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Two Canberra police officers found guilty of assaulting a teenager during a routine traffic stop have appealed their convictions again. Lawyers for James Head and Matthew McVicar say the judge - who had described a video of the assault as disturbing - gave too much weight to the video in dismissing their appeal. Head and McVicar were found guilty of the assault last year after the court was shown footage of the pair swearing and dragging one passenger roughly from his seat to arrest him. It was about 10pm on Australia Day in 2017, and the teenage driver had accidentally driven through the Civic bus interchange. The video shows the officers confront the group in a car park near the interchange and interrogate the driver, who had taken longer than the officers would have liked to pull over after they directed him to do so. The backseat passenger can be heard to say, "He parked where he ..." Head tells the teenager: "If you don't shut up your mouth I'll pull you out and arrest you for hinder." He demands the teenager's licence, which he did not have on him. "All right, get out of the car. I'll be searching you for being a smartarse." "You have witnessed an offence and therefore you are to provide me with your details. Get the f--- out of the car right now." McVicar becomes involved, asking "How f---ing old are you?" The teenager replies, "I'm f---ing 19." McVicar then says: "You're f---ing 19, are you? Get the f--- out of the car." The pair roughly pull the teenager from the car, and Head can be seen grabbing him in a headlock, taking him to the ground and handcuffing him. The magistrate had found the forceful arrest was not lawful and convicted them of common assault. The pair unsuccessfully appealed to the ACT Supreme Court, where the judge hearing the case had been scathing of the two officers' conduct, describing the video as disturbing and the officers as "highly aggressive, loud and ill-mannered." "The dramatic disproportion between the officers' conduct and the situation with which they were dealing is readily apparent from the video," Justice David Mossop said. Justice Mossop dismissed the appeal and affirmed the conviction. This week, lawyers for McVicar and Head appealed the judge's decision to the ACT Court of Appeal. Documents filed by the pair's lawyers David Healey Solicitors and Sharman Robertson say the grounds of appeal include that the judge gave undue weight to the video footage. They say the judge failed to rehear the decision, failed to properly reassess the relevance of fresh evidence, erred in not sending the case back to the Magistrates Court for rehearing and misconstrued the relevance of the powers of arrest. The officers are asking the court to uphold the appeal, vacate the finding of guilt, and send the matter back for hearing according to law in the Magistrates Court.

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