An off-duty cop who punched a taxi driver during a night of heavy drinking in Sydney has had his charge dismissed on mental health grounds.
NSW Police Senior Constable Deane Thomas Bell, 33, faced Downing Centre Local Court on Friday over the assault, which took place outside a pub in Coogee just after midnight on April 14 last year, News.com.au reported.
The driver demanded upfront payment from Bell as he was afraid he would “do a runner”, to which Bell replied “I’m a police officer” before punching him in the face and fleeing the scene, according to agreed facts tendered to the court.
Bell pleaded guilty, but Magistrate Jennifer Giles dismissed the single charge of common assault, finding he was remorseful and “haunted” by his experiences as a cop.
“It seems very clear that Mr Bell has been floridly unwell for quite some time,” she told the court, and noted his “trauma-filled work of being a police officer, dealing with guns being drawn on him, salvaging dead bodies, being the first on scene at bus crashes”.
The court heard Bell was drinking to “self-medicate” at the time, and suffered from PTSD and “hyper vigilance”.
Ms Giles told the court that the attack on the driver was “something [Bell]’s horrified about” and that he had been “absolutely slavish in terms of taking a proactive approach to his mental health” ever since.
Bell’s lawyer Michael Gallagher told the court his client was “drunk”, had acted on the “spur of the moment” and had never been in trouble before in asking for the matter to be dealt with under Section 14 of the Mental Health Act.
“I submit Your Honour would be perfectly satisfied that at the time of the offence … the offender had a mental health condition,” Mr Gallagher told the court.
Prosecutor Brendan Donnelly told the court he accepted there was a “powerful case” for the matter to be dealt with under the Mental Health Act, but said the taxi driver should not be blamed for refusing to use his meter.
“We cannot lose sight of the fact this was a service provider sitting in the front seat of a car, he was no threat to anybody,” Mr Donnelly said.
Header image: Deane Thomas Bell (Supplied).
