On Monday 05 February 2007 I had the bad luck to be assaulted.
Why does this warrant even the slightest interest in a country where child killings are commonplace, gang-style executions are frequent, mindless drug-fuelled murders are perpetrated in corner dairies and assaults are as common as grains of sand on the beach?
Firstly, because it happened to me ~ and secondly because the person who assaulted me was a cop, on duty, in broad daylight and in the middle of the city.
And he got full support from his colleagues ~ at least 4 of them.
The cop’s name is Sachin Nair, he’s a constable and the photographs attached to this article are of him. He has a facebook page and I invite you to visit it ~ and, having sussed out his photographs, I invite you to ask yourself if this is the sort of rogue cop you think should be policing New Zealand communities.
Or communities anywhere for that matter.
It would seem from the photographs that he is drunk as often as not. I wouldn’t know whether this affects his ability to do his job but perhaps it’s a question worth asking.
Or is he merely an example of the type of man who is attracted to the booze, rape and bash culture that we regularly see the police in New Zealand responding to and which they are frequently accused of perpetuating within their own ranks.
Remember Rickard?
Remember Shipton?
Remember Schollum?
This is my story.
I will be publishing others.
Including theirs.
My experience began when, sitting in my car at a red light in the right turning lane, a police car – lights flashing – pulled in one car behind me. A Caucasian police officer walked alongside the passenger door of my car and tapped on the window indicating I should pull over around the corner.
This was in the middle of the city at 9am on a sunny, summer, Monday morning in early February 2006.
I did as the officer requested as soon as the lights changed (a few minutes – it’s a slow cycle), and stopped about half way along the roadway parking area behind a local gymnasium. I assumed I had been pulled over for some traffic offence or other but couldn’t not recall what it might have been.
I got my driver’s license from my purse and readied myself for the arrival of a second officer by winding the driver’s window down. I’d seen this second officer, the driver of the police car, in my rear vision mirror.
When the officer arrived I offered him my driver’s licence which he said he didn’t want.
He said he had received a complaint about me and would I get out of the car and go over onto the footpath away from my vehicle. I said ‘I don’t have to, do I?’ to which he replied ‘no’. It’s the law in New Zealand that, when asked to get out of your car by a police officer, you can refuse.
At this point I told the officer my age, my gender status, where I was employed and that I had poor hearing. I told him that, if we were to speak on the footpath, I would not be able to hear him above the traffic. At 70 decibels I have 47% hearing in my left ear and 56% in the right, this qualifying me to be defined as marginally hearing disabled.
I invited the officer to get into my car to speak to me and he said no. I then said that I would get into the police car to speak with him and he rejected this offer also.
At this point the officer walked away from my car and I’m not sure where he went but he disappeared from view.
I was, at this time, concerned but neither upset nor distressed. In fact, I felt quite calm and my only wish was to get the matter sorted as quickly as possible as I had an important work meeting at 10.00am.
I sat alone in my car for a moment before deciding that I should comply with the officer’s request and get out of the car despite my concerns and the difficulties I always experience when trying to hear everyday speech in heavy traffic. As the officer who had spoken to me appeared to be from the Indian sub-continent I wasn’t altogether sure whether my hearing might be further compromised by an accent.
My recent experiences with the police had not been positive and I was hesitant to engage in any sort of public dialogue which, given the content of the following paragraphs, would not seem an unreasonable response to be experiencing at this time.
I live in an inner city apartment with my spouse and our small son who was, at that time, three years old.
Early one morning a quite serious fight broke out the square below our bedroom window following a nearby gallery event. My spouse telephoned the police as fights like this are a fairly regular and I have, on a number of occasions, felt it necessary to intervene to stop individuals being seriously injured prior to the arrival of the police. On this occasion a neighbour from the floor above, in an attempt to stop the fight, emptied a pot full of water on the participants but, unfortunately for us, the pot was dropped from the window as well.
A participant in the fight threw the pot back at our neighbour’s window but instead it went through our bedroom window showering glass over the bed and also over our young son. I was watching the fight from another room when this happened while my spouse was on the phone making a second call to the police. The breaking window woke our son and showered him with glass. This left the whole family very shaken and, as you can imagine, we had an extremely distressed child. Despite his being uninjured our son talked about this occurrence for many months and was not keen on sleeping in this room or even in his own bed any more.
