The Highest Court Reaches Final Verdict on the Case of the Police Officers from Mohács who Assaulted Homeless people
The Kuria, the highest court of Hungary, left the most significant parts of the appellate court’s decision untouched: it confirmed the prison sentence for both police officers who had committed the crimes. The victims were represented in court by the Streetlawyer Association.
The two police officers were first charged in February 2021, when it was learnt that while on patrol, they assaulted, on multiple occasions, two unhoused people living in vulnerable conditions: the officers pepperspayed them in the face from very close, spoke to them in a humiliating way, and forced one of them to sing and play air guitar in the street - the latter they then recorded and sent it to one of their colleagues. This all took place during the COVID pandemic, when streets of Mohács were empty due to curfews, leaving only patrolling police and unhoused people. This, in turn, rendered the latter group in an even more vulnerable position, and the former less afraid of potential consequences of police brutality, given the lack of possible witnesses.
“This behaviour, that an on-duty police officer would go beyond their official capacity and during an official police stop would violate the dignity of and humiliate the person they stopped for personal gain, impairs the public’s trust in the lawfulness of the police’s - a government agency’s - work at its core” - says the Kúria’s decision. According to reasoning, the primary defendant’s defence, according to which their superiors have not properly informed them on the rules of procedure regarding unhoused people, cannot be accepted. “The Court determines that operating according to the law, acting with professionalism and with empathy towards people in vulnerable positions in the various situations they may encounter during their duties, is what makes a police officer a police officer. (...) The Court finds the contents of paragraph [49] of the appellate court’s decision appropriate. The defendants, therefore the primary defendant as well, treated the vulnerable plaintiffs in a humiliating manner for their own [defendant’s] entertainment.”
The primary and secondary defendants had already been found guilty on the first degree in 2023 by the Metropolitan Court of Kaposvár’s (Kaposvári Törvényszék) military chamber, though they have received much more lenient sentences: a two-year suspended prison sentence with four years of probation. Following that, the appellate court in 2024, the Appellate Court of the Capital (Főváros Ítélőtábla) gave a harsher sentence: two years and three months in prison, which was made compulsory for the secondary defendant. The Kúria, however, was not anymore lenient towards the primary defendant either.
The Streetlawyer Association has worked on the case since 2021 as a top priority. The organization’s lawyers and volunteers have stood up for the victims in multiple hearings. First, the organization turned to the Commissioner of Fundamental Rights, who declared via statement, that the plaintiff’s human dignity had been violated. Following this, Streetlawyer won a lawsuit against the National Police Headquarters, after police had refused to investigate the two unhoused people’s complaints. With this recent criminal procedure, a four-year-long case has finally been brought to a close. The police officers apologized for their actions following the second-degree verdict, which the plaintiffs have accepted.
Streetlawyer’s work is supported by the City Council’s Fund named Fővárosi Szolidaritási Alap.