Police bashed, pepper-sprayed screaming naked woman on Sydney street

WARNING: Graphic content

Two NSW Police officers stomped on the face of a mentally ill Sydney woman and pepper-sprayed her naked body as she screamed out in prayer before one shared the footage of the attack with a friend.

Details of the brutal attack by Timothy John Trautsch and Nathan Black can be revealed after their victim later died in unrelated circumstances, and the Herald and other news outlets launched a legal bid to reveal their misconduct.

Timothy Trautsch leaves court on Thursday.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Trautsch, then 27, and Black, then 26, were among emergency services called to help a 49-year-old woman, who the Herald has chosen not to identify, who was spotted naked and bathing herself in a puddle in an Emu Plains cul-de-sac late one afternoon in January 2023.

The woman was living unmedicated with schizophrenia after being released, earlier that day, from the nearby Amber Laurel women’s prison.

Body-worn and CCTV footage of what came next was so confronting police claimed it should be suppressed for 60 years to protect the woman from further trauma.

Nathan Black leaves court on Thursday.Credit: Wolter Peeters

But the woman died last year in “unconnected” circumstances, the Penrith District Court heard on Thursday. The police left the suppression order in effect despite the woman’s death.

On Thursday, barrister Matthew Lewis, SC, representing the Herald and other news outlets, petitioned the court to allow media to witness the footage on behalf of the public which needed to understand the depth of the police misconduct.

The footage, aired in front of the officers’ family and media, begins with the woman sitting on a nature strip, naked, swearing at police and refusing to tell them her name.

The woman told the two plain-clothed police officers she would “put them both down” and saying “aliens were watching”.

‘I’m terrified of you people.’

The victim

One officer told the woman she would be sectioned to Nepean Hospital.

“I’m terrified of you people,” the woman screamed.

“You ain’t got the drugs to fix me, you ain’t got the drugs to put me out. You can’t beat me … that gun is not going to help you.”

The woman began running as Black and Trautsch gave chase and tackled her on the road. She was sitting cross-legged, praying for God’s protection, as one of the officers fired pepper, or OC, spray into her face and vagina.

Timothy Trautsch (left) and Nathan Black at an earlier court appearance.Credit: Nine News

The woman, covered in her own excrement and spray, washes herself in the gutter.

Black periodically turned his camera on and off, with another clip capturing the officers laughing.

“Wash your c---, wash your arse, wash it out,” Black is heard saying on the video.

“What the f--- is going on.”

At one point, Black’s camera drops to the ground, showing only the road and a power pole, as the woman screams in the background, calls out in prayer and pain.

Black and Trautsch, in the confrontation, drag the woman across the road by her hair and repeatedly kick her in the face, body and head.

‘That’s enough, there could be cameras.’

Timothy Trautsch

At one point they spray her visibly grazed back with more pepper spray as she rolls on the ground.

“That’s enough, there could be cameras,” Trautsch warns Black at one point.

NSW Ambulance paramedics had witnessed the attack and rushed the woman to hospital before raising the alarm. One asked Black if the woman had been sprayed in her genitalia.

“Yes, you have to do what you have to do,” Black replied.

A full investigation was launched and both Black and Trautsch were initially suspended without pay.

Senior sources within the NSW Police told the Herald they were “absolutely horrified” and called Black and Trautsch a “disgrace”.

Nathan Black (left) and Timothy Trautsch attacked a mentally ill woman with OC spray and by stomping on her face as she sat naked on a roadway.

Black sent portions of the video to a fellow officer on Facebook Messenger.

“She was f----- the whole body worn [footage] is so good shows her being f-----,” Black wrote to his friend.

“Nurses are lodging a complaint [another officer] is investigating because we caved her, but she had a hold of the cuffs and we had no other options.”

Judge Graham Turnbull said on Thursday the behaviour of the woman was confronting, and he will consider releasing pixelated vision of the approximately 20-minute altercation.

He was concerned a redacted version provided by police “dehumanised” the woman by blurring her too much and failed to show her actions and the response by Black and Trautsch.

Black and Trautsch pleaded guilty to charges of assault and misusing a prohibited weapon regarding the pepper spray. Black also pleaded guilty to two counts of intentionally publishing protected information.

Prosecutors told the court Black and Trautsch made no attempt to strategise, seek reinforcements or other services, and instead just “used violence”.

The judge will make his determination on the footage as part of the sentencing process in the coming week.

Black and Trautsch resigned from NSW Police before they could be formally fired.

Black launched a workers’ compensation claim against NSW Police, saying he had been traumatised by witnessing decapitations on the job and was not supported. The court previously heard that Trautsch had also made a workers’ compensation claim.

Doctors told the compensation court that Black had sustained a liver infection because of the woman’s bodily fluids entering his bloodstream as she bit the officers.

The commission held that Black must be paid during his suspension and was diagnosed with PTSD which predated his attack on the woman.

“It would seem that the actions of the vulnerable female caused Mr Black to lose all control and act in an uncharacteristic and egregious way which have brought consequences for him that are ruinous to his career,” the commission found.

The court heard from psychiatric experts who had spoken to Black. Similar work had been done in his compensation case.

“The workplace culture of the NSW Police enshrines a ‘get over it and get on with it’ work ethic... stay quiet and not be viewed as weak by senior staff or other colleagues,” Black wrote in one questionnaire about his mental health.

But the Commission heard Black had not availed himself of either police chaplains or counsellors and, after organising one psychiatric session, left before it began.

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