By the time the police arrived the participants in the fight had fled and another group of partying young people had arrived. They appeared to be young Koreans and had no idea what the officers were asking them as they spoke little English. I went down to the square to help clear things up for the police as it was our apartment that had been affected.
I won’t deny my trepidation at this as the first question is invariably ‘where’s your husband’ and explaining the truth is sometimes worse than saying nothing.
In attempting to explain what had happened to one of the officers I was aggressively threatened with arrest for obstruction as though I was the perpetrator of the event and not one of the victims. It was extremely unpleasant and totally unnecessary. I felt intimidated and had to go to another officer in a patrol car to get assistance as I felt my safety was threatened, not by any pot hurling loon but by this thuggish and aggressive constable. The incident concluded with the second officer coming to our apartment to apologise and to tell us that we would be contacted during the following week regarding the incident.
No such contact was ever made.
In the light of what follows I am not surprised.
To return to the 05 February 2007 incident:
Having decided to risk leaving my car I wound up the driver’s side window, picked up my mobile phone from the passenger seat and got from the car, moving to where the officer had indicated I should go which was close to the wall at the back of the gym.
It is worth noting that the footpath at this point is as wide as any in the city.
I decided to phone my spouse who was employed as the national manager of a not-for-profit nearby and let her know that I had been pulled over – I had a matter of minutes before dropped her at work – as we always send each other an ‘I love you have a good day’ text when we first arrive at work and I didn’t know how long I was going to be detained.
I quick-dialled her number and faced back up the street towards where she works and, when she answered, I told her I loved her and that I’d been pulled over by the police.
At no point did I hear the officer tell me not to make a phone call and it was only when I subsequently asked him how I had resisted arrest that he said that, when he saw me making the call, he had told me not to make it. There was no suggestion that he told me more than once and my personal belief – and the belief of witnesses – is that this instruction was never issued.
The first I knew that there was an issue was sensing someone running at me from my left.
Before I could respond more than by half turning to my left the officer put me in a headlock with his right arm and endeavoured to get my phone with his right hand.
I held my phone away from him – it is a flip phone and I was concerned it would be broken – and the officer responded immediately by grabbing me by the hair with his right hand at the back of my head (I wore my hair long at that time) and attempting to hip throw me over his left hip.
At this point I dissociated (I am a sexual abuse survivor and this is a technique that I resort to in times of physical and other threat) and for the remainder of the time I was being assaulted I remained in this state.
The officer tried again to hip throw me and again I stepped out of his throw – an attempt on my part to avoid the consequences of having my head propelled into the pavement which was to be the obvious outcome of being held by the hair and driven into the ground in this way.
The third time the officer attempted to hip throw me I said to myself, in my dissociated state, ‘just let it happen and get it over with’ and I allowed myself to be thrown to the ground.
My upper forehead was thrust into the pavement causing considerable abrasions and I lost consciousness.
When I regained consciousness the first things I saw on the footpath in front of me were my phone and my sun glasses which had been on the top of my head. For a moment I could not recall where I was or what had happened.
My left cheek was against the pavement and the officer had his knee on my neck. He had my right arm forced up behind my back and my left arm was extended out from my shoulder and up in the air. My left wrist was handcuffed and the officer had hold of the loose cuff and was pulling it up in the air so as to extend my arm as far from my body as it would go. The cuff on my left wrist was locked in such a way as to be stuck on the two bone protrusions of my wrist and I was in considerable pain from this.
As the officer pulled the loose handcuff up in the air he was shouting ‘Put your hands behind your back, put your hands behind your back!’
It seemed to me in my dissociative state – there is a reason for repeatedly saying this – that he was reciting a script for an audience while, in fact, doing the exact opposite of what he was saying, thereby giving the impression that I was stopping him handcuffing me when in fact I could not comply with what he was asking because of the reality of what he was doing.
I responded by shouting, ‘I can’t. You’re pulling my arm. Stop pulling it and I will.’
