Criminal - An Officer's Arrest

Episode Date: April 5, 2024

Sultan Alam was the first Pakistani officer to join the traffic department of the Cleveland Police in the UK. He was harassed at work and complained to his senior officers about it. Then his coworkers showed up at his house to arrest him. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here. Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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That's BotoxCosmetic.com. That's BotoxCosmetic.com. The judge said in his judgment that were it not for the fact that these matters have been either admitted and or proven, they would almost defy belief. Sultan Alam decided he wanted to become a police officer when he was a teenager. One of my first jobs was in a factory, and I remember having got off the bus to walk the remainder of the journey to this factory. And there was a traffic car with all its, you know, lights flashing and sirens going, literally flying down the road next to me. And that sort of left an impression. I thought, wow, I was only 17, 16, 17 at the time.

I thought, wow, I'd love to drive one of those, you know. But he didn't apply to join the police right away. First, he got a different job, helping out at his uncle's general store. I was on my own. I shouldn't have been on my own, actually. Somebody else was supposed to come in the evening to help. This was sort of late afternoon, and three guys came in. One of them had a baseball bat. I was behind the counter, and there's very little space behind the counter. And initially, I picked up a, what you might term, a beer crate to try and protect myself, but he beat that out of my hands,

and then as another blow was coming down aimed towards my head, I put my left arm up. Instinctively, you know, it was all just instinct. None of it was... I wasn't certainly a martial arts expert at the age of 19, and my forearm was broken in two, and by that time they'd managed to empty the cash register and went off. He says some people saw what happened and called the police. Actually, they turned up first, even before an ambulance came.

And the police officers took one look at my arm, which had started to swell up to ridiculous levels. They took me to hospital in their police car. Sultan remembers the police visited him in the hospital to collect a statement. The group who had attacked him and robbed the store were arrested. There was no trial because they pleaded guilty, but I still had quite a bit of interaction with the police officers involved, so I thought, hmm, yes, I can do that job. And father was very proud when I joined the police service, extremely proud.

His father had been a police officer too, in Pakistan, before the family moved to England. Sultan Alam first joined the police force a few days before his 22nd birthday. He became an officer on the Cleveland Police Force. Today, the force covers an area of more than half a million people in northern England. At that time, there were very few, if I can put it that way, ethnic minority officers in the police service. I mean, when I joined Cleveland Police, I was the third non-white officer to join. What did that mean, you know, for you being a non-white officer?

Sometimes there were comments made, you know, you've been allowed in because we need to make up quotas. So sometimes you were not considered an equal in an educational level. It was normally the stereotypes, you know, Asians are known to have corner shops. So there would be jokes along those lines or, you know, taxi drivers. So there would always be some digs here and there, sometimes quite subtle, but you knew exactly what was being said in all honesty. But I chose at that time to try and make the best of a bad situation because this was a career that

I'd chosen for myself. Sultan became a traffic officer. He would watch for speeding cars, respond to accidents, or provide backup to other officers. Once, there was an issue with people driving stolen 4x4s. The police called them ram raiders. They would use the 4x4s to smash repeatedly into an ATM and break it off a wall. Then they would take the ATM and drive away in a different, faster getaway car. If police started to chase them, they would throw rocks and bricks at the police cars behind them. What was the culture like on the traffic department team? The culture on that department was very much a white male dominated department. Anyone who wasn't or didn't fit that description was, not by everyone, but certainly by some people, you were treated as an outsider and you needed to prove yourself. Sultan says people started to write fake or incorrect court dates

for his cases on the station calendar. Some of my coursework was ripped up. When I came out on duty one day, there's the contents of an ashtray in there covering my paperwork. Did you have an idea who was doing this? No. Honestly, don't know. Suspected one or two people. It would be wrong to say who,

because quite often you may suspect the wrong person, you know. One day, he came in to find an AIDS awareness poster with an image of two black men put in his locker. Sultan brought it to a senior officer. And I told him that, you know, I've had enough of this now. I've tried to, not to make a too big of an issue of it, but, you know, enough is enough. So he needed to do something about it. But the senior officer destroyed the poster. Things kept showing up on Sultan's locker. A co-worker found a racist drawing in his office mailbox. Sultan kept reporting the harassment to his boss.

