A jury in northern Tasmania has found an off-duty police officer guilty of assaulting a man and perverting the course of justice.
Key points:
- The 12-member jury took less than three hours to reach a verdict on the charges
- Justice Pearce said he was considering handing down a period of home detention, but would ultimately decide based on a range of suitability factors
- Todd Apted was bailed to appear again in April
Todd Barry Apted, 52, has been on trial in the Supreme Court in Launceston over an altercation in Newnham in August 2020.
It was alleged he got into a fight with Juma Obeid, a then-24-year-old of African descent, in Tompsons Lane.
The 12-member jury took less than three hours to reach a unanimous verdict on the assault charge and a majority verdict on the perverting the course of justice charge.
Following the verdict being handed down, prosecution lawyer Lisa Pennington read out a victim impact statement from Mr Obeid.
In it, Mr Obeid wrote he did not file a complaint about the incident because of his distrust of police officers.
“The thing that stuck in my head was that it was a police officer that did this,” he wrote.
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want to complain, but that it was a cop that did it, because who would believe me?”
“If a police officer did this in broad daylight, what else could they do?”
Apted’s lawyer, Grant Tucker, told the court he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his long policing career at the time of the incident.
The diagnosis, combined with conviction, “rules out a return to policing”, he said.
Mr Tucker tendered a medical report, including that Apted attempted suicide in March 2022.
He said his client was a “parent first” and was trying to help his son.
“He went to his son’s aid, as I suggest any parent would in receiving an SOS,” Mr Tucker told the court.
He asked Justice Robert Pearce to consider not imposing a custodial sentence given Apted had no prior convictions and had suffered significantly since.
Justice Pearce said he was considering handing down a period of home detention, but would ultimately decide based on a range of suitability factors.
Apted was bailed to appear again in April.
CCTV dominated trial proceedings
It follows the jury being repeatedly shown CCTV vision with audio of the incident during the trial, recorded by cameras on a nearby house.
The vision shows Apted yelling at Mr Obeid, before punching him in the face.
Mr Obeid falls to the ground and Mr Apted stands over him, continuing to yell.
“You picked the wrong c**t mate, I’m a police officer,” Apted said in the video.
“You’re police?” Mr Obeid replied.
“You’re too f**king right I’m police,” Apted replied.
Mr Tucker told the court his client had been threatened by Mr Obeid and was defending himself — something Mr Obeid denied in his testimony.
“Mr Obeid said he didn’t care if Apted was a police officer, he’d ‘cut him and throw hands’,” Mr Tucker told the court.
Apted testified because of that threat, he thought Mr Obeid had a knife and could therefore harm him or his son.
Ms Pennington told the jury none of that exchange had been captured on the CCTV vision because Apted made it up.
“He fabricated a version of the event to extricate himself,” she said.
Apted maintained in his testimony on Wednesday that the threats had been made before the start of the CCTV vision.
He was formally stood down in February 2021, police said, and was suspended in March of the same year.
He has been suspended since, and following the trial’s outcome, will be the subject of a code of conduct inquiry.
