Sydney cop Senior Constable Mark Anthony Follington has admitted to brawling with and arresting a trans woman at a Liverpool’s Golden Fleece Hotel in 2019 because she didn’t say hi to him. It’s now also alleged that he made up a false story for the police report at the time.
Follington and his junior colleague, Probationary Constable Mark Brown, were on a drug patrol and casually asking customers at the pub for their IDs. When the woman in question, Anya Bradford, got up and left the pokies room, they prevented her from exiting, The Daily Telegraph reports.
The cop told the court that this sort of behavior made him assume that the Bradford had a warrant out for arrest, when in actual fact she didn’t.
Nevertheless, the two cops then started brawling with Bradford, and even slammed her into an ATM. She managed to escape and ran down the street.
When the officers caught up with her in the lobby of another building, they pepper sprayed her and put her under arrest.
Follington then claimed in the police report that Bradford had actually assaulted him first, which was what supposedly kicked off the whole incident.
However, the court has now heard that the women actually just stated that she didn’t have ID, told Follington to “fuck off”, and walked away. CCTV footage also shows that the woman didn’t shove the cop to the ground like he claimed at the time, the AAP reports.
“When I was in the room, you could see I was focusing within the room, she had no eye contact with myself,” Follington told the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday.
“People normally come up and say hello, she was keeping her eyes down. To me, that starts to send a signal to me that this person is trying to hide from me.”
Although he conceded that his story didn’t match the CCTV footage and was “false”, he nevertheless pled not guilty tampering with the evidence by making up the story in 2019.
“You knew the arrest was unlawful and you had to make up a story about Ms Bradford in order to justify the unlawful arrest and the force used,” prosecutor Claire Robinson said in court.
To this, the cop replied: “That is incorrect.”
The case continues.
