Four British evangelists took police officers to court accusing them of unlawful arrests and harassment.
A group of British street evangelists filed a lawsuit against a group of police officers for alleged harassment and unlawful repeated arrests. The proceeding started rolling out on Monday at the Bristol Country Court.
Mike Overd, Don Karns, Mike Stockwell, and A.J. Clarke. collectively known as the Bristol Four, filed a case against a group of police officers over an incident that happened in the summer of 2016. The four street evangelists claimed that British police arrested Overd while they were preaching the word of God in front of a statue of John Wesley in Bristol City Centre.
In a video footage of the incident, officers were seen forcefully pulling Overd to the ground while he was screaming in pain. He was later handcuffed and dragged into the police vehicle and brought to the police station for interrogation. The officers held him under their custody for seven hours before releasing him.
"We have faced no alternative but to bring this case as the police must be held to account for their actions for what they did in July 2016 and moreover for their actions over the past eight years," said Overd in a statement before the Monday hearing, according to the Christian Post.
The Christian Legal Centre (CLC) is representing the British street evangelists in court.
The accused group of the British police is now facing claims such as assault, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and misfeasance in a Public Office. The Bristol Four also forwarded a claim of Human Rights infringement, specifically rights set forth in articles 9, 10, and 11 of the European Convention of Human Rights against the police.
Overd on the other hand also filed a complaint on what his lawyer describes as an eight-year-long "sustained campaign of harassment" that he suffered from the officers, the Christian Concern reported.
Before the arrest, the evangelists were preaching the gospel in public quoting passages from the King James Version of the bible. They specifically touched on the issues of homosexuality and Islam, some highly sensitive issues in the country.
The authorities later filed charges against the four preachers reminding them that quoting scriptures from the King James Version of the bible may be considered as abuse or worse a criminal offense. The Bristol Four were later acquitted of the charges.
Overd appealed for a cultural shift on how British police handles Christians across the U.K. He stated that if freedom of speech does not bear the right to offend, then it is considered worthless.
"The freedom to preach the message of the gospel on the streets of the U.K. to the lost, is one of our fundamental rights in this country," said Overd. "If we lose that right, we will begin to lose every other freedom," he added.
Meanwhile, CLC Chief Executive Andrea Williams described the police actions as shocking and aggressive. She explained that the authorities should defend the freedom of speech instead of clamping down on it.
"We cannot allow the gospel to be shut out of the public debate, and that is what is at stake in this crucial case," Williams explained.
