A woman subjected to a violent police search in northern New South Wales is fighting for an investigation into the police involved.
Janel Boekeman was punched in the face three times at Armidale Police Station in September 2009 during a search which the District Court found was unlawful and involved excessive force.
The ABC has obtained CCTV footage of the incident which the court heard shows veteran policeman Nigel Kentish punching the mother of three, while a fellow officer holds her down in the presence of two others.
In the moments before, Senior Constable Kentish can be seen putting his hands on Ms Boekeman’s neck before she falls against the wall.
Another officer holds her down and during the struggle she kicks Mr Kentish before he responds by hitting her.
“The force behind it was horrible,” Ms Boekeman said.
“To hit a girl while she’s held down, that to me is just disgusting. That’s beyond excessive force.”
Ms Boekeman was convicted of assaulting police at the station but District Court judge Robert Toner quashed the verdict in 2011, finding “the police were determined to punish (Ms Boekeman) for her behaviour earlier in the night”.
Ms Boekeman had been arrested after a confrontation with Mr Kentish.
She clashed with the officer at a friend’s house when he came with two fellow police to arrest a man over an unrelated home invasion.
The 33-year-old was later convicted of a minor assault on Mr Kentish and resisting arrest.
The court heard Ms Boekeman had refused to be searched by the policeman at the police station because she claimed he had assaulted her during their earlier clash.
However, he hit her and searched her anyway.
Judge Toner found: “There was no reasonable basis for police to suspect that anything she was carrying then represented a danger to police or to the appellant. Thus the search was unlawful.”
Ex-officers should be investigated, lawyer says
Ms Boekeman sued the police and recently received a compensation pay-out after a three-and-a-half-year legal battle.
But she says the fight is not over.
“[Mr Kentish] most definitely should be charged,” she said.
“That would be justice to me because he is another citizen of the community and he deserves what everyone else gets.”
NSW Police say they did not investigate the case because Mr Kentish left the force nine months before the District Court judgement was handed down.
A spokesman says a regional complaints management team initiated a complaint and reviewed the footage as a result of the judgement.
“However, the matter did not proceed to investigation as the officer had already exited from the NSW Police force… in December, 2010,” he said in a statement.
But Ms Boekeman’s lawyer, Peter Kemp, says the matter is unresolved and all the officers involved in the incident should be investigated.
“It seems that the only organisation we have that can do anything about it is the Police Integrity Commission (PIC),” he said.
“This is not just an isolated case. There are other matters occurring all the time.
“[People] might be aware of another case that occurred recently up in Ballina.”
Incident not referred to Integrity Commission because officer left force
In that case, 24-year-old Indigenous man Corey Barker was allegedly set upon by officers at Ballina police station in 2011 and then wrongly accused of assaulting them.
The incident has been the subject of a PIC inquiry.
A NSW Police spokesman says Ms Boekeman’s case “wasn’t specifically referred to the Police Integrity Commission because the officer had left the organisation.”
“The matter was registered on the complaints system, Catsi, which the oversight agencies have access to,” he said.
The PIC has declined to shed any light on its involvement.
In a statement, commissioner Bruce James QC said: “With the exception of its public investigations, the commission does not publicise its reasons for investigating, or not investigating, individual matters of alleged police misconduct.”
Mr Kentish and the NSW Government declined to comment.
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