Police probe officer conduct after incident at Royal Bolton Hospital

Greater Manchester Police received a formal complaint about the way a police officer spoke after the incident on Tuesday morning.

It is claimed a police officer arrived in A&E to a report of an argument between two groups.

A spokeswoman said: "GMP has received a formal complaint in relation to an officer’s verbal conduct when responding to report of an assault at Royal Bolton Hospital on Monday, June 25.

"The matter will be referred to GMP’s Professional Standards Branch who will investigate the complaint fully.

"It would therefore be inappropriate to comment any further at this time."

Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, which runs Royal Bolton Hospital in Minerva Road, also issued a statement.

A spokesman said: “The full facts of this incident are still being ascertained. Needless to say, we take incidents of this nature extremely seriously as the welfare and safety of all our staff and visitors is very important to us.”

The alleged incident is detailed in a thread of tweets on social media by user @wahida_alom.

She wrote: "Yesterday I witnessed something I cannot get out of my head."

She says she was in A&E and claims: "I was greeted by three young people (two males, one female, all three White British) who came across as very loud and were engaging in random antisocial behaviour. Although it was bothering me and others around me, we decided to ignore them."

The tweets claim one of the group made a "remark regarding her hijab" leading her son to intervene.

She wrote: "Her son intervened and asked the male who made the remark what the problem was, and made it clear that whatever was said was wrong and should have been said to him and not his mother.

"The male who made the remark started protesting loudly at this point, shouting out swears and more rude comments.

"An argument broke out and one of the nurses opted to go and get help from a police officer who was present.

"The police officer came and automatically began to speak harshly to the Somalian boy. "What is your problem?" "Don't shout at me" "calm down"

"He then went to speak to the group of three and his tone was completely different. "Alright mate, is there a problem here pal?" At this moment we realised the difference in the way he spoke to both parties."

The tweets allege the Somalian boy protested and was held down by the police officer "in a violent manner" and that he told the police officer he was injured and shouted to his mother for help, who was "screaming and shouting".

The Twitter user said: "Nurses were ordered to take her away. This was before the male doctors attempted to move her away in a very forceful way. Me and my sister attempted to calm her down by speaking little of what we knew of their language in order to comfort her, however we were dragged away from her.

"The woman was clearly having a panic attack and when I attempted to make the police aware of this I was told I'm not qualified and also that "she is faking some sort of seizure to get our attention"."

According to the tweets, part of the hospital was sectioned off and those waiting moved elsewhere but could still hear "loud cries of help".

The user wrote: "Like it was one sided and no one wanted to do anything to help this poor woman and her boy.

"The group of three people were calmly escorted out of the building and that was the last we saw of them. After everything had calmed down, on our way out of the hospital, my sister and I saw the woman and her boy stood outside. We were being watched as we walked by and I stopped to tell her that everything will be fine and asked if they needed a lift home.

"We were followed by the police officer I mentioned before, and made to feel like we were doing something suspicious."

The GMP spokesman added: "“We are investigating the incident with the hospital’s foundation trust but can confirm that no police officers were involved in the incident shown in the video and, although we cannot go into detail as it is subject to an investigation, we can say the complaint we received relates to the demeanour of an officer after the incident." 

Two videos were also posted on Twitter showing a boy being held down by two men.