Journal Archive
Constable Jackie McDonald was falsely accused of breaching police regulations in 1994. Although totally exonerated by a magistrate last year, she may never fully recover from the trauma caused by those who sought to convict her.
CRIMINALIZING A COP
By Brett Williams
It was 4.00 am on Christmas Day when Constable Jackie McDonald tried to protect herself and other police from a crazed, blood-spitting prisoner.
She'd had some years' experience as a street cop, but had never seen an offender so violently out of control.
Even six police officers struggled to restrain him at the Elizabeth police cells as he kicked, spat and smashed his arms against the charge counter screen. As he writhed on the ground, McDonald held a paper towel to his mouth to shield others from the blood he spat at them.
Not even the restraint of handcuffs subdued him: he continued to twist and kick out at any one near him.
With no sign of his fury subsiding, a padded cell became the only option.
"It took everybody just to hold him down and get him restrained enough to get him in the padded cell," McDonald remembers. "And he was still 'going off' in there."
His near-uncontrollable rage followed a ferocious brawl which had erupted at an Ingle Farm house in 1994. Police officers trying to contain the violence had been injured and reinforcements were called.
Along with other dangerously hostile offenders, the prisoner was arrested by police at the scene and taken to the Elizabeth police station to be charged. But processing violent, alcohol-affected prisoners in cell complexes always poses great danger to police officers.
Already in the cells on other business, McDonald and her partner had naturally been asked to stay and back up their colleagues when they arrived with their charges. As is so often the case in police work, the "extra-numbers precaution" proved to be a wise move.
So, McDonald did her duty. Along with other police officers, she risked her personal safety to contain the offender. And when the commotion was over, she returned to the streets to continue her shift, with no time for reflection or respite.
Like all charge-room business, the entire incident was recorded by video camera; but McDonald held no concerns about a visual record of her actions: she'd done nothing wrong.
When she reported for duty at Salisbury police station the following night, however, she learned that the incident wasn't over. Colleagues told her that the State duty officer had visited Elizabeth police station and taken the video tape. But it still didn't strike McDonald that her actions were destined to be called into question.
Her unsuspecting view of the State duty officer's visit, however, was soon shattered. "The next thing I know," she says, "I've got to go to IIB (Internal Investigations Branch) to be interviewed."
With only two days' notice of that interview, McDonald went to Flinders Street police headquarters in Adelaide with then Police Association secretary, Peter Parfitt. They were to meet an IIB inspector on the seventh floor.
"He had a 'friendly little chat' to me downstairs first of all," McDonald explains. "And (then) he says: 'We'll go upstairs and watch the video and have an interview.'
"He didn't show me any photos and he didn't tell me who had made any allegation - just that an incident had taken place in the charge-room area at Elizabeth police station. He just started with his interview, got me to identify myself on tape and cautioned me."
But when the inspector asked his third question in one of three separate interviews with McDonald that afternoon, things became somewhat clearer.
"It is my intention to now interview you about...a prisoner (who) has alleged that he was assaulted," the inspector warned.
Eighty-three questions later, he finally became specific about how McDonald was alleged to have assaulted the maniacal prisoner whom she simply helped contain.
"Looking at that video tape," he asked, "would you agree that it appears as if you've kicked the person while he was lying on the ground."
But McDonald's actions were entirely lawful and easily explained. As the prisoner lay face-up and struggling on the charge-room floor with police restraining him, he momentarily raised his upper torso. At that moment, McDonald "lunged forward" intending to push down on his right shoulder with her right leg as a means of applying restraint.
But she misjudged the movement and missed him completely. So, she lifted her right foot, placed it on his shoulder and pushed his torso back to the ground. "And that was it," she exclaims. "I knew I was being video taped, and you don't do something like that (kick someone) - that's all there is to it."
Perhaps the eyes of McDonald's accusers weren't so attuned to detail: it seemed to appear to them that she'd deliberately kicked the prisoner.
She left the IIB interview with only one feeling: total devastation. "He (the inspector) didn't tell me anything about what was going on at the end of it," she says.
She asked for and was assured by the inspector of receiving transcripts of the interviews. But months later, she'd received nothing.
Perhaps mistakenly, McDonald believed that the system of complaint investigation would serve her fairly. She was certain that the police department would "look after me".
As she continued to enquire into the progress of the matter over the ensuing months, she would be told that:
* "It's still being investigated".
* "The file is lost".
* "The transcript is on its way".
McDonald, now 27, remembers that, after these initial months of anguish and uncertainty, she became "an absolute mess". "My whole personality and everything about me changed," she says.
"I was this person who would cry for nothing. I wasn't sleeping; I wasn't eating; I lost dramatic amounts of weight; and my hair was falling out in clumps.
"I ended up having to go see my doctor because I couldn't cope with it anymore. He drafted a letter and sent it to the department asking if it could at least speed up the process and draw the matter to a close for my health's sake - it never occurred.
"Time went on and on, and I was just destroying myself. But then, after six months, I thought: 'This is ridiculous - why am I doing this to myself? I should just try and put it in the back of my mind and move on.' "
Almost two years passed without McDonald being informed of any developments in the case. She clung to the belief that "if it was that bad, they would have done something straight away". But her faith in the no-news-is-good-news adage would prove to be misplaced.
In December, 1996, she received a letter from the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) recommending that she be charged with breaching police regulations. The letter, from PCA chief, Tony Wainwright, claimed that McDonald:
...used excessive force against ....... ....... (prisoner's name withheld)... In particular that she kicked ....... as he was being restrained on the floor when there was no lawful justification for the use of such force.
