On the 18th of March at Wyong Local Court the case was heard of a handicapped man who was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. The two witnesses in the box before the fire fighter named Joshua Viles told their stories and it was clear to all who heard those statements that the first two witnesses created a scene where, by the time Mr Viles arrived, the handicapped man was being held down by one person and kicked and punched by another. Mr Viles admitted to then tackling the man. That made him a third assailant.
In the Police evidence there is a paragraph among the handwritten notes of Senior Constable Duncan Arnold. It is a part of his notes that are the statement of Joshua Viles. “This statement made by me accurately sets out the evidence which I would be prepared to give in court as a witness. The statement is true to the best of my knowledge and belief and I make it knowing that, if is tendered in evidence, I shall be liable to prosecution (garbled words) have wilfully stated in it anything which I know to be false or do not believe to be true.
I am not sure how the law goes on publishing this stuff but I believe I am within the law to publish this as once it has been tendered in open court it is freely available. That is one of two things I may ask Law Access tomorrow although they will probably not answer me.
About 2:15pm on Sat 25th February 2012 I was out in front of the Budgewoi Fire Station doing some checks on one of the fire trucks. I was in full uniform when I heard a commotion across the street. I know this is not true as when the attack on the handicapped man began Mr Viles had already moved up behind him but that cannot be proven so moving on. ….(Not relevant just places the building and describes me)…….
…he was aggressively grabbing at a lady’s neck who he was in a heated argument with. The fight just escalated and me and Tiffany ran over…..According to both of the first witnesses this cannot have happened. The handicapped man was held by one person and grabbed by another. There was never a time when he was alone with any woman. Nor did he have the opportunity to be grabbing some one by the neck as his arms were held by the second assailant. Again this is based on the statements by the first witnesses.
I TACKLED HIM TO THE GROUND….According to Greg Brown when Mr Viles arrived the handicapped guy was already on his knees and being punched and kicked by a second attacker. As I said Mr Viles now became the third assailant….He was telling me to get off him I had his arms behind his back…he did not have the arms of the person doing the punching nor did he have the arms of the person holding the handicapped man down.
He was making grunting growling noises. That was screaming!
It wasn’t until I had physically tackled him to the ground and he was telling me about his back problems that I looked over and saw a scooter just around the corner…under questioning and with the statements of police it was proven that Mr Viles had to have been right next to the scooter and probably slammed the man into it as he tackled him. As Mr Viles knew everyone else at that moment it is not reasonable to assume he did not know he was dealing with a handicapped man. That same handicapped man was in the street in front of that shop and passing the fire fighters almost every day for several years. He was a town character and it is extremely unlikely for any of the participants not to know who he was and that he required a machine to get around the shopping strip.
I’d just seen a man physically fighting a woman and thought it wasn’t right so I had to get him off her…Under questioning of the earlier witnesses while Mr Viles was present it was seen that there was never a time that a woman was being attacked by that handicapped person. Mr Viles was forced to admit that this was so and in disgust at the total lack of truth in his story he was allowed to leave the witness box without further comment. He was such a hopeless and obvious liar. The act of getting someone off a person in a fight is not the same as attacking a person and slamming them face first into the concrete in a spear tackle before dropping a knee into their spine. The latter is certain to cause significant harm and is way past the fair application of protecting a victim even if the victim had been wrestling with a woman which we conclusively proved not to have happened.
So, the Fire Fighter Joshua Viles took an oath to tell the truth in a document that was used to convict a handicapped man of a crime while the fire fighter was in uniform and using his integrity as a first responder. That statement was proven to have been false and misleading. That statement was an attempt both to harm the handicapped person as much as possible and protect the fireman from the responsibility for a brutal assault on one of the vulnerable people in our community.
The behaviour of the Police, the Fire Brigade and even the Prosecutor in this matter bring shame on our community and those who uphold its integrity. The Prosecutor and the Police let confessions of serious crimes pass in a court room when the perpetrators should have been charged. The Police saw all of the statements and also did nothing but make efforts to avoid taking responsibility. The Fire Brigade began and dropped a lacklustre and totally ineffectual investigation which was designed to pretend to be the real deal but probably never even involved the opening of a folder or the turning of a page.
Notes on this to Fire Brigade Headquarters asking for comment