After what seemed like at least half a minute the officer thrust my left hand behind my back and cuffed it together with the other and demanded aggressively a number of times that I get up. I told him I was unable to do so because of my knee – I suffered from acute osteoarthritis of the left knee and was booked into hospital for a total left knee replacement two weeks later. The officer responded by forcing my cuffed hands upwards and dragging me to my feet. I was then dragged by the cuffs to face the street and arrested for resisting arrest.
Because of the head injury sustained during this incident the planned surgery had to be delayed until 20 March when it was finally undertaken.
By the time I was dragged to my feet there were at least two officers present.
The arresting officer then told me my rights. During his quickly recited words a truck went by and I didn’t hear most of what he recited. I politely asked that he repeat what he had said after the first sentence but he refused, saying that I’d get to read them myself ‘back at base’. It seemed important to me at this point that I know accurately what my situation was.
At this juncture I asked the officer who had arrested me if his violent actions towards me had anything to do with my gender and he said that he didn’t ‘judge people’ – a statement he made repeatedly once we were in his car – and that he knew how to deal with ‘people like you’ as he had a lot of dealings with ‘such people’.
After this I was pushed into the back of the police car.
I was left in the back of the car, cuffed in a way that meant I was unable to move my left wrist without extreme pain and that I was unable to do anything but face the door in a very confined and uncomfortable way.
By this time my spouse had arrived, having run from her workplace in heels to be with me having heard what was happening over the phone. Not knowing where I was but only that I was being bashed she called the police, an interesting irony considering who was doing the bashing. She was told the police were already on the scene.
She was not allowed to see or speak to me but was interviewed by the police. I understand from speaking with her that she told the officer who interviewed her (the arresting officer’s partner) that we were a couple and that his response to her was to say that he was used to dealing with ‘people like that’.
After 10 minutes or so in the patrol car alone, the officer who had arrested me and his partner got into the car. I asked to be uncuffed and was told no.
I then suggested to the officers that I posed no threat to two fit young policemen. I suggested that they consider the power balance in the car and was told by the Caucasian officer that he and his ‘mate’ looked after each other and that he had had a call from a member of the public saying that his partner was in trouble and that was why he had responded.
I asked how his partner could possibly have been in trouble when he was on top of me with his knee on my neck.
Again I was told that the officers looked after each other at which point I said that I spent 8 years in the NZ Army and had some idea of what looking out for your mates was all about. I again asked about the power balance in the car and told the young officer who had arrested me that, in my opinion, he had over-responded to whatever he thought was happening and that his behaviour towards me was grossly unnecessary. I was calm and polite throughout, always calling the officers ‘constable’ ‘officer’ or ‘sir’, but advocated for myself in a firm but respectful manner. I repeated my hearing disability and asked to speak to my spouse.
I was told I could not.
The arresting officer then took a statement from me and, once it was written down, he told me I was a liar, that my statement was false and that the statements of my spouse and the person who had made the initial complaint disagreed totally with what I had said. While not having any idea what the initial compliant was or what the complainant had said but knowing now that it somehow involved violence towards my spouse, I knew that the statement my spouse had made would have been the truth and would have agreed with mine and stated clearly that, while we were having a verbal spat, there had been no violence. Her statement – taken less than 10 minutes after I was pulled over and after she had run down a steep hill in high heels to be with me – included the statement that, if violence had occurred, she would have been at home packing and not there supporting me.
At this point I was driven to the police station and told that ‘the boss’ had said I would also be charged with obstruction but that there would be no other charges.
I was asked to give up all my property – jewellery, earrings, phone, spectacles, sun glasses, belt etc – and then searched. A woman watch house officer then offered me either a female or male officer to undertake a body search. I said I didn’t care who did it as I had nothing further on me. The male arresting officer then put rubber gloves on and undertook a perfunctory search.
His distaste was palpable.
I was then given a print copy of my rights and my statement and the opportunity to read and sign them. I asked for my glasses so I could read the text but this request was refused despite the fact that this happened at the watchhouse desk and my glasses were being kept there.
The fact that I was unable to read the two documents but was required to sign them seemed to cause some amusement. I eventually signed the papers after getting ‘assurance’ that the statement was the same as that read to me in the back of the police car and that the ‘rights’ document was the standard one.
