Witness Alleges Police Made Attack On Accused

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31044, 27 April 1966, Page 3

Witness Alleges Police Made Attack On Accused

/Seu) Zealand Press Association)

AUCKLAND, April 26. An Auckland public accountant told Mr L. G. H. Sinclair, S.M., today that he had seen two policemen force a man to the ground with a “brutal gesture.”

The accountant, Alexander Maxwell Gunn, was giving evidence for Christopher Patrick Mooney, a 39-year-old labourer, who denied charges of using obscene language, resisting a constable in the execution of his duty, and wilfully damaging a constable’s watch strap.

The Magistrate reserved his decision. The hearing began on Friday.

Mr K. Ryan appeared for Mooney and Sergeant B. P. Donnelly prosecuted. Gunn said he was working late at his office overlooking High street on April 14. At 9.45 p.m. he heard a cry for help. He went to his window and saw a uniformed policeman examining the contents of a bag or box He saw the uniformed policeman and another drag a man. without much force from the rear of a police car parked in High street. The man was left lying on the footpath. “He lay there almost completely inert,’’ said Gunn. Another police car arrived and two men in mufti stepped from it, said Gunn. They walked up to the man on the pavement and picked him up by the shoulders. “Forced To Ground” “They raised him six to nine inches off the street and then, with what I consider was a brutal gesture, they forced him to the pavement.

“I was quite horrified. He fell like a concertina, landing on his rear quarters. “Immediately I rushed to the lift and went down to the street as quickly as possible,” said Gunn. He approached the group and said to one policeman: “How dare you attack any man in this way?” He said he told him that in a civilised country no man deserved to be treated as though he were a wild animal. Gunn said he told the policemen he intended to report the matter, which he later did. Called Police Mooney said in evidence that he had been walking down Queen street on the evening in question when he was struck by one of a group of youths. He sent a man to call the police. Three minutes later he saw a policeman beckoning him from a patrol car. Mooney said that after being taken in the patrol car to High street, the policeman in the passenger’s seat got out. opened the rear door and hit him with his fist in the ribs. Mooney said: “They pulled me out of the car by the legs. The driver hit me across the shoulder. Both of them flung me on the footpath. I was lying face down on the footpath and they started beating me across the back." He said that a man with glasses whom he now knew as Detective-Constable Carrucan, came along and told him to get up. He tried to but fell back. “He and the driver of the patrol car picked me up bodi y by both arms, lifted me about four feet in the air and dropped me. They did this about five times. I started shouting for help as loud as I could.” Charges Denied After being taken to the Central Police Station and being placed in a padded cell. Mooney claimed he was seen by a doctor who ordered him to be taken to Auckland Hos- , pital for an X-ray, At no stage of the incident had he used obscene language. He denied kicking any of the policemen. At the hearing on Friday,

a constable, Russell James Martin, said he was in a patrol car in Queen street at 10 p.m. on April 14 when he saw Mooney wave at the car. Mooney demanded to know why he had to wait 15 minutes for the police to arrive and said that he had a complaint to make. He was invited to sit in the back of the car and discuss his complaint, said Martin. “He lay down on the back seat and shouted in a loud voice: ‘Help! help! I’ve been assaulted.’ “He shouted this several times,” said Martin. After driving into High street and parking the patrol car, Martin said, he opened the back door and asked Mooney to get out. Mooney then shouted: “Help! Help! I’ve been assaulted and the police are assaulting me.” Martin said Mooney slid along the back seat and sat on the footpath and then lay on the road between the patrol car and the footpath. Martin said obscene language was then used by Moo-

ney, and he was told he was under arrest.

Passers-by had gathered and vehicles were stopping. When Martin, with the help of a policeman from another patrol car, tried to place Mooney in the car, he “struggled violently, lashing out with his fist and feet.”

A civilian approached, said Martin, and was taken aside. Cross-examined by Mr Ryan, Martin denied that the man said Mooney was hurt and an ambulance should be called. Martin denied he called the civilian a liar and he denied that any policeman had picked up Mooney and hurled him to the footpath. Another constable, Barry Henry Bidois, who was the driver of the patrol car, gave similar evidence. A detective constable, Andrew Digman Carrucan, said he was present at the incident in High street. Cross-examined by Mr Ryan, he said Gunn came up to him and said: “How dare you assault this man.” At this, said Carrucan, Mooney had got up from where he was lying in the gutter and said: “Thank you, sir."

The Magistrate said an attack had been made on the Police Force's methods in dealing with the accused. He would refer to this when he gave his decision next Monday.