Police officer imprisoned for illegal detention of vulnerable individual

The Valladolid Court has sentenced a National Police agent to 3 years in prison, after he was tried for illegally detaining and beating a man with mental health problems who in May 2022 entered the Parquesol Police Station to request psychiatric admission believing that it was a hospital.

In its ruling, the Fourth Criminal Section of the Provincial Court considers that the public official has proven the authorship of a crime of illegal detention – they apply the mitigating circumstance of reparation for damage -, deserving of three-year sentence. of prison and eight years of disqualification from practicing the profession.

On the other hand, the accused has been acquitted of the crime against moral integrity–it is required that the defendant’s behaviour be degrading or humiliating and affects the concept of dignity of the affected person–understanding that the punching and kicking inflicted is more closely linked to a crime of work mistreatment for which they did not demand public and private accusations.

Furthermore, in terms of moral damages, the court requires the police to pay compensation of 9,000 euro in favour of the victim, the same amount that the convicted person had already recorded prior to the trial and which has led the court to apply the mentioned mitigating factor for repairing the damage.

“In the case examined, neither was the gratuitous, surprising and unexpected attack by the police agent justified nor was there any reason why, by filing a complaint for the alleged crime of attack, which has been proven to be based on uncertainties, proceed to his arrest,” the sentencing ruling warns.

The sentencing court recalls that “the accused himself assumed in the oral trial that he had attacked the victim when both were in the hall of the National Police Corps offices in Parquesol, once he had been taken to said place from one of the floors”, a criminal action for which he said he regretted. His confession came only to assume the facts that are observed in the recording of the security cameras of the police stations.”

The prosecutor in the case, who initially requested seven and a half years in prison, and the private prosecution, who requested five years, modified their conclusions on the last day of the trial to reduce the overall request for a sentence to three and a half years in prison–six months for a crime against moral integrity and three years for illegal detention–, with the mitigating circumstance of reparation for the damage, and a total of ten years of disqualification from practicing the police profession.

The defence, on the other hand, had requested a minimum sentence and a fine of 90 euro for a minor crime of mistreatment and sought acquittal for the crime of illegal detention because, in their opinion, there was an invincible error. Subsidiarily, for the crime of reckless illegal detention, he had requested a suspension of one and a half months of employment and salary.

“I was overwhelmed but, of course, I totally regret what I did,” the National Police officer declared at the trial, regarding what happened on the afternoon of May 25, 2022 when the victim went to the Police Station at Parquesol and ran into the accused at the counter, to whom he began to ask incoherent questions about GEO 3 and later about GEO 2 and GEO 1, without the accused being able to resolve his doubts because there was no one in those rooms, group or unit with this name.

The official stated that he was unaware that the victim was disturbed, “because very strange people always come to the police station,” and explained that during that meaningless conversation he had to attend to other incidents that forced him to leave the counter, both the entrance of the taxi driver that he had taken the complainant there and that he wanted to charge him like another person who tried to park his car in a restricted area.

In his defence, the police officer alleged that he was suffering from Covid that afternoon and was in a feverish state and, in addition, he was the only person providing security service at the doors, hence, in a carelessness to attend to these people, the victim slipped away and disappeared inside the police building.

The situation overwhelmed him, since he had lost sight of the victim and the danger was evident because the Parquesol Police Station has the TEDAX explosives warehouse and another series of “sensitive material” from other units. “I thought I might get into trouble,” the police officer said graphically.

Given this, the agent put another half dozen colleagues on alert, some of them from the Underground Brigade who had just arrived at the police station and others from the Investigation Group that occupied the first floor, until finally one of them found the victim on the second floor where he was now asking for the head of the police station.

Led to the stairs to begin the descent, the accused then took charge of the victim, who in the trial maintained that it was then that the victim resisted and hit him on the cheek and ear, until seconds later he took him to the hall. and there, as he openly confessed, he beat him with a punch and a kick when he was already on his knees on the ground.

Although the agent insisted that there were reasons for the arrest as he had been the target of a crime of attack by the victim – he located the attack on the stairs, where there are no security cameras – he did acknowledge that he went too far by hitting him in the police station lobby, evidence that the cameras collected and whose recording, in part, was played in the courtroom.

The victim, for his part, indicated that that afternoon he went to the police station thinking that it was the hospital and that his wish was to be admitted after suffering a psychotic break. “I was very bad. I saw a flag of the Spanish State and I said to myself, how good I am going to ask about my psychiatrist,” declared the victim, who reported that minutes later he was on the ground after having been hit by the police officer at the counter.

“My goodness, but where have I gotten myself, I’m in the orphanage again!” is what the victim, between sobs, claims he thought after an attack at a police station that made him relive sad memories of his time at a hospice in his country of origin where they kept beating him and putting him in a barrel of water as punishment.

The man also assured that at no time did he hit the police officer who was occupying the bench. In fact, the national police officers who were at the police station that afternoon and who helped the accused locate the victim did not remember having witnessed any attack by the complainant. They did specify that the victim was “very upset” and began to undress in the hall, and only two of them admitted that the accused hit the citizen “in a surprising way, as if to calm him down.”

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