An innocent farmer who claimed he was tasered twice by garda\u00ed searching for an illegal gun in Co Cork has settled a High Court action brought over the alleged incident.<\/p>\n
Thomas Browne, 54, had claimed he was \u201cunlawfully assaulted and battered and falsely imprisoned\u201d by members of the Armed Support Unit while he was working in a shed on his farm on December 14, 2015.<\/p>\n
He claimed garda\u00ed did not identify themselves and acted with unnecessary force during the raid.<\/p>\n
An Garda S\u00edoch\u00e1na said the operation took place, but denied any wrongdoing on behalf of Garda members.<\/p>\n
On Monday, Garnet Orange, for Mr Browne, told Mr Justice Tony O\u2019Connor the case had settled and could be struck out. Mr Orange asked the judge to make an order directing the Garda Commissioner to pay his client\u2019s legal costs.<\/p>\n
The judge made the orders as sought.<\/p>\n
According to court documents, Mr Browne \u2014 who has no involvement in criminality \u2014 was building a new shed with his two teenage sons and an electrician friend on the day of the raid.<\/p>\n
He said he was in an existing shed inspecting a fuse board when the doors were pulled open and several people \u201cstormed in with lights and started shouting and roaring\u201d.<\/p>\n
The lights made it impossible to identify the group and they did not identify themselves, according to Mr Browne\u2019s statement of claim. He said he feared he was being robbed.<\/p>\n
He alleges he was forced to the ground, which was wet with oil and water, before a taser was fired into his lower back.<\/p>\n
Garda\u00ed continued to shout at him before going silent as they searched the shed. Mr Browne said he raised his head to see what was happening and that he was tasered again.<\/p>\n
It was the Garda commissioner\u2019s case that the unit was justified in using reasonable force as they were searching for a firearm. They denied any negligence or breach of duty and claimed Armed Support Unit members identified themselves as garda\u00ed.<\/p>\n
Court documents state garda\u00ed were searching for a firearm used in an aggravated burglary two days before the raid.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An innocent farmer who claimed he was tasered twice by garda\u00ed searching for an illegal gun in Co…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":267362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[54,42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-267361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-courts","9":"tag-headlines","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/267362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}