Tennille Dean pleads guilty to assaulting police officers

Police noticed a woman covered in blood walking along a Geelong street. They asked if she was okay, she spat and scratched them.

Police officers were driving along North Shore Rd in April when they spotted Tennille Dean.

A woman was seen walking down a Geelong street covered in blood before she attacked police officers who had stopped to assist her.

Tennille Dean, 29, appeared in Geelong Magistrates’ Court via videolink from remand on Tuesday, and pleaded guilty to multiple charges, including assaulting police officers.

The court heard that late on April 28 this year, police officers spotted Dean walking along North Shore Rd covered in a “significant amount” of blood.

The officers became concerned for Dean’s welfare, the court heard, and stopped to ask if she was okay.

Dean responded by shouting abuse and spitting at them, the court heard.

When police attempted to subdue Dean, she bit and scratched, “screaming and thrashing about” and repeatedly told officers she had the right to deny assistance, until paramedics arrived.

Following the incident, three officers were required to attend hospital for tests.

A month later, Dean was arrested over a separate incident and while in custody at Geelong police station, she hit a custody officer multiple times.

The court heard Dean had a 22-page criminal history, and magistrate Ann McGarvie said many of the priors involved assaulting police and emergency workers, with similar charges showing up “almost every time she’s back in court”.

The court heard Dean had been placed on a community corrections order (CCO) by the County Court, and was back in custody “within days”.

Dean’s lawyer conceded it was a “concerning prior history” and said the root cause of her violent offending was an issue with substances, particularly alcohol, and her diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dean had a “long history of trauma” and was “particularly sensitive to situations where she feels threatened”, her lawyer said.

Ms McGarvie noted Dean was “not under threat at all” when officers stopped to check her wellbeing.

“She walks over and spits into the police car,” Ms McGarvie said.

Dean’s lawyer told the court that when sober, Dean “expresses significant remorse to how she’s behaved”.

She said Dean had never had the chance to participate in residential rehabilitation, but a potential spot had opened up, the court heard.

“The glimmer of an opportunity has only come up now … if she’s sentenced today she was lose that opportunity,” Dean’s lawyer told the court.

Prison would only provide “a period of respite from this cycle”, Dean’s lawyer said, while her life was “too chaotic” to make the most of a CCO.

“She’s put herself in a very difficult position,” the lawyer said.

Police prosecutor Senior Constable Craig Williams said sentencing was a “difficult exercise” but said it was very serious offending.

“No police officer or custody officer should go to work and expect they’re going to be assaulted,” he said.

Constable Williams read out a victim impact statement from one of the officers, and said the incident “affected them greatly”.

Magistrate Ann McGarvie said she would defer sentence for a month, but noted she couldn’t defer sentence indefinitely.

Dean will reappear in court on August 7. 

Originally published as Tennille Dean pleads guilty to assaulting police officers