OZschwitz: Scum poLICE plant knife after their bloody assault, court told

POLICE covered up for one of their officers who assaulted a man in Wagga Wagga and planted a carving knife at the scene to incriminate the victim, a court heard yesterday.

Allan Hathaway is suing the state of NSW for aggravated damages over the 2003 incident, which resulted in his spending several weeks in hospital with a broken hand and arm, double vision in one eye and facial injuries that needed stitches and an internal plate.

It became the subject of an investigation by the Police Integrity Commission in 2005 and the officer was charged with inflicting grievous bodily harm to Mr Hathaway, but he was acquitted earlier this year.

Police had followed Mr Hathaway, a disqualified driver, to a dead end road on a hot February day. He abandoned the car, ran through some unit blocks and jumped over backyard fences while they gave chase on foot.

He tried to hide in somebody's outdoor toilet, but when the door would not close he ran into a nearby house and hid under a bed.

Soon afterwards he saw the feet of an officer, who turned out to be Constable Christopher Jackson, enter the room and check some cupboards before discovering his hiding place.

"He said: 'Get out from under the bed or I'll lodge two bullets in your head,' " Mr Hathaway told the Supreme Court yesterday.

Constable Jackson then tipped over the bed and allegedly sprayed Mr Hathaway with capsicum spray, before striking him with his baton about the head, arm and knees.

"I could feel the blood running down my face," Mr Hathaway said.

"I could feel I was still being hit by the baton. I feared I was going to be killed."

Other officers entered the room and placed Mr Hathaway under arrest.

But almost immediately after he arrived at the police station, he was taken by ambulance to Wagga Wagga Base Hospital and later to Albury Base Hospital for surgery on his face.

Mr Hathaway's barrister, Ian Roberts, SC, said an incident which resulted in a person being transported to hospital would usually lead to police declaring that a "critical incident" had occurred and a forensic examination of the scene would be carried out.

But instead, the officers called in a cleaning company with whom they had no previous relationship and the bedroom, which was covered in blood, was cleaned within hours of the incident, Mr Roberts said.

The cleaners discovered a kitchen carving knife hidden among some bed clothes, which was later used in evidence against Mr Hathaway.

But a forensic analysis of the knife found none of Mr Hathaway's DNA on it, despite the fact that he was sweating and bleeding from his dash through the streets and had traipsed blood through the house.

"We submit that the … knife was planted," Mr Roberts said.

"It must have been done so for the purpose of obscuring the fact that it must have been obvious that Jackson had viciously assaulted the plaintiff."

LNK

OZschwitz: Scum poLICE plant knife after their bloody assault, court told

OZschwitz: Scum poLICE plant knife after their bloody assault, court told

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Via AnCaps: Law & Enforced Unnatural Order