Prosecutors seek two and a half years for two Benidorm officers over alleged hate crimes

Prosecutors maintain a request for two years and six months in prison for each of two Benidorm local police officers tried at Alicante Provincial Court on Monday 26 October over alleged hate crimes.

The prosecution alleges that the officers humiliated a trans woman during lockdown and also seeks three years of disqualification from office for both men, while defence lawyers are asking for their full acquittal.

A video recorded during lockdown

The events before the court date back to 1 May 2020, when the officers were patrolling to monitor compliance with restrictions on movement and encountered the woman on a street in Benidorm.

According to the indictment, they stopped her and one of them, who held a supervisory rank, addressed her with insulting remarks without leaving the vehicle, while his colleague recorded the scene on a personal phone.

The video was subsequently shared in a WhatsApp group that included other police officers, before an unidentified person uploaded it to a social network, where it attracted public attention.

The public prosecutor considers that both acted with discriminatory motivation towards the trans community and argues that the behaviour cannot be reduced to a case of degrading treatment alone.

Defendants deny discriminatory intent

The officer who made the recording denied before the court that he intended to discriminate against the woman or the trans community, answering questions only from his own lawyer.

He said he recorded at the senior officer’s request to capture insults that, in his account, the woman had directed at them elsewhere that morning, a claim forming part of his defence.

The senior officer maintained the same account and said he had not intended to circulate the video on social media, but had sent it to the wrong WhatsApp group and deleted it on realising the mistake.

Defence lawyers reject any intention to discriminate against a community and attribute the officers’ actions to a response to alleged earlier insults; the prosecution’s request is for a sentence, not a conviction.