A high-speed pursuit has led to a police officer being convicted of assault after pressing his knee onto the head of a teenager during an arrest in Sydney's west.
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Paul Medulla, 35, was charged with common assault after an investigation by the NSW Police Professional Standards Command into the injury of a teen during the arrest in the early hours of August 14, 2022.
The assault followed a pursuit involving police helicopters and the riot squad when Medulla used his knee to bear down on the teenager's head as he and other officers made the arrest.
"The court disapproves of the conduct involved in this matter ... and the large majority of people in NSW would also disapprove," Magistrate David Price said on Wednesday in Parramatta Local Court.
Mr Price said the conviction was necessary as a deterrent to remind police of their duty to only use appropriate and reasonable force no matter the circumstances.
Seated behind his lawyer in court, Medulla shook his head as the magistrate made a 12-month conditional release order alongside the conviction.
The defence tendered letters from former premier Gladys Berejiklian and Shane Fitzsimmons, the former commissioner of the NSW Rural Fire Service, thanking Medulla for service during the 2019-20 Black Summer bushfires alongside other character references.
Medulla's lawyer Paul McGirr stated his client had been suspended on base pay from the force since January 2023, and had suffered significant financial losses being unable to claim overtime and supplementary payments to the tune of $25,000.
Mr McGirr called the assault an "extremely isolated and split-second incident" which had resulted in Medulla's name being "dragged through the mud" due to media interest in the case.
"It's my view that the action of Constable Medulla ... was neither necessary nor appropriate in the circumstance," Mr Price had said in his earlier judgment finding Medulla guilty.
The prosecution had claimed Medulla was angry in the "chaotic scene" of the arrest, despite the teenager being "clearly subdued" by Medulla and his colleagues.
He was found not guilty of a second charge of assault occasioning bodily harm in relation to the same incident.
Two other charges over a separate incident on July 22 in 2022, where the prosecution alleged Medulla assaulted an offender under arrest by kicking him in the head, were dismissed by the magistrate.
Australian Associated Press
