Police have quietly dropped charges against an anti-lockdown protestor after devastating bodycam footage showed officers initiated the fight.
Jay Smith (not his real surname) said he was charged with affray, resisting arrest and disobeying police orders after police told him to leave a freedom rally in Melbourne on May 29 last year.
As Jay and a group of friends left the protest, he was intercepted by a group of police officers who pushed and then punched him in the face.
When Jay’s friends rushed to his defence they too were set upon by police and arrested.
Jay, who has spent 14 months fighting the charges, told me he was relieved to have them dropped.
“What the police did that day was completely wrong,” he said.
He agreed that anyone else would have been arrested for doing to him what police had done.
“Absolutely. The police should actually get stood down and fired, if not charged and face the laws that they are trying to uphold.”
Jay’s friend Nick Patterson, 38, was charged with more than 20 offences after rushing to his defence.
Nick, who spent almost a month in prison before being released on bail, argues the charges against him should also be dropped now that police have agreed Jay had done nothing wrong.
“They put me in jail based on my actually defending my mate because they were committing a crime,” he said.
“They violently assaulted Jay. They punched him twice before we’d done anything.”
Nick faces court in November.
You can follow Nick’s case in detail at FightCorruptPolice.com, a website he’s set up to detail and provide updates on his legal fight.
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Author Avi Yemini