And that particular senior officer's response to that, not directly to me, but how he chose to deal with it, was to try and get rid of me. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Sultan Alam remembers that several months after the racist drawing, his senior officer, Chief Inspector Jeffrey Evans, asked another officer to reopen an old investigation into Sultan. Sultan had gotten in trouble for breaking police protocols for driving. It had already been investigated and closed.

But after Sultan began reporting harassment, it was reopened. People started to try and discredit my driving. Let's face it, a traffic officer, a highway patrol officer must be able to use the tool of his trade, and the tool of his trade is a car. No one had ever reopened an old, completed investigation into an officer before. The officer who was reinvestigating Sultan wrote a report that he had an attitude problem, and that his driving was aggressive and unsympathetic. Chief Inspector Jeffrey Evans submitted the report to the police superintendent and recommended Sultan be transferred from the department.

And that's when I decided that that's it. Enough is enough. Now I need to take steps and protect myself. He had already started keeping a record of the incidents of harassment after the racist drawing. Prior to that, there were many things that went on that I didn't document. I mean, why didn't you just leave? I mean, when you started to see these things happening and escalating, why did you say, I'm not doing this, get me out of here? Well, why should I leave a department that, A, I am doing well with my work. Nobody could criticize my work ethic.

And I would then be giving in to the bullies. And certainly, if I can't deal with that behavior and confront it, then I shouldn't really be a police officer. Would you go home at night and talk about what was going on and what was being done? No. No, I kept that at work. talk about what was going on and what was being done? No. No, I kept that at work. Although, obviously, later on when things got really, really serious,

that was a different matter. But with these other incidents, no, I didn't. Sultan started trying to put together a formal complaint against his senior officers. He called the lawyers of the Police Federation, basically a union, asking for help, and they told him he should hear back soon. Weeks passed, and Sultan didn't hear anything. He knew there was a deadline to request a discrimination tribunal.

He had only three months to make a complaint. When he realized the deadline was coming up, he went ahead and completed the paperwork himself. Almost a year passed. In November 1994, there was a date set for the tribunal. The police federation had agreed to represent him. In the meantime, he was still going to work every day. Less than a month later, he had just finished eating dinner with his wife and two daughters

when there was a knock at the door. And no less than four detective sergeants were at my door. So I said, oh, we need to speak to you. He said, oh, must be serious. There's four of you. You'd better come in. The officers told Sultan they'd come to arrest him and that he didn't have to say anything. Anything he said could be used as evidence in court.

He knew all four of them from work. And from there I was taken to a police station. Yeah, it was quite a... It takes a while to process, actually, to be honest. You just think it's a mistake, it's just going to get sorted out. You know, it's just... Yeah, it didn't sink in. I was given the impression that I would be home that night, later on that night.

He remembers he was brought into a room for questioning. What were you thinking had happened? I couldn't figure it out, to be honest with you. I knew one thing I did say at the outset in my very first interview was that I know I'm being set up. I just need to figure out who. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. Each month, Apple Podcasts highlights one series worth your attention,

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After four of his colleagues came to his home to arrest him, Sultan Alam spent the night in jail. The officers said they were arresting him on suspicion of handling stolen goods. Police had been looking into an issue they called car wringing, when people would steal cars and change their identification numbers to try and resell them or use them for parts. The police were focusing on a taxi company owned by one of Sultan's friends. They said they'd received information that they were using stolen engines. They had also arrested several people from a garage that Sultan frequented.

He liked to buy and sell used cars and would go there to get work done. In the morning, the police officer in charge of the station where Sultan was held came to see him. Me and this chief inspector, we worked together for about six, seven months. So he came to see me as a welfare visit, brought me a cup of tea in a real cup, as opposed to a plastic cup. Sultan was released on bail, but he had to turn in his passport. He was immediately suspended from work and went to the police station to get his things. When you're suspended, if you go to police

premises, you have to be accompanied by another police officer. So it's like you're an outsider then, really, and I went to get personal stuff out of my locker. He says when he went back, one of his co-workers was there watching and started laughing at him. And I turned around and said, yeah, you can have your laugh now, but I will be back in uniform in this police station. When you got back home after picking up your stuff, I mean, what did you do? Did you just sit in kind of a state of shock?

