CCTV footage captured the chaotic moment five off-duty female police officers got caught up in a brawl with a mother and her daughters at a bottomless brunch.
Rose Webb, 58, and daughters Casey Jackson, 32, Emma Dee Jackson, 34, and Billie Jo Jackson, 35, were said to have gone ‘over the top’ in the brawl with the off-duty cops at the Cocktail Club on Shaftesbury Avenue.
The police officers had been ‘letting their hair down’ and enjoying a High School Musical themed brunch, drinking prosecco, eating pizza and singing ‘We’re All in this Together’.
The two groups were dancing close to each other when Webb became annoyed at PC Tanisha Whitlock’s dancing, Wood Green Crown Court heard.
Webb is said to have yelled ‘f****** lezza’ at PC Whitlock as her colleagues, Daniella Andrean, Binal Valji, Megan Pearson and Bethan Thomas all became involved in the struggle.
But mother-of-four and grandmother-of-two Webb along with Casey, Emma Dee and Billie Jo were all cleared by a jury of affray after claiming they had been acting in self-defence.
Webb and her daughters chose not to give evidence. Representing herself, Webb told jurors: ‘Firstly, I was acting in defence of my daughter (Billie Jo) and secondly in defence of myself in the chaos that ensued.’
She said the CCTV confirms their claim that the police officers were the aggressors.
Dominic Thomas, defending for Billie Jo, slammed the off-duty officers for ‘strutting around’ as if they owned the place and turning the venue into the ‘TSG dance room.’
He blamed PC Whitlock’s ‘manic aggressive’ dancing for starting the fight and said: ‘The best way to describe it was an angry chicken.’
Prosecutor Alex Balancy said all the women involved had been drinking on October 15, 2022.
He said: ‘Everyone started off in a good mood, singing, having a good time. Rose Webb started trying to engage in conversation with the officers.
‘Ms Whitlock, clearly the more social one, was dancing.
‘It seemed to annoy at some point Ms Webb, so the four defendants appear to move away from that area.
‘At some point, Ms Webb said she was going to the bathroom and headed towards the officers.
‘It would appear that along the way, she pushed one of the defendants, which appears to have escalated.
‘Casey Jackson appears to try to diffuse the matter.’
Webb then made her alleged homophobic remark which sparked the brawl, he said.
‘The whole thing erupted into an almighty melee,’ the prosecutor said.
‘Rose Webb grabbed the hair of Ms Whitlock, dragged her along the floor and simply would not let go.
‘Even when eventually they managed to get her to release her grip, she went back and punched Ms Whitlock in the head.
‘Those four defendants simply lost it and went over the top, and the complainants were trying to restrain them.
‘Other members of the public tried to jump in to try to separate the parties, and members of staff jumped in, too.’
Ms Pearson told the court she was trying to get Webb to let go of the tufts of Ms Whitlock’s hair she was clinging on to.
‘I hit her chest and neck to try and make her release the grip,’ she said.
‘There was a lot of screaming from Tanesha at that point. I looked down at female one (Webb) and Tanesha and I got hit in the face.
‘I said: “What the f*** is wrong with you lot?”
One of the daughters replied: ‘That’s my mum!’
‘I said “well your mum is holding on to my friend”. We dragged female one away from the area.
‘Danny (Ms Whitlock) had a mouth full of blood. She was crying and said she had been kicked in the face.’
PC Valji told the court: ‘It was chaotic, there were arms, legs, people everywhere.
‘Ms Whitlock was screaming “help me” and trying desperately to get out of this pile of people on top of her.
‘I reached forward to try and pull her out of the situation. I was trying to get them to stop.
‘She was screaming “help me” and her lip was cut. I was trying to release the grip of the person pulling her hair.’
The brawling family were all cleared of affray by the jury on the 13th day of the trial, prompting Judge Alexander Jacobs to quip: ‘Unlucky for some, maybe not for others.’
The jury took a total of 12 hours and 14 minutes to deliberate.
Footage shows the fight lasted for roughly four minutes of messy hair pulling, pushing and wrestling between the two groups of women.
Two men step in about halfway through to try to break up what prosecutors described as an ‘almighty melee’ but the nine women continue to take pot shots at each other.
The brawl starts with one woman pushing another on to the booth seating after the groups were angrily arguing. It then descends into chaos as each woman starts fighting with another.
Defending, Mr Thomas said that the Territorial Support Group (TSG) officers took over the place with their ‘manic’ dancing.
Cross-examining, the barrister said to Ms Whitlock: ‘You are strutting around as if you own the place. What was a public room has become the TSG dance room.’
Ms Whitlock replied: ‘I was just up dancing. There was no one else in that space.’
He said one part of the footage shows Billie Jo having to ‘pick her through’ Ms Whitlock’s group to get her black handbag. Webb also had to move through the officers in order to go to the toilet.
‘Your group isn’t having it’, Mr Thomas said as he showed the CCTV footage of them making their way through the reveling officers.
‘That could go the other way,’ Ms Whitlock rebutted.
Mr Thomas asked what the problem was with Webb ‘trying to make her way to the loo’.
Ms Whitlock replied: ‘She barged me out of the way.’
He closed with a speech, labelling Ms Whitlock’s dancing as ‘manic aggressive’, adding her behaviour ‘fell well below how a police officer should behave even off duty’.
‘Ms Valji dragged her (Whitlock) back to her seat when she danced in that intimidating and bizarre way,’ he said.
‘The best way to describe it was an angry chicken.
‘The officers got drunk as they were entitled to, but it led them to behave like territorial and entitled bullies and that they were not entitled to, and that’s the whole story here.’
Webb, Casey Jackson, Emma Dee Jackson and Billie Jo Jackson, all of Northolt, west London, denied affray.
Billie Jo Jackson works in water safety at Hammersmith Hospital while Casey Jackson is employed by a property firm with celebrity and high-profile clients.
Webb has a managerial role in a business.
