ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A Betoota Heights man has been convicted of a string of charges ranging from impersonating a police officer, resist arrest and operating a vehicle while intoxicated during a wild night out in April.
Darcy John Taylor (24) was approached by police officers in Machattie Park at approximately 2am on the morning of the 11th of April.
When asked by the police why he was there, he reached into his pocket without saying a word and pulled out his wallet.
He flipped it open and closed then in a slurred timbre that he was a detective on a stakeout in the park.
The arresting officers asked to see his ID again but this time, Darcy ran off into the darkness with the officers in tow.
They caught up with Mr Taylor near the Grosvenor Street entrance and allegedly bashed him half to death with their telescopic batons – but the officers’ bodycam was switched off manually during the alleged incident.
Police indicated during the trial that Mr Taylor fell and hit his head and is simply mistaken about what happened.
The drink driving charge was given to Mr Taylor the morning after the arrest when he left the Roberts Road Police Station in the Old City District on a skateboard.
Magistrate Gina Greenshot rejected Mr Taylor’s excuse for riding the skateboard, telling him that a man who had 15 pints of Reches the night before and a good, old-fashioned beating at the hands of some pin-dick policmean shouldn’t be riding a skateboard.
Mr Taylor blew .052 out the front on the polcie station, so the same arresting officers took him back inside and bashed him again with their little batons.
Mr Taylor waived his right to counsel this morning after seeing his solicator rock up to court with a soul patch.
“He told me to fuck off as soon as he saw me,” said his lawyer, David Reale.
“He’s well within his right to do that. I would advise against doing something like that but there you go.”
More to come.