Yeah, that would be the right word, actually, because initially you're trying to work out, well, A, what's happened, and B, who's behind it, and C, what to do about it. And then straight after that, things started to happen pretty much a few days apart. Sultan heard that Cleveland police had requested that his discrimination tribunal be put on hold, but their request was denied.

And the police federation, who had been working on Sultan's case for almost a year, told him they wouldn't be representing him anymore. And the officer who came to deliver that news in person gave me two choices. He said, you can either drop it or you can fund it for yourself. And I said, no, I have a third choice. I'll represent myself. Sultan was still on bail after his arrest, and he was still suspended from work at the

police department. He spent his time preparing his discrimination case. He had a thousand pages of documents to go through and needed to find witnesses. And then, on December 20th, officers came to arrest Sultan again. They told him they'd received information that he was planning to flee the country. And my response was, well, you've already got my passport, so how am I going to leave the country? And their response was, oh, well, you're an Asian, you can get another passport, or words to that effect. I thought, all right, OK. I didn't think passports were that easy to come by.

They took Sultan to the police station to be charged and then to court. That time they put me in handcuffs, even though I said, you know you don't need these. And the thing is, being a police officer, you know you don't need these. And the thing is, being a police officer, you know it's futile to resist. Because if they want to put handcuffs on you, they will. So you may as well just give in and wear them. But it was the ultimate indignity for me. This time, when Sultan was arrested, the police sent a press release to local journalists.

Sultan was released again on bail, and three weeks later, his discrimination tribunal began. He presented his case himself and called 18 witnesses. After several months, the tribunal found that in some cases, Sultan had been discriminated against, but that his complaint was out of time. It was submitted too long after the incidents had happened. While Sultan believes that the chief inspector, Jeffrey Evans,

tried to have him transferred out of the department because he was reporting harassment. The tribunal didn't agree. But Sultan also remembers that the judge did say that some of his senior officers seemed to have a, quote, partial and convenient loss of memory. Although the finding did not go in my favor, I felt quite vindicated in all honesty.

Once the tribunal was over, Sultan could focus on his criminal trial. He was trying to find evidence that someone had framed him. He thought that the accusations might have been coming from a man he had arrested for driving while disqualified, and who had threatened him and made complaints about him. But then, he found out a detail that changed how he was thinking about the whole thing. The person who arrested me and who was in charge of the investigation

was the brother-in-law of a senior officer I'd complained about. During Sultan's trial, prosecutors said he was in charge of a whole operation, buying stolen cars and using them for parts. And the one that they placed all their emphasis on was a particular car that I'm supposed to have received, a stolen car I'm supposed to have received on a particular day. But he says that was impossible. On that day and at that time, I was the acting sergeant on traffic. So I can't have been miles away in civilian clothes

when I was on duty in uniform at the police station. The prosecution said that Sultan owed multiple debts and that he needed to sell a particular car. If he didn't manage to sell it, he wouldn't be able to afford his mortgage and he would lose his house. Lots of people in England lost their houses that year because interest rates were unusually high. Sultan's defense attorney asked the prosecution why the police had begun to investigate Sultan in the first place. His attorney asked if there had been an informant who gave the police information that made them suspect Sultan, or if the police had been monitoring Sultan's movements outside of work and at the garage. The police just said they had been conducting two bigger investigations into stolen cars called Operation LSD and Operation Xerox.

The best evidence would have been photographs of me receiving a stolen vehicle. And I knew none of that existed because it never happened. They said the men at the garage had told them that Sultan was the ringleader, and that's why they had arrested him. But the defense argued that the other men hadn't said anything about Sultan during questioning until after Sultan was arrested. The defense accused one of the officers of destroying records of the investigation, like notes with car registration numbers.

