The policeman who was charged with police violence was acquitted in Buskerud District Court on 7 July last year. But the Attorney General appealed the acquittal.
On Tuesday, the appeal case opens in the Borgarting Court of Appeal. The accused police officer in his 30s has denied criminal guilt throughout.
– No new evidence has been notified that is decisive for the question of guilt, says the policeman’s defender John Christian Elden to VG.
He was acquitted in the district court both of the allegation of violence and of gross breach of duty. He also avoided paying compensation to the two victims.
Legal aid attorney Morten Kjensli has appealed the compensation issue.
The basketball game took place at a petrol station in Kongsberg on 30 October 2022.
A security guard who experienced a death threat at a nightclub approached the police patrols who were at Esso on the night in question to lodge a report.
At the same time, the man who should have threatened him – Kevin Winnes Simensen (27) – came to the place with several friends, to get a lift home after a night out on the town.
Simensen pulled away, when the accused police officer wanted to talk to him. Approximately three seconds later he was lying on the tarmac.
Kevin Simensen gave VG his version when the case was before the district court:
According to the indictment, the policeman laid Kevin Simensen on the ground and hit him repeatedly on the head and body with a clenched fist.
The defendant also sprayed Simensen with pepper spray and hit him on the head and body with a telescopic baton.
The police officer was also accused of hitting Kristian Pablo Teigen (27) twice in the thigh with a telescopic baton, despite the fact that he had pulled away.
The case received a lot of attention after Dagbladet published a surveillance video from the petrol station in May last year showing the fight.
The leader of the Police Union has said that the video was painful to watch, because she understood that a lot would happen in the wake of its publication.
– But a few seconds of video does not give the whole picture. That is why it is so important not to prejudge, says union leader Unn Alma Skatvold to VG.
She says that the investigation and trial will shed light on the cause and sequence of events before, during and after the video recording in a thorough manner.
– Could the appeal be a burden on trust in the police?
– A survey recently confirmed that trust in the police is still very high in Norway, even though many cases in recent years have been burdensome.
Unn Alma Skatvold heads the Police Union
The acquittal in the Buskerud district court was not unanimous:
The majority came under “some doubt” that the use of force was justifiable, compared to the “massive resistance” described by the defendant and his colleague.
The minority believed that less invasive measures should have been tried first.
In the district court, the prosecutor submitted a request for 60 days in prison for the policeman.
– The assignment should have been solved in a completely different way, said prosecutor Marit Oliver Storeng, who is the head of investigations in the special unit for police cases.
Simensen and Teigen have been charged with violence against the police officer. Simensen was also charged with threats against the security guard.
Agder police district has recently dropped these cases on the status of the evidence, informs Drammens Tidende.
This is what the parties said in the district court
- The accused police officer explained that he feared for his life and health in the arrest of Simensen and that he was scared.
- Kevin Simensen said that he experienced being assaulted and that he tried to get away from the situation.
- The policeman admitted that he hit Simensen “an awful lot” of times, but said it was because the blows had “no effect”.
- Colleagues of the policeman have explained that they found the assignment very demanding and that they believed that their accused colleague was moving quickly up the power pyramid.
- Experts on operational police work and arrest techniques explained that the techniques used by the accused police officer are largely in line with how the police work operationally and what they learn at school.
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