SA Police Constable Anthea Beck tells District Court her account of brawl with anti-vaxxer Raina Jane Cruise

A young police officer has told a court she was fearful and needed to defend herself from an “obnoxious” anti-vaxxer during a violent brawl. See the video.

An SA Police officer had to punch a failed Senate candidate twice during a brawl because she was being driven headfirst into the footpath and “no one was coming” to help, a court has heard.

On Wednesday, Constable Anthea Beck gave her account of her confrontation with anti-vaxxer Raina Jane Cruise as the District Court watched her bodycam footage of the incident.

Asked, by Ms Cruise’s lawyer, whether she had struck his client, Constable Beck replied: “Yes, I struck her – I remember it being two times.”

Judge Joanne Deuter asked Constable Beck to describe her feelings at the time.

Raina Jane Cruise says her arrest was not lawful, and she was using reasonable force to defend herself from false imprisonment. Picture: Keryn Stevens

“She (Ms Cruise) has got a handful of my hair, she’s got control of my head, she’s jerking me around and it hurts, she’s on top of me and I can’t get out,” she said.

“I was losing control of the situation, I was scared for my safety – I was very scared – because I had this person who was fairly heavy on top of me.

“I’m alone, there’s no one coming, I have to get out of this situation because how many times do I let her hit the back of my head into the footpath?”

Ms Cruise, 39, has pleaded guilty to assaulting two Exeter Hotel security officers on October 17, 2021, but denied any guilt over the encounter with Constable Beck.

Injuries sustained by SA Police Constable Anthea Beck during the incident. Picture: District Court registry

Constable Anthea Beck told the court Ms Cruise had been immediately “argumentative and quite hostile”. Picture: Keryn Stevens

She has pleaded not guilty to one aggravated count of assault and one count of intentionally causing harm to a prescribed emergency worker.

She claims Constable Beck did not formally arrest her before touching her, and was therefore acting unlawfully – meaning she was “reasonably” defending herself from false imprisonment.

In her evidence, Constable Beck said she moved to arrest Ms Cruise but managed only to say “all right” before the failed Senate candidate pulled chunks of hair from her scalp.

Injuries sustained by SA Police Constable Anthea Beck during the incident. Picture: District Court registry

A clump of hair that Constable Beck lost during the incident. Picture: District Court registry

On Wednesday, Andrew Graham, for Ms Cruise, suggested his client was “just drunk” and that Constable Beck “knew” she “objected to being touched”.

He suggested Constable Beck had “committed” to arresting Ms Cruise in a physical manner and “did not pay close attention to” her duties as a police officer.

“That’s absolutely not what happened,” Constable Beck replied.

In his closing address, prosecutor Greg Dudzinski asked Judge Deuter to find Ms Cruise guilty.

He said Ms Cruise had been “particularly defiant” about Covid mandates, was “pulling down people’s masks” at the Exeter and had “thrown the most punches” at its guards.

Ms Cruise, he said, was “hostile, anti-authoritarian and violent” and Constable Beck had lawfully arrested her as her aggression reached “a fever pitch”.

“It was because of Ms Cruise’s actions that there was a delay in the words ‘you are under arrest’,” he said.

“The law does not expect a police officer under attack to be able to utter every single word, and the law does not require that (in those circumstances).

“She said ‘I’ll smash you one-on-one b*tch’ … these aren’t the words of someone acting in self-defence, these are the words of someone who wants to fight and to cause harm.”

Mr Graham, however, said the video “was the best evidence” of his client’s actions, rather than Constable Beck’s “reconstructed” and “exaggerated” recollection.

He argued neither Constable Beck nor her partner were in “immediate physical danger”, and the officer had sought to “paint Ms Cruise as the villain”.

“They are not in the middle of a riot, there’s no missiles flying over heads … they are dealing with obnoxious drunks,” he said.

“To say that they were in danger over-eggs what occurred … someone being obnoxious and much larger does not mean the other person is in immediate physical danger.”

Judge Deuter will hand down her verdict at a later date.