Court recommends perjury charges for two police officers who gave misleading testimony

A court has recommended that two police constables face perjury charges after video evidence showed they had heavily embellished their testimony about an altercation with a man at a San Ġwann kebab shop.

This emerges from a judgement handed down on Monday by magistrate Donatella Frendo Dimech, in a St. Julian’s district case against a Serbian man named Lazar Mitic.

Mitic was accused of having assaulted or resisted two police officers in San Gwann, on 26 September 2021. He was also charged with having reviled or threatened the officers, disobeying their lawful orders, disturbing public order, using obscene words or gestures in a public place, and being indecently dressed in public.

The officers in question, referred to in the judgement only by their numbers: PC1505 and PC266 had given the court a detailed account of how the events had unfolded at the Kebab shop, as well as in the police car on their way to the police station. Two other officers, PS790 and PC1221 had also testified to describe the defendant’s conduct whilst he was being detained at the St. Julians’s Police Station.

The officers explained that Mitic had initially been cooperative, but had become agitated at one point and started to act erratically, leading to difficulty in communicating with him. “The officers recounted how Mitic was incoherent and became aggressive towards them so much so that whilst resisting arrest, PC1505 hurt his shoulder.” 

“He was getting in my face every time we spoke, and he grabbed my camera from here and pointed his finger at my chest,” PC1505 testified.

“After that, he kept on trying to get inside [the shop] ..... he even grabbed on to the glass and clawed at it .... he grabbed at the glass and continued to resist the arrest and was arrested from there. .... he started to tell me that I was hiding behind my uniform and started to invite me to fight with him…take off my uniform and fight with him 'man to man’. .... While we were in the car, he kept urging us to take off our uniform and fight him... from the back seat he began to kick the seat in front."

But Mitic’s defence lawyers, Veronique Dalli and Dean Hili gave the court an altogether different description of the incidents which led to their client’s arrest.

On 26 September 2021, Mitic had reversed into a parking spot outside a kebab shop in San Gwann. A Maltese couple, who had been dining inside the restaurant, claimed that Mitic’s vehicle had touched theirs. Not long after that, Mitic had called the police alleging that the male half of the couple was brandishing a knife at him. 

But when the police arrived, the lawyers said, instead of establishing what had happened, the officers had assumed Mitic to be the culprit and had completely ignored what he was trying to tell them. 

The court had examined PS266’s bodycam footage, which shows Mitic in the police car and at the police station. Further footage was obtained from the kebab shop, however “and it is this footage which disturbed the Court in no small manner.” 

“For whereas PC1505 and PC266 state that the defendant entered the shop whilst they were talking to the couple who had reported the altercation, the footage belies those statements and reveals that the said officers had proceeded to sit down for a meal when Mitic re-appeared on scene, this time wearing a vest! Why leave out such an innocuous detail of their stopping for a bite? 

“The Court believes that the reason for doing so was that this was the only way for them to justify their not having taken the couple’s details as it is readily obvious that they had ample time to do so. It is blatantly untrue their stating that they omitted doing so because the incident, namely the resistance by Mitic of his arrest, happened so quickly that by the time they had settled him down in the police car the couple had left. Let it be stated at the onset, Mitic did not resist arrest and the footage betrays their version that the couple left whilst they were handling Mitic!”

The magistrate noted that the shop’s CCTV footage of the cash register area shows the officers seated at the table beside the cash register, when a “visibly nervous and agitated” Mitic approached them, pointing behind him. “Had the police bothered not to remain seated, did their job and taken down the couple’s details, given that Mitic was clearly protesting about something which had happened, their affidavits and testimony would not have been riddled with inaccuracies and, indeed, outright lies!” remarked the magistrate. 

The footage showed that two minutes after Mitic spoke to them they got up from the table, “not to speak to whoever Mitic was pointing to, but to escort him outside and this is where the footage, showing the entrance to the shop, continues to belie the constables’ version that Mitic resisted arrest [and] led to PC1505 suffering slight injuries. In fact, reviewing the footage …shows Mitic calm and composed, talking to the officers although his conduct evolves to a more unruly one when he paces up and down visibly anxious when talking and at one point, marking the beginning of the escalation, he pokes a constable in the chest with his index finger.” 

Soon after that, the man is seen to back away while the police instructed him not to approach the shop. He makes a sudden dash for the entrance but is stopped on its doorstep by the officers. “This is where he is handcuffed and offers no resistance whatsoever... It is truly a shame that these officers decided not to give a faithful account of that evening’s events for they handled the defendant impeccably and were making headway calming him down and in the process preserving law and order,”  said the magistrate.

“Police officers undoubtedly are deserving of society’s respect and adherence to their orders and guidance in observance to the Rule of Law which governs that society. However, it is truly disheartening when officers themselves are the cause of the undermining of that respect, when they veer from the truth, when honesty is compromised, the more so for menial reasons.”

In view of the video evidence exhibited, the Court determined Mitic to be guilty of only one of the offences “but only insofar as the offence of insulting and threatening words are concerned” and sentenced him to one year’s probation.  

The man was acquitted of the other charges. The court, however, underlined that it, in no way, condoned or excused the defendant inviting the officers to fight him, “irrespective of his agitated state of mind.” 

The magistrate ordered that a copy of the judgement, together with the testimonies of PC266 and PC1505, as well as the footage be served on the Commissioner of Police “for any action which he may deem appropriate.”

Lawyers Veronique Dalli and Dean Hili represented Mitic as legal counsel.