‘F*** the police’: Alice man cleared after telling cops to ‘f*** off and leave him alone’ outside pub

A Territory man jailed for calling police officers ‘c***s’ and telling them to ‘f**k off and leave him alone’ outside the pub has been exonerated after his conviction was quashed on appeal.

AN Alice Springs man jailed for calling police officers “c***s” and telling them to “f*** off and leave him alone” outside the pub has been exonerated after his conviction was quashed on appeal.

Franklin Brokus had been found guilty in the Alice Springs Local Court in December 2020 of disorderly behaviour in public but appealed the ruling, claiming his language was not “obscene”.

The court heard two police officers had heard someone yelling “f*** the police” outside Uncle’s Tavern and when they got out of their car to investigate, Mr Brokus swore at them.

When they took his can of drink from him as he sat next to the footpath, he ”continued to berate police and used offensive language”.

Other evidence was led to show Mr Brokus was intoxicated, “in the view of one of the police officers, he may have been showing off” for two women and was “probably angry because police officers took his can of alcohol and emptied it”.

In overturning the conviction, Justice Jenny Blokland found that while behaviour only had to have a “tendency” to disturb the peace to be considered disorderly, it also had to be “serious enough to warrant the intervention of the criminal law”.

Justice Blokland also ruled that while Mr Brokus’s language, “as annoying as it may have been”, was not “obscene”, as the words f*** and c*** “do not necessarily have a sexual connotation in current usage”.

“It does not appear the appellant meant the words ‘f***’ and ‘c***’ or ‘c***s’ in their literal sense or original meaning as referring to sexual intercourse or female genitalia,” she said.

“Although unpleasant and sexist in some contexts, the use of the word ‘c***’ seems to rarely refer to ‘vagina’.

“While ‘Far fewer people will be upset by the word vagina than will be appalled to hear the word c***’, there is nothing in the context here that would indicate use of the word ‘c***’

conveyed the idea of a vagina.

“The appellant may well have been annoying and potentially made the police work unpleasant. However, it was an error to make a finding of guilt on the basis that it was made.”

Mr Brokus was sentenced to 14 days in prison but he was not spared any jail time after the conviction was overturned as he was also sentenced to prison for other “appropriate” charges, which he was required to serve.