'Do you want me to hit you?': Former cop guilty of assaults on three women

A former police officer has been found guilty of violence against three women while in the force, including strangling and groping one victim and blackmailing her with a recording of her having a panic attack.

After a four-day trial last week, Judge Ngaroma Tahana today delivered her reserved decision in the Manukau District Court, finding the former constable guilty on all 14 charges.

His interim name suppression was continued until his sentencing in October.

NZME understands he was employed as a police officer at the time of the offending but no longer works for New Zealand Police.

The charges include the assaults of three women, and indecent assault, strangulation, blackmail and damage to one woman’s home.

A police video interview with that woman was played in court last week. In it, she told the interviewer that while she was driving and the police officer was in the passenger seat, he lifted her skirt and grabbed her private parts.

She said he also, while driving her home, punched her in the nose, making it bleed, and screamed at her.

He was swerving into oncoming traffic on the highway, so they switched seats and while she drove, he continued to punch her in the ribs.

When they got to her house they had a “scuffle” indoors before he strangled her while she was on the ground.

She said she thought she was going to die.

All she could think about was who was going to feed her dog and who was going to tell her mum if she died, she said in the video.

“All I could think is they’re going to find me dead in this room,” she told the detective in the interview.

The man also blackmailed the same woman with a recording of her having a panic attack on a phone call and threatened to send it to her boss.

The judge heard from a second woman who was known to the former constable. She said she had been arguing with him when he grabbed her by the shoulders, shook her and threw her down.

She said despite the man telling her not to, she took photos of bruises on her shoulders from the incident.

The former constable’s lawyer Andrew McCormick suggested the second woman was drunk and aggressive during the argument and had punched the defendant several times before he pushed her out of the way.

The judge heard testimony from the third woman’s flatmate, who claimed he had overheard the man repeatedly ask the woman if she wanted him to “hit” her.

The defendant speaks

At the end of the trial, the man took the stand, and despite admitting damage to the first woman’s home, aggression and verbal abuse, he denied assaulting any of the women.

Crown lawyer Claire Robertson asked why he had recorded the first woman having a panic attack and threatened to send it to her boss.

He said he mentioned sending the recording only once, to get her off the phone.

“I’m not trying to be malicious,” he stated. “I just wanted ... it to stop.”

Previously, McCormick suggested to the court his client only “raised” sending the recording once, out of concern for the woman’s safety.

When questioning the ex-police officer, Robertson asked why he recorded the panic attack instead of just telling someone, if he was so “concerned”.

He said he was aware that if he told her boss about her panic attack it would tarnish her reputation.

She asked if he knew that the woman would be “concerned” about other people knowing she was having panic attacks, to which he answered “no”.

She suggested he did it to hold it over her as leverage because “why else” would he record her having a panic attack.

Robertson then asked about the third woman, and the former constable said he had never “repeatedly” asked the woman “do you want me to f***in’ hit you?”, as the flatmate had reported.

Robertson questioned whether he was saying he was just “unlucky” that these women had all accused him of violence or threatened violence.

“I’m not saying I’m unlucky,” he responded.

He said this was because he knew how much his past behaviour had contributed to what he had been accused of.

“What I’m saying is I didn’t say those words [to the third woman],” he said.

Ella Scott-Fleming has been a journalist for three years and previously worked at the Otago Daily Times, Gore Ensign and Metro Magazine. She has an interest in court and general reporting. She’s currently based in Auckland covering justice-related stories.