Page 2755 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 14 August 1991
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He was alleged to have used a fricative word that offended, greatly offended, the constable who laid the information, his colleagues and an indeterminate number of the public who were presumably there at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning.
For years and years I defended young people for using language which we well know you will hear in locker rooms, even police locker rooms, and on issues such as insulting behaviour, offensive behaviour and the rest. I will read into the record some of the transcript of proceedings in the matter that Magistrate Dingwall decided on 9 October 1990 in the Magistrates Court. His Worship said:
Well, both defendants are charged under section 35(1) of the Police Offences Act 1989. That section reads:
Where a police officer has reasonable grounds to believe that a person in a public place is engaged or is likely to be engaged in violent conduct in that place, the police officer may direct the person to leave the vicinity.
His Worship went on to say:
Violent conduct is given extended meaning to mean violence to or intimidation of a person, or damage to property. The evidence as it stands is that the constables observed a group of males, which they specified as six males, which they say included the two defendants, who were carrying on in behaviour which Constable Bourke described as antisocial.
Their behaviour amounted to rowdiness, one member of the group banging a sign outside the Pancake Parlour, and another one or more banging the front door with - at one stage.
There is a gap in the transcript. He continued:
Evidence that they were swearing and evidence that members of the group were inviting passerbys to fight.
There is no evidence, though, as to what each of the defendants was in fact doing at any time from the time the police officers first left the Pancake Parlour to the time that they were subsequently given a direction to move on, outside the chemist.
The legislation is very specific in that it requires the police officer to have reasonable grounds of believing that a person has either engaged or is likely to engage in violent conduct in that place.
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