Judge's furious blast at the thug cops who stomped on the face of a naked woman and PEPPER-SPRAYED her genitals before sharing vile video of the brutal attack: 'Gratuitous cruelty'

Daily Mail​

2 days ago

Two cops who kicked and stomped on a naked woman and pepper-sprayed her genitals now face up to 12 years in jail after a judge blasted their 'gratuitious' violence.
Nathan Black and Timothy John Trautsch pleaded guilty to assaulting the mentally ill woman during an arrest on January 22, 2023, then sent body-worn footage to a colleague, bragging: 'We caved her.'
Judge Graham Turnbull told Penrith District Court that the act of pepper-spraying the woman's was 'gratuitous cruelty'.
'I struggle with what the possible reason was, beyond the intention to inflict gratuitous pain,' he told a sentencing hearing on Tuesday.
The men launched the savage 18-minute assault after the woman was found nude and bathing in a puddle in an Emu Plains street in Sydney's west.
The victim - who cannot be named for legal reasons - had earlier been released from the nearby Amber Laurel Women's Correctional Centre.
She had walked 300m to Smith Street, an industrial cul-de-sac lined with smash repair and auto shops, where she stripped naked, triggering the welfare check call to police.
The court heard the woman, 48, had been given antipsychotic medication for her schizophrenia but had not taken it.
Trautsch, then 27, and Black, then 26, attended the scene and attempted to get her into an ambulance to go to hospital, prior to the violent assault
At one point, sitting naked on a grassy footpath, the woman told the officers: 'If you touch me, you are f***ed and I mean f***ed.'
After trying to handcuff the woman, she resisted by grabbing the cuffs and the officers responded with rapidly-escalating violence.
The footage of what happened next is so confronting, NSW Police tried to get it suppressed for 60 years, purportedly to protect the woman from further trauma.
But Judge Turnbull agreed to play the video, taken from body-worn cameras and CCTV, at their sentence hearing.
The footage showed the woman being pushed onto the road, kicked twice in the head, dragged by her hair, and punched while she sobbed and screamed at the men.
'God, make me strong. God, make me strong,' she said over and over. 'God, please. I'm sorry I didn't listen. I'm sorry, God.'
The two officers struggled to handcuff her on the ground as she lashed out with her arms, while spraying her six times with pepper spray.
The woman was sprayed twice in the face, once on her back - already grazed from the rough road surface - and once on her genitals.
At one stage, the woman defecated on the road and onto Nathan Black's leg. 'Wash your dirty stinky a***,' one of the officers was then heard saying.
They discussed using a Taser and a long baton, with Trautsch visibly laughing.
Black messaged a colleague about how they emptied two cans of pepper spray at the woman, boasting that 'the whole body-worn is so good, shows her being f***ed'.
The woman died in unrelated circumstances 18 months after the attack.
Judge Turnbull said one of the officers was 'gloating' about the footage.
He said the pair had 'got to the stage where they are defecated on, a suggestion of bodily fluids, she is completely unable to recognise who they are.
'There's just the two of them. The circumstances got to that these two men just lost the plot.'
Crown prosecutor Nicholas Marney told the court that the two officers could simply have restrained the woman, noting she posed no threat to them, despite grabbing at the handcuffs.
When the woman was eventually taken to Nepean Hospital, Black told medical staff, 'You have to do what you have to do.'
The men were charged in March 2023 and suspended without pay.
On Tuesday, the pair sat apart in the dock staring straight ahead, as Crown prosecutor Nicholas Marney replayed the disturbing footage of the young men physically and verbally abusing the stricken woman.
In urging Judge Turnbull to give the men long sentences, Mr Marney said it was an 'abuse of powers'.
Instead of helping a woman subject to a welfare check, they had assaulted and berated her,' he said.
Black has pleaded guilty to assault occasioning actual bodily harm, using a prohibited weapon without a permit and three counts of common assault.
He also admitted two counts of intentionally publishing protected information after sending snippets of the body-worn footage to another police officer.
Trautsch pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, three counts of common assault and one count of using a prohibited weapon without a permit.
The men face a maximum of 14 years for the charge of using a prohibited weapon without a permit, with a minimum of five years, but are entitled to a ten per cent discount for pleading guilty two weeks before they were due to stand trial.
Judge Turnbull said both the use of pepper spray on the 48-year-old woman's wound and her genitals appeared deliberate.
'I see things with my own eyes. The video had the potential to speak for itself. (There) seems to be to be a spray almost deliberately towards the vagina,' he said.
The judge expressed mild surprise that following the incident the two officers – who have since left the police force – charged the woman with two counts of assault.
'I have to say after four decades of experience, it is not uncommon in tight spots for people to be charged, or should I say, it does happen to deflect attention.
'The person becomes not just a victim but a defendant.'
Judge Turnbull said that the victim's 'presentation was … pretty fearsome. It evolved' and that the initial response of the police 'reflected straight out threats of harm, standing in the middle of the street like a bull, in her florid psychotic state'.
But he said that the 'way she's being struck and sprayed would increase her agitation, the way she's kicking out'.
His Honour asked the men's legal counsel: 'Why didn't they give up and let her calm down for a minute?
'Isn't it part of the irony by exercising her powers in this way she has come to harm?'
Neither now serve as NSW Police officers in the wake of the attack.
There was a suggestion by the defence that Black had suffered a liver condition after being defecated on by the woman, but no evidence was presented at court.
It was previously revealed that Black had taken legal action to sue NSW Police over 'psychological injury' and trauma from his time on the force.
However NSW Police barrister David Baran last year told a court Black's claim for workers' compensation would be opposed.
'We say this injury is suffered from this horrific assault,' he added.
'Psychological trauma is based on this assault. He did what no police officer should do.'