Police officers freed of wounding charges

Two police officers, Constable Alister Casey and Special Constable John Myvette, were today freed of the charges of Wounding in relation to the alleged beating of Kevin “Possum” Dawson. Chief Magistrate Margaret Mckenzie dismissed the charge because the case was also set for trial today and Dawson, who was an inmate at the Hattieville prison, could not be located. It was alleged that between three-thirty and four o’clock p.m. on March fourteenth, while he was in the holding cell at the Queen Street police station, Casey and Myvette entered the cell and beat him up with wooden batons. Dawson was cut on his upper lip, over the right eye and on the top of his head and wounded on both hands and the left leg. According to the complainant, he was beaten because three weeks prior to the incident, he had deceived the court and the police by switching his charge sheet for drug trafficking with another inmate for a charge of possession. Using the identity of the other inmate, Dawson pleaded guilty to possession and was released after being ordered to pay a fine. He was a fugitive for about three weeks before he was apprehended. The deception was detected later the same day when the inmate who had Dawson’s charge sheet, revealed that he was not Dawson.