By now I was feeling sick and the headaches had started.
At no point was I asked how I was or whether I required a doctor. Had I been asked if I wanted to be examined I would have said yes.
I was subsequently fingerprinted and put in a cell. Later I was shifted to another cell which I shared with a male prisoner.
I was transported to the courts with the male prisoner in a police car with the arresting officer and his partner who seemed to find the situation amusing with the partner telling the arresting officer twice ‘Sachin, get your shit together’.
In the hallway behind the courts the arresting officer advised me to plead guilty straight away and I’d probably get off but with the worst punishment being a $100 fine. I had at this point neither spoken to a lawyer nor been offered the opportunity to contact one.
In the hallway behind the courts the arresting officer told me that, if I wanted to hit my partner I should do so in private and not in public. People, he told me, didn’t like seeing other people getting hit in public. He said ‘we don’t like domestic violence so don’t do it where you can be seen’.
I was disgusted by what he said and told him, in response, that my spouse and I have a four and a half year old son who has never been smacked or even shouted at. And that this reflected our attitude to life and to each other.
Violence in any situation is never an option for us.
I was then put in a cell and waited for the court hearing.
I was given the opportunity of speaking to a duty solicitor and did so and the result was an application for diversion.
The police, who have the exclusive control of the diversion process, refused on the grounds that I was ‘known to police’. In what context they would not say but I was astonished at this statement as it is over 10 years since I have even had a parking ticket!
My brief appearance in court saw me charged with resisting arrest and obstructing the police in the execution of their duty – two separate charges.
This in itself was interesting in that I was arrested for resisting arrest before I’d been told I was going to be arrested and before I was charged with obstruction. Legally, it has to be the other way around.
In fact I neither resisted arrest nor obstructed the officer and know full well that these charges were laid simply to justify my beating.
Shortly after my experience the lawyer for a man who had been tasered following a verbal dispute with an officer was interviewed on television and I recall the lawyer saying ‘contempt of cop is not a crime in New Zealand’.
At no time did I even bad-mouth Constable Nair nor any of his colleagues but I can assure you that my contempt for them is now rating at a level much higher than before.
Sadly my son, age 5, is deeply fearful of the police after this experience and hides whenever he sees a police car. Before my beating he was encouraged to believe the police were there to help and support him and could be trusted. He no longer believes this and cannot be encouraged out of his new, fear-based understanding.
On her return from work at the end of the day on 05 February 2007, my spouse was concerned at the state I was in and insisted we go to the hospital to have me checked out. I was in shock, had been vomiting regularly all afternoon and was cut and bruise, the bruises on my knees are still clearly visible 4 weeks after the beating. My concussion and CT scan results were documented by the hospital.
I was still having headaches and nosebleeds resulting directly from the beating I received four weeks later.
Of course, this was just the beginning of the drama.
During the next week I found a lawyer (I didn’t have one) and, since I was charged with offenses under the Crimes Act I approached a criminal lawyer to defend me. She immediately told me the cost and that I didn’t really need a person of her qualifications and that she needed to be instructed by a solicitor before she could consider representing me.
I really felt comfortable with her so the solicitor was arranged and she accepted the brief.
After I had told her my story and my spouse had contributed her part her first question was ‘were there any witnesses?’
Of course there were.
Dozens, if not hundreds.
Her suggestion?
Get a private detective to find some and get statements. She even had a suggestion as to who we might use – an ex cop whose trust in the police was very low.
To digress a moment, my naivety was such that I found myself saying such things as ‘at least we can trust the justice system’ to which my lawyer responded ‘I don’t’.
Her response to my saying that the police would have to tell the truth in court was also a surprise: ‘Hardly’, she said, ‘they lie all the time’.
And so it transpired.
The private detective did his work and came up with a number of witnesses most of whom, while they agreed that what had happened was awful, simply wouldn’t agree to appear in court.
I can fully understand that.
He did, however, find some who were so disgusted by what they had witnessed that they were prepared to engage with the system and they stayed the course to the end.
My first appearance in court was to set a date for the trial and this was set for 25 July 2007, five months away.
