Protester On Trial For 'Assaulting PC With His Voice Through A Megaphone' Is Cleared
The boss of a cab driver’s union accused of assaulting two police officers by using a megaphone too close to their ears has been found not guilty part way through his trial.
James Farrar, 51, faced two charges of assault by beating of an emergency worker after he used a loudhailer near PC Ann Spinks and Sergeant James Lewis during a demonstration about the congestion charge on March 4 last year.
But at the end of the prosecution case, Judge Philip Bartle QC told the jury at Southwark Crown Court to find Farrar not guilty after his defence argued there was no evidence he had committed a crime.
Prosecutor Terence Woods argued that while there was no physical beating, using the loudhailer in proximity to the officers was an “unlawful application of force”.
But dismissing jurors on Thursday, Judge Bartle said: “The essence of the defence argument, which I accept, was the facts did not justify the offence in either case of assault by beating because the offence requires unlawful application of force.”
Farrar, chairman of the United Private Hire Drivers’ branch of the IWGB union, had organised a weekly Parliament Square demonstration against Transport for London (TfL) for exempting black cabs from the congestion charge but enforcing it for Uber and minicab drivers.
Icah Peart QC, defending, said it would be “violence to the English language” to say that using a megaphone was an application of force.
“There was no actus reus, a guilty act, because speaking through a megaphone cannot and does not amount to the application of force.
“What he was doing to address the protesters was, given the circumstances, entirely appropriate.”
Jurors previously heard Farrar, of Seymour Road, Bordon, Hampshire, had used the megaphone before at the weekly protests which typically featured drums, air horns, whistles and vuvuzelas, as well as other megaphones.
Peart said: “As the organiser of the protest, how else could he have made himself heard if he had not taken advantage...