McDonald could hardly believe what she was reading. "All those sick, horrible feelings were brought to the surface, and the whole thing started over again," she says.
"I was really angry that they'd done it. I thought: 'You've waited so long and let me think everything's okay, and then you drop this bombshell on me.' "
Already suffering immense stress, McDonald was then to face one of the most demeaning experiences of the entire saga: formal charging. Her then inspector summoned her to his office in January '97 and served her with papers.
For a moment, she considered not accepting them and even asked the document-serving inspector what would happen if she pursued that course. But as degrading as she found the whole process, she took the summons-like papers and called the Police Association.
The document's extraordinary wording seemed to suggest that the truth of the matter had already been decided. It read:
If you do not admit the truth of the charge(s) in writing...you will be taken to have denied the truth of the charge(s).
McDonald, of course, was innocent, and had no intention of admitting to an offence she didn't commit. She opted to have the matter heard by the Police Disciplinary Tribunal. "And I didn't get to the tribunal until August ('97)," she says, "so I had another eight months before I actually got to have my say."
But when her day in court came, the humiliation continued. Forced to refute a charge of using unnecessary force, she endured the abhorrence of prosecution by a fellow police officer.
"He was putting it to me that I was very angry on the night because I was working Christmas Day - (that) was the impression I got," she says. "He basically put it to me that I was being spiteful and that I deliberately kicked him.
"I thought: 'I cannot believe that you are putting these allegations to me.' I felt very belittled by it."
But with a wealth of experience in failed prosecutions against police, Adelaide barrister, Bill Morris, never believed that the prosecution had a case. Representing McDonald was a task he remembers as a "walk-in, walk-out job" in which he "virtually had to do nothing".
The prosecution case was damned by the very same video tape on which it had so heavily relied as proof of the alleged assault.
"I seriously suspect that they (investigators) didn't do the very simple task of looking at that video critically," Morris says.
By a simple, frame-by-frame viewing of the video tape, Morris discovered that McDonald's movement was nothing like a kick. He followed each step in the action of her right leg and found that she had:
* Lifted her right heel from the ground so as to balance on the ball of her foot.
* Raised her thigh which, in turn, lifted her foot from the ground.
* Moved her lower leg forward by rotating it at the knee.
He could see that these were clearly not the steps of a person intending to kick but rather place her foot.
Also alleged, by a police witness, was that McDonald had drawn her foot back before "kicking" the prisoner. The video clearly showed no backward movement in her leg, and that witness was never called by the prosecution.
"We just let the video speak for itself," Morris says. "When we went to court, we had her description of what she said she was doing, and what she intended to do, which matched absolutely perfectly to the video.
"It was a dead easy one to decide. The magistrate looked at the video, listened to Jackie give her evidence and found her not guilty - just like that.
"In his judgement, he made criticism of the investigating officer, saying: 'I fail to see what the investigating officer reckons he saw in the video.' "
McDonald sat quietly as the magistrate delivered his finding, but she was oblivious to the news of her acquittal.
"I couldn't even hear what he was saying because my head was pounding and there was ringing in my ears," she says. "I felt physically ill and had to look at Bill Morris to know whether or not I'd been acquitted."
Despite losing his case, the police prosecutor approached McDonald and offered to shake her hand. After all that she'd suffered since 1994 - which Bill Morris says "pulverized her" - she resisted any temptation to respond with spite. "I shook his hand" she recalls, "and said: 'I thought we all wore the same uniform.' "
Perhaps not surprisingly, McDonald's acquittal brought her no instant relief. She cried and felt "completely numb". Not until days later did the impact of vindication take effect. But even today, she says it's still not over.
"I joined this job thinking the department was the most wonderful thing around and that it would always look after us, and we'd always be protected," she says. "I can't believe that now."
Police Association president, Peter Alexander, recognizes the insidiousness of McDonald's treatment. He's concerned that its effect on her may be ever-lasting. And, he insists that her actions of that Christmas morning, rather than be condemned, would be commended by anyone with policing experience.
Alexander sees a clear lack of objectivity in the process of investigation into alleged police misconduct. "I can't understand why, when people are investigating police, the normal investigative procedures aren't adhered to," he says. "In other words, the status quo: deal in evidence; deal in fact; follow proper procedures.
"Whether we're the victims of politics, or just a lack of understanding by those involved in investigating police, I don't know, but we continue to identify it."
IIB chief, Commander Geoff Edwards, was contacted by the Police Journal last month for comment - he refused to respond to any criticisms of IIB's handling of the McDonald investigation.
Bill Morris regards the prosecution's evaluation of its case as "a very, very bad assessment of a matter proceeding to a prosecution". Moreover, he believes that the PCA erred in recommending the charge.
Tony Wainwright was contacted by the Police Journal last month but declined to be interviewed.
McDonald's spirits were the lowest of her life during the two years and eight months she spent under investigation. She looked for other jobs thinking that, if she was to be treated this way by her employer, she would seek out "a place where the workers are (regarded as) very important".
McDonald stresses that she was never suicidal. She now believes, however, that suicide could well be considered by some other police officers burdened with the same injustice.
It was her husband, family and friends whom she says "pulled me together again". And the team of colleagues with whom she worked were her "tower of strength". "They were really the only ones who said: 'We believe you,' " she says.
As compensation for her suffering, McDonald seeks neither money nor career favours. She wants only a simple apology; the police department has never offered one. "And it's not going to either," she insists.
"If they just said: 'This is the process we have to follow - we apologize and understand that it's a stress on members', but I don't believe they ever will."[End]