In the meantime I underwent the surgery that had been delayed by the concussive head injury and I was in recovery mode from this on 25 July when the defended hearing was to be held.
As with most things there are good judges and bad judges. In my case we got the judge we wanted least, an elderly, previously retired Rumpole of a man with a double-edged reputation: totally supportive of the police and rabidly anti-women. Not a good mix in my case as I’m sure you will agree.
I can’t remember what the weather was like on the day of the hearing but I can vividly recall being up most of the previous night – stress-related vomiting.
We arrived at the court and gained some idea of the time-frame for the day only to be told eventually – after two hours waiting – that the arresting officer, that same Constable Sachin Nair – was sick and would not be coming to court.
The outcome?
The hearing was rescheduled for 22 October 2007, a full nine months after the events that had precipitated it.
I don’t recall anyone actually believing that Nair was ill but my lawyer put the only positive spin on the events that was possible. ‘Maybe’, she said, ‘we’ll get a different judge next time’.
We didn’t, of course.
On our way from the court we met a woman police officer who had been in court during the brief exchange of information. She stopped us and asked ‘Who was the Arresting Officer in your case?’.
I replied ‘Constable Sachin Nair.’
She responded ‘Why am I not surprised’.
We prepared again for the hearing on 22 October in exactly the same manner ~ right down to the pre-match vomiting!
I rescheduled my character witnesses and the two people acting as witnesses on my behalf were ready to appear.
In the meantime – eventually – the Nair statement of events as he recalled them was provided to my lawyer and I received a copy. This was late in the week preceding the hearing as seems to be the practice of NZ Police who have a questionable record when it comes to legal disclosure.
It’s fair to say that Nair’s version of events differed substantially from mine and those of my witnesses but I was happy about this in a way because it reinforced my understanding of what had happened to me and what his motivation was. His version of what happened was not only at variance with the witness statements and my recollection written down in the 24 hours following but was also at odds with the irrefutable telecommunications records of Vodafone.
As indicated in my earlier summation of events I phoned my spouse to let her know I’d been pulled over and when she heard me screaming ‘I’m on the ground being hit’ she ended that call and phoned the police.
The police records indicate the time I was pulled over and the time my spouse phoned them by which time I was bashed up and being arrested. Between those times I made my call to my spouse. All of these times are recorded and there is no way in the world that these electronic records equate to what Nair says he did, what he says I did and what subsequently happened to me – it is quite simply impossible for him to have, for example, quoted long sections from the Domestic Violence Act to me, asked me not to make a phone call a number of times and read me my rights before arresting me within the 22 seconds it took between me making my call to my spouse and her ending her call to the police.
Nor is it possible for me to have screamed the abuse at him that he accused me of and threatening him in the way he says I did with witnesses 20m away who actually heard me say calmly ‘I’m calling my partner’ when asked what I was doing. Hearing that suggests that if I was screaming at Nair then the witnesses would have heard me doing that too – and of course the things I said would have taken up more than the 22 second time window in themselves.
And why did he feel it necessary to restrain me?
Because I tried to attack him and he was frightened. Or so he said. I can see his point. After all he was a fit, young male police officer in his mid 20′s whereas I was then a 61 year old, overweight woman academic with mobility problems. Perhaps it was my being transgendered that truly freaked him out. If so, I can see his point. The trasngered elderly can be terribly scary creatures.
But back to the story …
All this made me feel that I was vindicated in defending the charges and justified in my belief that Nair wasn’t only a thug but an unprincipled liar as well.
So we went to court at 9.30am on the 22nd of October quietly confident. I had a great lawyer, excellent witnesses and the truth on my side.
Any disquiet came from the knowledge that the judge reportedly had a less than comforting history of supporting the police no matter what and wasn’t that keen on women in my situation. That, and the fact that the crown I served honourably for 8 years was about to be sullied by a lying thug supposedly serving the self-same crown, left me with some small misgivings but nothing that outweighed my desire for social justice to be done and to be seen to be done.
At 10am, having maneuvered our way through the security checks that saw the titanium in my new knee set the courthouse alarms off, we were seated in the courtroom and ready for the day.
