When hundreds of protesters defied Victoria’s Covid-19 lockdown rules on September 18, 2021, the state was still in the process of counting daily new cases of the virus.
That day, there were 1438 new cases.
It wasn’t the only thing the state was counting.
There were 235 people arrested that day, 193 people fined for breaching lockdown rules and five police officers hospitalised.
Five years on, one of the ugliest clashes of a historically ugly time for Victoria has reared its head.
New details have been heard about what happened that day between Richmond and Kew as hostilities exploded and crowds turned their anger from those who were making the controversial pandemic rules to those were enforcing them.
One of those protesters was Brendon MacIsaac, a man who this month finally had his day in court after being charged with a vicious assault on an emergency worker on duty.
The Victorian County Court heard how MacIsaac, now 63, found himself at the front of the protest as it made its way towards a line of police wearing face masks at the old railway cutting in Kew.
There, between two man-made walls acting like a funnel, police tried to hold their line.
But the sheer number of protesters overwhelmed them.
Video from that day shows police using pepper spray and swinging batons in an attempt to control the crowd of some 300 protesters.
One policewoman was brutally shoved to the ground and trampled as she tried to escape.
Others swung at individuals with their batons as they surged past police in the direction of the Melbourne CBD.
In the scrum was MacIsaac, whose conduct was described by Judge Marcus Dempsey.
“On the afternoon of 18 September 2021, you took part in a protest against the necessary and lawful stay at home restrictions that the Victorian government had introduced, to reduce the spread of a globally catastrophic and deadly pandemic within the community, namely Covid-19,” he said in sentencing MacIsaac.
“Approximately three-hundred protesters marched and ended up in a cutting in Kew. Police formed a line across Barkers Road to prevent the unlawful protest from continuing any further.
“There were only enough uniformed police members to form a single line, and the victim was one of them.
“Somehow you had found yourself at the front of the protest line, which ought not be seen as you being a leader or chief agitator of the group. Far from it. You appeared disconnected from the other more volatile and agitated protesters who demanded police acquiesce to their demands and be let through.
“(A constable) was standing with a handful of colleagues. He was clearly a policeman. He was clearly on duty. He was following the orders of those superiors who were trying to contain and manage hundreds of people who were acting in clear defiance of a lawfully issued order to remain at home and to be socially distanced.
“He had a police issue baton in a ready position and a hand out in an attempt to de-escalate any threat of violence. He had made no threats of harming anyone. He had not struck anyone or indicated he would do so with his baton. In my view, he would have been well entitled to use it if necessary to defend himself. But what I have described and what I am about to describe further is captured on his body worn camera footage.
“You were one of many protesters who aggressively and violently broke through the line of police who were in position to prevent the protesters from marching further.
“In the course of breaking through the police line you assaulted (the constable). You charged at him with your shoulder and grabbed hold of his baton. You would not let go. He was off balance and this caused him to fall to the ground along with other events.
“He attempted to get up but you had released your grip from the baton and punched him to the face, causing him to fall back down.”
Judge Dempsey said the officer was “then trampled on by others before being dragged out” and had to be taken to Epworth Hospital with minor injuries.
Police were able to identify MacIsaac from the constable’s bodyworn camera footage and located him a short time later.
He gave what Judge Dempsey described as a “fatuous interview”.
“You thought you would be coy or clever and professed not to recognise the individual who was so clearly you in the body worn camera footage,” he said.
“You went as far as to tell police that you must have a doppelganger.”
Judge Dempsey said MacIsaac “acted out of character” that day after “(finding) yourself in a situation not entirely of your making”.
“Group behaviour can influence individuals, and I suspect that is what has occurred here,” Judge Dempsey said.
“It seems implicit in your interview and your attendance at the protest that you had a distrust or scepticism about the way the government was handling the pandemic, but that did not rise to actual antipathy towards police.”
MacIsaac was given a 12-month good behaviour bond and released with a conviction recorded.
The officer who was attacked chose not to provide a victim impact statement to the court.
The Police Association of Victoria has been approached for comment.
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