Police Find Use of Force Was Justified in Incident with Teenage Girls—But Flag Room for Better Tactics

South Yorkshire Police concluded on 23 June 2026 that officers acted lawfully when they used force during an incident involving teenage girls at a leaving-do party that turned into a disturbance. The police's internal Professional Standards Department (PSD)—the unit that reviews whether officers followed the rules on using force—completed the review and found the officers' actions were justified.

BBC News and The Star both reported the findings on the same day, drawing on the force's official statement.

What "Proportionate and Necessary" Means

When police use force, they must follow a legal test. Under the College of Policing's guidelines, officers need to show at each step that force was the minimum required, had a legitimate policing reason, and that they considered or tried talking people down first. A PSD verdict of "proportionate and necessary" is significant: it closes the formal misconduct path, meaning the officers involved face no disciplinary charges or gross misconduct proceedings related to the use of force itself.

But the PSD did not give the incident a clean bill of health. The department flagged an "opportunity for learning around de-escalation," according to the BBC. That phrase is standard PSD language, used when conduct doesn't break the rules enough to warrant disciplinary action, but reviewers think officers could have handled things better. It typically leads to reflective practice—a conversation with a manager or training module—rather than formal punishment.

In PSD terminology, these two findings are not contradictory. "Proportionate and necessary" answers one question: was what happened lawful in the moment? "Opportunity for learning" answers another: could the situation have been handled without force at all? A force can say yes to both.

Why This Matters

Police contact with young people—particularly girls and young women—has come under closer examination in recent years. The Independent Office for Police Conduct and Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary have both published reports on how stop-and-search, restraint, and street-level policing affect young people and women differently. South Yorkshire Police, like most large police forces, automatically reviews any use-of-force incident involving under-18s, whether or not a formal complaint was made.

The de-escalation flag is the operationally significant part of this outcome. Police forces across England and Wales face ongoing pressure—from inspectorates, coroners' juries, and community review panels—to try talking situations down and assessing risk more carefully, especially with young people. When a PSD identifies a gap in de-escalation, even in a case where force was ultimately found lawful, it feeds into an institutional learning process that regulators watch closely for patterns across the force.

South Yorkshire Police has not said whether this single incident will lead to wider policy or training changes. Given the specific nature of the finding, change is not guaranteed. However, in a regulatory environment where individual PSD findings are collected and analyzed to spot force-wide trends, even one-off learning flags can influence how a police force adapts over time.

Whether the families of the teenagers filed a formal complaint, or whether the review was launched proactively by the police force itself, has not been confirmed in available reporting. That distinction affects how the public views the force's accountability, though it does not change the legal standing of the PSD's conclusions.