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POLICE officer Joshua Savage became “a bully in uniform” when he smashed a car windscreen then hacked at it with a Swiss army knife, a court heard yesterday.
The 28-year-old officer stopped Leon Fontana on Weedington Road in Gospel Oak, north London on September 16 2016 in a case of mistaken identity.
Prosecutor Jonathan Polnay played footage of the incident, which went viral at the time, to the jury, showing Mr Savage repeatedly order Mr Fontana to “get out of the car,” telling him: “You’re not allowed to drive it.”
Mr Savage then appears to start swinging his baton at the driver’s-side window, then at the windscreen before taking out a Swiss army knife and starting to saw through the windscreen.
Mr Polnay told Southwark Crown Court: “Dixon of Dock Green, PC Joshua Savage certainly is not and you might think it not unfair to say that he comes across as a bully in uniform.
“When Mr Fontana was saying: ‘I’ve got a licence, I’ve got insurance,’ he was telling the truth.”
Mr Polnay told the jury that the police believed Mr Fontana was actually another man, who “to put it mildly … is well known to local police.
“He was believed to be involved in drug dealing and police had been told he may be violent.”
Mr Polnay told the jury that Mr Savage’s behaviour “was against the very laws that he was meant to be upholding,” adding that the officer “absolutely lost his temper. He lost it.”
Ms Savage said in a witness statement that he saw the suspect “lunge to the footwell” of the black Ford Fiesta and that he believed Mr Fontana “may have had access to firearms, offensive weapons or drugs.”
But Mr Polnay asked the jury: “Did you hear him shout a warning to his colleagues? Do you not think he might do that if he really thought he was going for a weapon?”
In evidence, Mr Fontana said he felt “very threatened” during the incident, adding: “I definitely wasn’t leaving my car.”
Mr Savage, of Hermon Hill, Wanstead, east London, denies common assault, possession of a bladed article and criminal damage. He has been placed on restricted duties by the Met.
The trial continues.
