Reasonable force? Cop acquitted after punching woman in the head five times

A woman who was punched in the head five times by a police officer while being held in custody said she was “fearing for her life”.

She suffered bruising, a fractured cheek and tooth damage, and needed an emergency root canal following the incident.

The sergeant, who has interim name suppression, was charged with injuring with intent to injure and recently stood trial in the Tauranga District Court where a jury was shown CCTV of the incident.

The Crown alleged the level of force he used went beyond what was necessary, and that he had struck the woman out of anger and frustration.

The woman told the jury “the punches just kept coming” and left her “pretty much fearing for [her] life”.

The sergeant told the jury his punches hadn’t been hard – describing them as “compliance punches” – and his lawyer, David Pawson, suggested that Bevins could have been injured by knocking her face against the edge of the stainless steel bed as she was taken to the ground.

The jury disagreed with the Crown’s case and found the officer not guilty.

‘Came in all aggressive’

The CCTV showed Marina Kēri Bevins in her cell after being arrested, in May 2023, for breaching a bail condition.

Crown prosecutor Molly Tutton-Harris told the court there was no shying away from the fact Bevins had been difficult and belligerent that night. But, the trial was not about who she was as a person, but rather “what was, or was not happening at the precise moments [the sergeant] punched her five times”.

The footage showed Bevins sitting on the cell bed, tearing off squares of toilet paper.

The police sergeant walked in, grabbed the blanket she had stuffed in the toilet, and threw it out of the cell, before walking over to her and grabbing her arm.

He told the jury he gave a tug and only when she didn’t comply, did he use more force to remove her.

Bevins said he “came in all aggressive” and “ripped [her] off the bed”.

The footage showed him putting her up on the bed, taking the toilet paper from her, and then punching her in the face.

He said that was in “response” to her striking his face.

The CCTV didn’t show what she was doing, as she was obscured by the sergeant’s body, but it did show him punching her a further three times after the initial punch.

He said the punches were short, straight jabs – though later accepting two had been uppercut style – and maintained they weren’t hard, and not intended to injure her, and were “compliance jabs”.

After four punches were delivered as she was held in the corner, her legs held by another officer, she got up and was standing on the bed.

The sergeant grabbed her by the shirt, and she tried to pull his hand away, before he pulled her off the bed and she was swung around the cell, with other officers around.

The sergeant then delivered a fifth punch – again, he said that had been in response to her lashing out at him.

He said she’d been trying to grab at his face, she denied that.

Once she was down on the ground, two officers held her there, and officers then left the cell one by one.

Self-defence, or reasonable force?

Some of the key issues for the jury were whether, if they agreed the punches had caused her injuries – bruising, a cheek fracture, and damage to her tooth – his actions had been in self-defence, or were a reasonable use of force to enable him to remove cell times.

Bevins told the jury that when the next shift of officers started, they checked on her and asked her if she needed an ambulance. She said she did, and was taken to hospital.

She later needed an emergency root canal as her tooth was “pretty much dead”.

The Crown’s case was that while police officers were permitted to use force, the force the sergeant used “far exceeded” what was needed to protect himself, and extract police property.

“This is particularly so, given that at the time he threw the first punch, all police property had already been secured. There were several other options available to the defendant that involved either no force or less force.”

Tutton-Harris gave several examples often used by police – including holding hands behind the person’s back (which police had used earlier that night to remove a lighter from Bevins), or holding a person on the ground.

“Given there were four male police officers in that cell, you might think that this could have been relatively easy for them to have done to the single, smaller female,” she said.

Tutton-Harris also pointed to a police form he’d filled out after the incident in which the sergeant ticked a box that said he felt “very safe” during the interaction with Bevins.

He couldn’t explain why he’d filled it out that way, and said he had not felt safe.

In closing, Tutton-Harris said the sergeant “punched the complainant five times in the face out of anger, out of retaliation, and out of frustration”.

Tutton-Harris said Bevins had been “pinned” while “a much bigger, stronger man, leaned over her” and “held her in place while punching her four times to the face” with “significant force”.

His fifth and final punch, the Crown alleged, was so strong it broke her tooth, cutting the sergeant’s knuckle.

The sergeant accepted the cut was likely caused by her tooth. He also had a scratch on his face, under his eye.

She was charged with assaulting police, but at the conclusion of a judge-alone trial, the charge was dismissed.

‘Belligerent and difficult’

Pawson said the woman was a “handful” and the sergeant had been justified in his use of force.

“She was mounting up and fighting and having a go at the police officers,” Pawson said.

He said the incident had all happened “very, very fast”, and one couldn’t “dissect things in the cold light of day”.

The two-day trial took place in the Tauranga District Court last week.

He pointed to the fact that Bevins had already had to have a lighter removed, because she’d been threatening to light a mattress on fire.

She said under cross-examination that she hadn’t intended to set it alight, she just wanted to get the officers’ attention, as they hadn’t let her make a phone call.

Regarding the use-of-force form, in which the sergeant recorded he felt very safe, Pawson said police fill out “lots of documents”.

“You heard that... when I asked him about how many forms you fill out day to day, and I suggest it’s quite a few.”

Pawson questioned Bevin’s reliability as a witness, highlighting her previous convictions, and he described her as “belligerent and difficult”.

He also addressed the significant bruising, shown in the Crown’s photo booklet, and showed it spreading across the side of Bevins’ face and chin.

He said while it might have first appeared to the jury like she had “a real hiding”, the defence’s medical expert had explained how bruising can spread, and doesn’t necessarily correlate to the force used.

The expert said the bruising suggested there were likely three blunt force impacts, but it could have been two.

Pawson said one of the “main problems” with the prosecution’s case was that the Crown was asking the jury to “guess where the intent to injure was and where the injury occurred”.

He said the jury couldn’t be sure she hadn’t hit her face on the bed as she was taken to the ground, and reiterated the punches had been “compliance jabs”.

“The police are entitled to use reasonable force to do their job,” he said, adding that they have to protect the community.

“I don’t know about you, but I know that if I ring the police, they turn up to a job and there’s something happening outside my house, I expect them to sort it out decisively.”

In deciding their verdict, communications discussed by Judge David Cameron and the lawyers in court, indicated jurors were stuck on “question three” of a question trail given to guide their deliberations, and not all were sure the sergeant intended to injure Bevins.

After the jury indicated they were split, they were told they could give a majority verdict, and 11 found the officer not guilty, after about six hours’ deliberation.

Hannah Bartlett is a Tauranga-based Open Justice reporter at NZME. She previously covered court and local government for the Nelson Mail, and before that was a radio reporter at Newstalk ZB.