He just said, oh, I had a look at them and I just threw them away. I didn't keep copies because I didn't feel the need to, which is quite unbelievable for other officers to sit there and listen to, because they know that's not true. You would always keep a record of whatever evidence you're given by somebody else. Sultan remembers the last day of the trial. I said to my wife in the morning when I left,

sometimes she used to come to court, but on that morning she didn't, quite deliberately. And I said, I'll see you at five o'clock, which is the normal time I would come home. And yeah, I just said my goodbyes and said, I'll see you at five o'clock, which is the normal time I would come home. And yeah, I just said my goodbyes and said, I'll see you at five. But Sultan was found guilty. When the verdict was read out, I thought, no, it's a mistake. Somebody's missed out the not and just read guilty.

So will somebody correct this? He was sentenced to 18 months in prison. An officer brought him paperwork to sign for his resignation from the police force. He came to my cell and said, well, you've been found guilty of criminal conduct, went through the formality. And I'm thinking to myself, you have sat there and listened to police officers tell lies. And now you have the audacity to come to me and you're demanding my resignation? What was his response? He walked away. Couldn't do anything else.

Sultan says he was kept isolated from other prisoners for his own safety. And the reason for that was because I'd put some of the people in there in prison. He says he would leave the cell for 30 minutes each day to to eat, shower, and exercise. The first few weeks, I'm still thinking that at any time now somebody's going to come and open the door and say, it was all our fault, sorry, you're free to go. After a month, he was transferred to another prison, and he did everything he could to keep people from finding out that he had been

a police officer. Sometimes his wife would come visit and bring their daughters. They were five and eight. My eldest daughter, she's the toughy, or she likes to think she is. She would never cry when it came time to leave. But my younger daughter, she had to be dragged away. Each time. But then, word got out that Sultan had been an officer.

One of the men Sultan shared a cell with asked him if it was true that he was ex-police. I thought I'll try and ride out this evening and ask for a transfer tomorrow. That was a mistake. Yeah, that was a mistake. He says he went to the cafeteria for dinner and came back to his cell around seven or eight. And around an hour or so later, about five, six, I think it was half a dozen other prisoners came into my room, filed in one by one, which was unusual. Initially, they were just talking to the rest of my roommates,

and eventually the subject turned to cars, and one of them turned, the leader of the gang, who had a knife. I know he had a knife because we've seen him carry a knife before, so he had a knife because we've seen him carry a knife before, so he had a knife under his belt. He turned the subject of cars to Volvos and said, you'd know about that, wouldn't you? At the time, police officers in England drove Volvos. It wasn't the polite kind of, you're an ex-police officer.

Let's just say they were a bit more blunt than that. And I denied it because that was my only safety net. I've got to keep that 1% doubt in his mind if I'm going to survive this. So I just kept denying it, denying it, denying it. I said, I don't know what you're talking about. It was a good half an hour, maybe longer. A prison officer doing the rounds opened the door, and he was my saving grace.

Sultan was transferred to another prison. He says that within a few days, he was recognized and had to be transferred again. He ended up on the opposite side of the country from his family. It made it very difficult for them to visit. After nine months, Sultan was released, but still under supervision. And the following week, on the Monday, I made a deliberate choice to take my daughters to school myself. I knew people would be looking, people would be staring, but so what? That's life.

Sultan got work as a taxi driver. But when he wasn't working, he was trying to find a way to prove his innocence. I became quite single-minded, really, in what I had to do so my every spare moment was spent either working or working on my case trying to gather the evidence to present to someone because I can't exactly go to Cleveland police and say your officers stitched me up it just wouldn't work it's a small force so I didn't want to take that risk because it would just, my belief was, it would get buried. Sultan and his wife divorced. A lot of his relationships fell apart.

But he stayed in touch with someone he had met in prison. I met a person there who was a solicitor. He was the only person in prison that I told who I was, and we had an opportunity to discuss my whole case. Eventually, very quickly actually, his conviction was overturned and he went back to practice. And he said, well, when you get out, get in touch with me. So Sultan did. After they were both released, they started working on Sultan's case together. They found out that the Cleveland police were under investigation for misconduct by police officers in another county.

