the police on this one though, there are operational differences that the they simply depending on certain situations, but I’m also aware that sometimes it’s a terrible look and you know the police don’t always cover themselves in glory in that respect but I guess I don’t think this is an example of two-tier policing.

This is an example of a long protracted, drawn-out process which at the moment looks like ineptitude from either the IOPC or CPS or somebody somewhere. Well as I say, I’m not sure it’s ineptitude so not just that, they are very busy organisations, they have a huge backlog of cases to deal with at the IOPC and at the CBS. The courts of course have tens and tens of thousands of cases before the courts ready.

There are already big jams where there’s a backlog and that’s just the crown court. The magistrates court have hundreds of cases in the backlog so if only it were as simple as just throwing money at one case getting a quick decision and getting it before the courts and it’s based that’s what I’m arguing for.

If only with that simple the problem it we’re in a criminal justice system and you and I discuss this many times in which is so overwhelmed and so lacking in resource that every single part of the process that your viewers and your listeners can’t get a police officer to come around when they get robbed and they get the house smashed up and they get their precious possession stolen or destroyed.

The police won’t turn up, they’ll just give you a crime number and say contact your insurance company so if we can’t even get police officers when your home is invaded and your whole life is kind of destroyed, then the reality is that we probably don’t have the resources.

We have chosen not to have the resources to deal with these sorts of high-profile cases in a joined up and effective and efficient way. But I would guess there is sometimes other different pressures and a case that’s as high profile is this. You might have thought somebody would be oiling the cog wheels of speed here somewhere to be able to make this narrative go away and otherwise we wouldn’t have ended up where we are.

I remember interviewing the original lawyer for one of the guys, I promise you your job is safe back when this first happened and it looked at that stage because we didn’t have any second video at the time. It looked like that the most damning thing ever, that created a balloon. Lots of people very angry about police brutality, even people on the right this is not what the police are meant to do, then we saw this other bit.

So given all of this and given the sort of heightened way we debate now in the social media world, I thought they could have put their foot on the accelerator for political reasons of nothing else. Well listen my experience over recent years is that the only time that the foot goes on the accelerator is as you say when something is in the news and usually when it’s a high profile individual who’s accused of something, then they will suddenly find three or four or five police officers to go and investigate and take witness statements and how people working on these very high, very fast cases to the 24/7, but the problem with that of course is that those man power woman power is taken away from dealing with other complaints and other cases that your viewers and listeners are very understandably concerned about.

So yeah, we can become sort of a bit of the media and every time it’s a high-profile case, we’ll throw resource at it. But what are we going to do about what’s the gap that’s behind and that’s to me is the bigger question on our streets every single day. Indeed, Chris thank you as ever we all speak again soon. He’s Chris Daw KC, broadcaster and Barrister.