Constable fined

Press, 10 July 1979, Page 7

Constable fined

PA Hamilton A constable has been sentenced in the Magistrate’s Court at Hamilton after admitting two charges of assault and one of wilful damage while off duty.

He is Ronald John Flood, aged 25, a constable stationed at Hamilton.

Mr T. B. Mooney, S.M., fined him S2OO, and ordered him to pay $177 compensation for damage to a rental car hired by the complainant. According to the police prosecutor, Senior-Sergeant I. C. Paterson, the incident occurred outside a cabaret in Alexandra Street, Hamilton, on May 11, after Flood and his wire had been socialising with the complainant, John Trevor Watson and his friends. He said that soon after midnight the complainant had gone out of the cabaret to the street and had invited the defendant’s wife to join him for a cigarette in a rental car hired from an Otara firm.

According to the complainant the car had been parked near the entrance to the cabaret and the wife had left the car after 10 minutes. However, subsequent inquiries had shown that the period had been considerably longer.

About five minutes later Flood had approached the complainant, who had still been seated in the car, and had asked him to get out.

When he refused the defendant had broken the driver’s window, kicked a car door causing considerable damage to the panel, and had then wrenched it open, damaging the hinges.

He had then reached into the car and had struck the complainant several times in the face before being dragged away by several persons who had gathered round. When a police patrol had arrived at the scene there had been no trace of Flood but the police had found the complainant and had directed him to the station to lodge a complaint. While the complainant had been waiting in the police

watchtower foyer, Flood had arrived and after talking with the complainant and ordering him to leave had struck him in the mouth, breaking a lip and a tooth cap. When arrested Flood had nothing to say in answer to charges. He had joined the police in 1977 and had been on annual leave at the time of the offences. Defence counsel (Mr E. O. K. Blaikie) said his client had acted under extreme provocation after having noticed his wife being dropped off from the rental car down the street from the cabaret. After the first incident, Flood had gone to the police station for a purpose other than to see the complainant but on seeing him there had been taunted by comments about his wife. Flood had been off-duty at the time and invited the Magistrate to treat him like any other aggrieved husband similarly provoked. The Magistrate said he accepted the fact of extreme provocation but he could nevertheless take nothing but a most severe view of the second assault in the precincts of a police station. Self-restraint was part of a policeman's training.