So Sultan and the lawyer sent everything they had to those police officers. And they listened. Investigating officers went to Cleveland Police Headquarters to confiscate all of the boxes of evidence related to Sultan's case. Literally, they just loaded them onto a trolley and walked out with them and loaded them into a van and took them to their own headquarters before anybody knew what was going on. And so what happened?

Well, they found that there'd been surveillance. Even though officers had said during the trial that they didn't have any photos of Sultan, there were photographs of him in evidence, just going about his life. They found something else, too. Very early on in their investigation, when they were looking through the files, literally a sheet of paper fell out of a file.

And that's what is known as an informant contact sheet. But the police had said that they didn't have an informant. Had they admitted that there had been surveillance and there was an informant, they would have to reveal the identity of the informant. And they would have had to release the surveillance logs, photographs, and any other evidence connected with surveillance, which would have exonerated me. So the easiest way to not release that information was to deny that it existed. The officers who were investigating found the informant. They called him by the nickname Burnside to hide his identity.

They interviewed him, and he said that he had been told by one of the four officers to steal cars and try and plant evidence on me. The officers who had arrested Sultan were charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. The informant, Burnside, was called to testify against the officers at a pre-hearing. He said that one of the officers who arrested Sultan had told him that he wanted to catch Sultan in the act. Burnside said the officer asked him to get a stolen car and bring it to the garage. The officer wanted to find Sultan taking parts from it.

As to where Burnside would get the stolen car, he said the officer said he'd pay. The judge asked Burnside, what's the going rate for getting someone to steal a car? And Burnside replied, depends what type of drugs they're on. Burnside also said that he knew he would be arrested too, as the officer said, quote, to make it look good. He said the police told him to say no comment, and he would be released. He would be fined, and the police would cover

the fine. We'll be right back. Thank you. different approach. According to Noom, losing weight has less to do with discipline and more to do with psychology. Noom is the weight loss management program that focuses on the science behind food cravings and building sustainable eating habits. Noom wants to help you stay focused on what's important to you with their psychology and biology-based approach. Noom takes into account your unique biological factors, which also affect weight loss success. The program can also help you understand the science behind your eating choices and why you have those specific cravings, and it can help you build new habits for a healthier lifestyle. And since everyone's journey is different, so are your daily lessons. They're personalized to help you reach your goal. Stay focused on what's important to you with Noom's psychology and

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Just after the hearing of the four officers who had arrested him, Sultan Alam found out who the informant, Burnside, was. He was surprised. It was someone he only sort of knew. He would sometimes give rides to him in his taxi. I'd always thought it was somebody else. But his testimony didn't end up helping the prosecutors convict the officers. The judge in the case decided Burnside was a wholly unreliable witness.

The prosecution presented other evidence. Another person who'd been questioned by the police during the car theft investigation said, Straight away, they were asking about Sultan Alam. A lot of the talk was off-tape. One of them told me during one of these talks off-tape that Sultan Alam had made complaints about the police, a senior police officer, something to do with racism.

My general impression from the interviews was that they weren't bothered about me, but I got the impression they were all out to get Sultan Alam. The judge dismissed the whole case. Sultan was still living with a criminal record. It had made it hard to find work. He says he remembered the names of the best lawyers from when he was a police officer. They were the ones most people would ask to call when they were arrested.

And he found one who would take his case. Sultan wanted to get his conviction overturned. But when he finally went to court, no one opposed his claims. That's unusual, by the way. Very unusual. Normally they would defend any prosecution. The prosecution wrote that if they had known about the new evidence, they never would have pursued the case in the first place. The judge exonerated him.

If somebody had said to me back in 1997, when I got released from prison, that it's going to take you till 2007. It would have been, it seemed like a huge mountain to climb. I don't know whether I would have been able to do it. So I've just taken everything a stage at a time. After his name was cleared, Sultan went back and rejoined the same police force. It turned out that time for me had stood still, whereas other people's careers had moved on. And those people who I took under my wing as trainees when I was an experienced police officer

now outranked me. It had been 13 years since he'd been on the force. But he says everyone knew who he was. His case had been all over the news. The majority were OK, they were professional, some of whom I'd worked with before. They made an effort to come and say hi if they saw me in the canteen, cafeteria.

