Police assault charges against gay activist Bryn Hutchinson dismissed

Police assault charges against gay activist Bryn Hutchinson dismissed

Bryn Hutchinson with family and supporters1

GAY activist Bryn Hutchinson has been found not guilty of assaulting police on the night of the Mardi Gras Parade earlier this year, with a judge throwing out the case this afternoon.

At a hearing at the Downing Centre Local Court in Sydney, Magistrate Eve Wynhausen dismissed all charges against Mr Hutchinson and his sister, Kate Hutchinson, who had also been charged with swearing at police officers involved in an altercation with her brother after the parade ended.

Shortly after the magistrate’s decision, Mr Hutchinson told the Star Observer outside the Downing Centre that words could not express his thanks to the LGBTI community and wider public for their unending support following the revelations of police violence during this year’s Mardi Gras festivities.

“This justified outrage led directly to increased public scrutiny of police,” he said.

“Justice in my case is not the end. There are clearly systemic issues with policing in NSW – my experience is one amongst many.”

The former Community Action Against Homophobia co-convenor also said the ordeal cost him many sleepless nights and had created great stress for him and his family.

“It is unacceptable for police to investigate themselves; political action must be taken to establish independent oversight of police conduct,” he said.

“I call on all concerned citizens and politicians to continue raising concern and supporting other victims of police brutality.”

Mr Hutchinson, 32, was charged with assaulting police after being detained and arrested at around 11:30pm on the night of Saturday, March 2, following a verbal warning by police officers against crossing Oxford St after the Mardi Gras Parade had ended.

At the time, Mr Hutchinson claimed he was innocent of all charges, and that he was the victim of police brutality and the use of excessive force by officers attached to Parramatta and Fairfield local area commands. His sister was also charged with offensive language on the night after coming to the defence of her brother. She, too, had all charges against her dismissed this afternoon by Magistrate Wynhausen.

“After such a traumatic experience of watching my brother being beaten up by police who are meant to be assisting civilians and the community, I am glad justice has been served,” Ms Hutchinson told the Star Observer.

“But that’s not the end, its time something is done about the culture of the police force. Internal investigations are not efficient, it’s like asking a thief to investigate themselves … Time for an external body.”

Speaking to the Star Observer shortly after the incident in early March, Mr Hutchinson claimed he was “grabbed from behind by several officers and thrown down on [his] back” before being flipped over and kicked several times.

The incident was one of several alleged instances of excessive police force over the Mardi Gras festival that triggered protests in Sydney’s LGBTI community and prompted responses from festival organisers, local rights groups, Sydney state independent MP Alex Greenwich, and NSW Police.

MORE TO COME

Bryn Hutchinson (third from left) pictured with family and supporters outside Downing Centre Local Court (Photo: Serkan Ozturk)

 

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15 responses to “Police assault charges against gay activist Bryn Hutchinson dismissed”

  1. Well done on your ruling Bryn.
    I would like to point out however that NSW has an independent, external body for investigating NSW Police issues. It is called the Police Integrity Commission, and you should perhaps learn more about them and what they do before calling for a body that very plainly already exists.
    http://www.pic.nsw.gov.au/

    • James, u r dead wrong – this Police integrity unit is very small and only investigates a very few cases each year – they refuse most requests to investigate. They have I believe 5 staff total. They are not what Bryn is calling for, and you obviously don’t know what ur on about.

  2. Thank you for the support, much appreciated by my brother and I. Been a very long and tiring 8 months but finally that piece is out of the way. It’s actually been interesting to see how much community support we have actually attained over this period and incident. Definitely not the end as I said above, time for something to be done for all voices of police brutality to be heard.

  3. The UK have the Independent Police Complaint Commission. Here’s the link to their website: http://www.ipcc.gov.uk/

    Word is that this independent commission is world leading and ‘best practice’ and is the way to go.

    Whilst NSW Police will no doubt kick and scream and will resist this no end, citing that only NSW Police have the expertize to investigate such matters, the anecdotal evidence, as Mr Rook suggests, and as we saw with the Curti case, is that the police’s main objective most of the time is to cover up for their buddies. And at this they do a great job, but it needs to end.

  4. Thanks for your thoughts David. The wider public has been wonderfully supportive. Now we need to see the proper rule of law and transparent processes for police accountability. The only way this will happen is for NSW to follow the best practice models of the UK for instance and create an independent external investigator for police conduct.

    • Bryn, rather than me pointing out how corrupt, malevolent and homophobic some NSW police are, and how totally useless the current police internal complaints process is, not to mention the Ombudsmans office (yawn) – you are spot on – we need to state what we want vs what’s wrong – I will find out what they call the UK process, how it works I will fire off a series of letters (NSW Premier, minister of police, my local MP and President of NSW Upper House Don Harwin) and maybe we can all get organized and push hard for this. Greens MP David Shoebridge had also been pushing hard for this.

      • I agree that organizing and engaging in political process is important. I am more than willing to be a part of it. If you would like to be in touch, throw ideas around and co-ordinate it is easiest to contact me on Twitter @brynhutchinson

  5. Well done to Bryn and his sister for fighting off these absurd charges – I am sure it wasn’t easy, and will have involved a lot of stress, time and of course $. Police – of course – are funded by taxpayers – so we all funded their BS charges that clearly never had any basis. I went thru the entire internal police complaints process – it was a total joke – buddies investigating buddies – in the end, after a year of investigation by police – all we got was a report from Crandell where he got most of the key details wrong – and then when this was pointed out he point blank refused to re-issue the report corrected – so what use is the report if its totally inaccurate? Anyways well done again to Bryn and his sister and I hope Jamie gets a fair hearing and look out NSW Police – we queens won’t let you ruin this city and we won’t let you pull ur BS games on us without a big fight