Alister Swift: Police officer found guilty of unlawfully detaining and assaulting woman during chaotic arrest

A WA police officer has been convicted of unlawfully detaining and assaulting a woman during a traumatic arrest at her Cloverdale home three years ago. It took a jury close to six hours to reach a majority verdict and find Alister Swift, 29, guilty of handcuffing a woman without a lawful reason and using excessive force against her in April 2020. Throughout his District Court trial, Swift vehemently denied the two charges against him, maintaining he’d used only the necessary force required to detain the woman, and that he’d taken those measures because he had feared for his, and his colleague Const. Cassandra Chapman’s safety during the chaotic arrest. While giving evidence late last month, Swift repeatedly criticised Const. Chapman’s actions on the day in question, claiming he’d received zero help from her while the woman he was trying to arrest under the Mental Health Act struggled against him. “She was frozen,” he said. “She’s just stood there and done nothing.” Prosecutor Peter Phillips said Const. Chapman, who made the initial report against Swift, had been “placed in one of the most difficult positions a police officer can find themselves in” — having to choose between obeying her superior or refusing because she believed he was wrong. “Officer Chapman made the choice and chose to do what was right,” Mr Phillips said during his closing address. Const. Chapman and Swift had been called to the Cloverdale property by worried paramedics who’d received a triple-0 call related to a domestic dispute. When they got to the house, Swift claimed he immediately heard the woman screaming and shouting at her partner inside. “Her volume control was poor. It was fluctuating from a loud shout to an almost scream,” he said from the witness stand. “I thought an assault was imminent.” After a violent struggle, the woman dropped her weight and fell to the floor, hitting her head. After she was cuffed, she then smashed her head three times on a table. After the woman calmed down, Const. Chapman removed her handcuffs. But her freedom was shortlived, with Swift restraining her again a short time later when she refused to tell him how to spell her name. Swift said that was when he decided it was necessary to detain the woman under the Mental Health Act and issue a police order prohibiting her from returning to the address for at least 24 hours. He used a “take-down manoeuvre” to pull her over the bed to the floor, and then he pulled her for several metres across the floor to the front door. When defence lawyer Anthony Eyers asked Swift whether he had dragged the “angry and confrontational” woman solely by her cuffs, or sworn and yelled at her as the woman claims, he responded: “I would never do that. I did raise my voice to her … in an ‘authority police voice’.” A short time later, he said the woman swung her head towards him, opened her mouth and gnashed her teeth, prompting him to “place” his hand firmly on the side of her face and place it against the door of a car. “The situation was rapidly getting out of control. I feared there was about to be an assault,” Swift said, explaining why he then called for backup and put the woman in the back of his police vehicle. In her own evidence, the woman told the court Swift had behaved like a “bully” throughout the “traumatic and shocking” ordeal, had been kicked by him, and had become “hysterical” as a result. “He was kicking at my feet trying to knock my feet from underneath me. I had no shoes on, it hurt,” the woman said. “He was just being really aggressive.” Mr Phillips claimed Swift had been motivated by spite and anger when he used “unreasonable force” to detain her. After Const. Chapman filed a report about the arrest, Swift became the subject of an internal investigation — which led to charges of assault and deprivation of liberty. In a statement shortly after, a WA Police spokesperson said Swift had been stood aside from operational duties. Swift will return to court for his sentencing later this year.