I think it was cathartic to go back into that environment, the environment that I knew that I had always aspired to. It was very important for me to do that. One of the officers who arrested Sultan was fined three days' pay. Another was given something called formal advice, which is one level below an official reprimand. Another was given informal advice. None were convicted. A judge later said that none of the officers involved has ever answered for his conduct in any meaningful way.

One of them was still working as an officer on the same force when Sultan rejoined. Did anyone ever apologize to you? Yes, the serving chief constable and the chief officers, they did apologize in private and in public. But the thing is, they weren't the ones who were in charge when all this was done to me. The ones who were in charge at that time had long since retired, collected their pensions, and gone on their way. Sultan went back to court again to sue Cleveland police. I said, I'm not going to settle. This needs to see the inside of a courtroom, and I want a judge to tell me what is right,

and I want a judge to tell them what they did wrong and how badly they did it wrong. In 2012, a judge ordered the Cleveland police to pay Sultan over 800,000 pounds. It had been four years since he proved his innocence and rejoined the police. But by then, Sultan had already retired. A few months after he returned to the police force, something happened. There was a self-defense exercise, and part of that involved handcuffing and obviously

you use handcuffs on each other we're all police officers and that just it was too much for me to it took me back to that time where being of being in prison and yeah I was I was just I was just a wreck, really. I don't mind admitting I had to be driven home from that one. He had a panic attack. Before that, he'd had a physical with the police doctor. The doctor knew why I was coming for my medical and he knew the publicity side of my case, but he didn't know the details. So when he interviewed me and then wanted to dig into some details and scratch beneath the surface I said well over the years I've learned to detach myself from from this I treat this as I am sort of standing outside. I don't get emotionally involved.

So I've had to detach myself for so many years in order to be able to cope with what I have to do and how often I have to do it regarding gathering the evidence, revisiting old details that nobody would normally want to revisit, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And he said, there's no way I'm allowing you back on operational duties until we've had a proper assessment.

Sultan was diagnosed with PTSD. A psychologist interviewed him and told him that he couldn't continue to be an officer. He went into medical retirement. It's still a cause of pain, in all honesty, because that lost career, I will never be able to recover. So there are things there that are in the unfinished business box, if I can put it that way. But I've come to terms with it,

because I don't have any power over it. In 2016, Sultan announced that he was running for office as Cleveland Police Commissioner, a political position overseeing the police force and holding the chief police constable, quote, to account. Some people thought he was running for revenge, but he said it wasn't about that. I have a particular set of skills that nobody else had.

I'd seen the police service and the judicial system from every angle, and I believe that stood me in good stead to hold the police service to account um wasn't a bad showing uh twelve and a half thousand votes did you question the the court justice system at any point um no the the court is only as good as the evidence presented to them. So the very same judicial system under which I was found guilty is the very same one which exonerated me. So the system works. It's the people who work for the system who are wrong. Sultan Alam's story was one of many headlines about the Cleveland police.

We reached out to Cleveland police for comment on the story, but didn't hear back. In 2012, their chief constable was arrested and fired for gross misconduct. A local paper published leaked information about an internal Cleveland police investigation that had found they were institutionally racist. But then the police started illegally monitoring the phone of the journalist who'd published the article, trying to find out their sources.

An Asian officer confessed to leaking the information. The Cleveland police started spying on him and launched a criminal investigation into him. Soon after, he left the job. In 2019, Cleveland police was called the worst police force in England. A government office found that it was the first police force ever to receive inadequate ratings in every area that they measure. The force was placed under, quote, special measures, which ended just last year. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Thank you. and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. This episode was fact-checked by Michelle Harris.

Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com and sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. We hope you'll join our new membership program, Criminal Plus. Once you sign up,

you can listen to Criminal episodes without any ads and you'll get bonus episodes with me Thank you. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminalpodcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The number one selling product of its kind with over 20 years of research and innovation. Botox Cosmetic, Adabotulinum Toxin A, is a prescription medicine used to temporarily make moderate to severe frown lines, crow's feet, and forehead lines look better in adults. Effects of Botox Cosmetic may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness may be a sign of a life-threatening condition.

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