Video shows incident

Viennese police officer denies allegations of abuse

(Bild: P. Huber (Symbolbild))

On December 5, 2023, a case of police violence is alleged to have occurred at a police station in Vienna. On Friday, the regional court heard a case against an officer who allegedly grabbed a 47-year-old man inappropriately by the upper body, pulled him inside the station, pushed him to the ground with his arm and arrested him without the legal requirements being met.

He is also alleged to have deliberately handcuffed the man too tightly. According to the indictment, the 47-year-old suffered redness on both wrists, abrasions on his elbow and swelling on his knee as a result of the police action. The public prosecutor accused the police officer of abuse of authority, which he vehemently denied.

"He didn't care"
The man was "half an arm's length away" from him and was extremely aggressive and "jerked his arm upwards", the defendant described. He had warned him twice - as required by law: "He didn't care."

Police officer defends himself in court
The 47-year-old "talked himself into a rage more and more." He finally "touched him on the upper body with the flat of his hand", the police officer stated: "It wasn't a push. He let himself fall backwards. I was perplexed." He would not have been able to bring the man to the ground: "He's 30, 40 kilos heavier than me."

"Put on the way I was taught"
Due to aggressive behavior, he arrested the man, who had previously refused to identify himself, in accordance with the law. He handcuffed the man lying on the ground "the way I was taught." The officer admitted that "the chains" were "very short." However, the hands of the detainee had "half a centimeter of space", the accused assured him and then added: "The wider someone is, the more it pulls."

Girlfriend filmed the incident
Because the man did not want to get up, he and a colleague "pulled him into the holding area". The 47-year-old's girlfriend, who had gone to the police station with him, filmed the latter with her cell phone. The video was played in the courtroom. It showed the 47-year-old man lying on his back being grabbed by one arm by two police officers and pulled out of the field of vision of his partner and an uninvolved witness. The man had previously said "Please, my knee, I've had an operation" and asked the officers to "help him get up".

The man had gone to the police in order to "trigger" his mother, as he explained as a witness to a panel of lay assessors. She had been picked up at home by the police because of outstanding police fines and taken to the police station to serve a substitute custodial sentence. However, her grandson had accumulated the police fines with the car registered to her mother.

I wanted to pay the fines and take my old, sick mother home with me:

Der 47-Jährige vor Gericht

"I wanted to pay the fines and take my old, sick mother home with me," the 47-year-old reported. The accused was very dismissive towards him and initially paid him no attention at all. Suddenly, the officer "grabbed him firmly by the shoulder and pulled him in from the security gate." Inside the office, he was then "thrown to the ground". "He wanted to prove himself", the witness suspected.

Arrest overturned
A police lawyer revoked the arrest of the accused a short time later. The 47-year-old's partner has since died, so her statements in the preliminary proceedings were read out. The uninvolved witness, on the other hand, was summoned to the hearing. When asked by the presiding judge why she had incriminated him in the preliminary proceedings, the defendant said: "She sympathizes because of a similar migration background." Like the 47-year-old, the woman has roots in the former Yugoslavia.

The trial was adjourned until March.