POLICE MUST PAY POUNDS 18,000 AFTER DRUG RAID TERROR

A police chief was ordered to pay pounds 18,000 damages yesterday to a
nine-year-old boy and his uncle after drug squad officers ambushed their
car and smashed the windows in the mistaken belief that they were drug
dealers.

A sheriff awarded pounds 8,000 to Robert Cowan, who was five at the time of
the incident, and pounds 10,000 to Ian Fielding, 37. He described the
evidence given by two Strathclyde Police detectives as "inherently
improbable" and said they had acted maliciously during the raid.

Mr Fielding was returning from a visit to Shotts Prison in September, 1994,
with the boy and his father, Robert Snr, and Stuart McKenna, a family
friend. They had been visiting Mr McKenna's brother, an inmate at the jail.

The driver said he feared that they were going to be murdered when six
"strangers" in three unmarked police cars stopped them in a country road.
He drove away from the scene with the police vehicles in pursuit.

The chase ended in a hotel car park on the edge of the M8 near Glasgow,
where officers armed with long-handled batons surrounded Mr Fielding's
Astra. Hamilton Sheriff Court was told during the civil action that the
schoolboy was showered with glass. He was said to be traumatised by the
incident and suffered flashbacks.

The officers claimed that they were acting on information that the
occupants of the car were involved in drug dealing and were likely to be
armed with machetes. However, they found no weapons or drugs and no charges
were brought. In a written judgment, Sheriff Vincent Canavan said the
evidence given by the occupants of the car was credible and viable.

Mr Fielding, of Milton, Glasgow, sued John Orr, the Chief Constable of
Strathclyde Police for pounds 10,000. The boy's mother, Janet Cowan, of
Springburn, Glasgow, sued for pounds 8,000 on behalf of her son.
Strathclyde Police said the judgment would be "fully considered".