rat's tales*

Last Monday Magistrate Estelle Hawdon found that the arrest of former navy clearance diver David Bunker, early on October 5 last year, was unlawful. Ms Hawdon had viewed nightclub security camera footage, tendered by Mr Bunker's counsel Winston Terracini, SC, and revealed three weeks ago by The Sun-Herald, that showed up to 14 officers pinning Mr Bunker to the ground and up to four officers kicking, kneeing and punching him.

"I find that the arrest was unlawful and as a result the charges against Mr Bunker, all of them, must be dismissed," Ms Hawdon said.

Ms Hawdon awarded costs to Mr Bunker's defence team that will be determined on July 27.

In January The Sun-Herald revealed security footage of an incident in which Ali Alkan was stunned twice by an officer with a Taser in March last year. The footage led Magistrate David Heilpern to dismiss a drug possession charge against Mr Alkan while ruling he had been "assaulted" with "lethal force".

The Police Integrity Commission is investigating allegations that because of his ruling Mr Heilpern has been targeted by riot squad officers in a smear campaign criticising his sentences.

*Three of the four most senior magistrates in NSW are now women. Tomorrow Chief Magistrate Graeme Henson will have two women deputies with the swearing in of magistrate and former crown prosecutor Jane Culver in the Downing Centre Local Court. She joins Deputy Chief Magistrate Jane Mottley.

State Coroner Mary Jerram was previously a deputy chief magistrate.

*It was a case of wrong place, wrong time, when a 16-year-old boy from a prominent Sydney Aboriginal family turned up at a party to see if his cousin was OK after he heard there had been a fight in which someone had been stabbed.

Partygoers at the Maroubra function last August called police but by the time 30 officers arrived, the alleged offender had left the scene.

Enter the 16-year-old, who found himself struck around the legs with a baton and given a burst of capsicum spray, allegedly for attempting to enter a crime scene.

Parramatta Children's Court magistrate Mark Buscombe was told by the teenager's barrister, Philip Adams, that the youth was arrested and taken to Maroubra Police Station where he was strip-searched without a guardian being present.

The court heard that police then took the teenager to hospital and released him but arrested him again the next day and charged him with failing to obey a police direction, offensive language, resisting arrest and affray. Mr Adams said there was no record of the arrest or detention of the teenager in the notes of officers who attended the scene.

In a judgment on July 2, Mr Buscombe dismissed all charges against the teenager, who pleaded not guilty. He also ordered police to pay his legal costs.