Responding to recently-released footage showing 62-year-old Millard Scott falling down stairs after being Tasered by Metropolitan Police officers in north London in April, Amnesty International has said the incident raised “numerous red flags”.

Oliver Feeley-Sprague, Amnesty International UK’s policing expert and member of the independent advisory group to the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead on Tasers, said:

“There are numerous red flags raised by this very disturbing incident.

“We need a proper investigation into how a 62-year-old black man who didn’t fit the description of the person police were looking for could be Tasered almost instantly at the top of stairs where he then falls from a height.

“Tasers are potentially lethal weapons, linked to hundreds of deaths in the USA and a growing number in Britain, and we’ve always said that UK police forces needed to restrict their use to highly-trained specialist officers. This appalling footage underscores that call.

“It beggars belief that the Met’s own professional standards body has concluded there is no case to answer here. This is yet another litmus test for the Met’s claim that black lives matter to them.”

A 2018 study showed that the Metropolitan Police Tasered black people more than four times as often as white people.