At 11am we were still sitting there with no Police Prosecutor in evidence and no sign of Constable Nair as the arresting officer and court life carrying on around us.
Eventually the judge asked what was going on and was told that no-one representing the police had yet shown up. He adjourned our case for an hour to enable us to find out what was happening.
Later – 45 minutes later – a Police Prosecutor from another courtroom who knew nothing about my case appeared and told the judge that the file had yet to be located but was on its way from the police station ‘as we speak’.
A further adjournment.
A brief meeting with my lawyer followed during which she said she was going to push the judge to have the charges dismissed, this being the fifth time I had appeared on them with the last three being abandoned because the police either weren’t ready, were sick or simply hadn’t appeared.
Back in the courtroom the same Police Prosecutor, looking incredibly uncomfortable, admitted that the file could not be found. He asked for a further rescheduling of the case at which point the judge asked where the arresting officer, Constable Nair, was. ‘He can’t be contacted at the moment’ said the prosecutor. The judge asked if he might be available later in the day and received the same reply: ‘He can’t be contacted at the moment’.
The Prosecutor repeated his request for another date and my lawyer reminded the judge that this was the 5th time this had appeared before the courts and the second time before him.
The judge asked the prosecutor what he wanted to do and the increasingly stressed prosecutor acknowledged that maybe the charges might be withdrawn. He was at pains to inform the judge that he was not responsible for this case and that he was actually engaged in another courtroom.
If charges are withdrawn they can be re-laid at a later date so my lawyer insisted instead that they be dismissed making it virtually impossible for them to be laid again.
Not impossible, but less possible.
Reluctantly the prosecutor agreed and the judge, equally reluctantly, dismissed the two charges against me.
I should have been happy I guess but in fact I wasn’t.
I was denied my day in court and there was no justice.
In fact a further injustice was perpetrated in that Constable Nair was able, simply by not turning up, to flout the law and thumb his nose at the uniform he should have been proud to wear, the system that employs him, the judge and his fellow officers who were left to bail him out.
And his employer, the NZ Police, allowed this to happen – indeed encouraged him in this behaviour – and, as far as I am aware, have never even reprimanded him for this self-serving action which has brought him and his employer into disrepute.
When I contacted his supervisor Sergeant Rachel Wood I was told by email that she had passed my request for information regarding the other officer’s present to their supervisors and that I would hear from them in due course.
It’s 6 months and I am still waiting.
I am not holding my breath.
My view is that he is a disgrace to his uniform and the warrant he holds and that he should be dismissed. He has shamed himself and his colleagues and insulted the crown he has sworn to serve.
On the day I was beaten my spouse endeavoured to ensure that I was safe while in the cells by contacting the NZ Police Diversity Liaison Officer whose voluntary responsibility is to ensure that queer prisoners are not denied their normal rights while incarcerated. The watchhouse staff didn’t know of the existance of such a role, had no contact details for the officer and had no idea what diversity liaison meant.
Some days later she did manage to make contact with the officer, a Constable Brent Clark, and complained about my treatment. To cut a long story short, the officer, we discovered, reported to the same supervisor ~ a person already involved in the case as he/she had instructed Nair to lay the further charge against me ~ as did Constable Nair.
Eventually my spouse obtained an admission of ‘inappropriate actions after the arrest’ passed on by Diversity Liaison Officer Constable Brent Clark from the supervisor and an apology was made to my spouse. Her request that this be put in writing and an apology be made to me in person was, however, refused.
I can’t deny I am disgusted with Nair and with a system that allows this sort of thing to happen ~ and this includes Sergeant Wood and Constable Clark ~ but there is a much sadder outcome that causes even this disgust to pale into insignificance.
Here in Auckland there is a small boy, aged five, who once held the police in such regard that he wanted to be one of their number when he grew up, was prepared to accept, untested, what his caregivers told him: that he could always trust a policeman.
This same boy, age six, hides when he sees a police car, runs away when he sees a uniformed officer and has nightmares now about ‘the bad policeman’.
Well done, Constable Nair, you are a credit to yourself, your family and your employer.
I’m sure you’ll drink to that!
dykiegirl 