Adrian Alan Hobson (30) was disqualified from driving for three months and fined £2,200 on 18 January after pleading guilty to careless driving.
He was prosecuted for going through a red light and crashing into another car when responding to an emergency call on 24 October 2016.
Hobson has appealed to the Royal Court against the sentence. His lawyer, Advocate Alison Brown, said that his appeal was due to be heard on 12 March.
During a recent hearing in the Magistrate’s Court, Advocate Brown argued that if Hobson was successful at appeal and the sentence was reduced, her client would have been banned for too long.
Among the points Advocate Brown made was that another police officer was disqualified from driving for only one month when she was sentenced by Assistant Magistrate Peter Harris for careless driving.
Mr Harris said the court had the power to suspend Hobson’s ban pending appeal. But he said that there were no previous cases available for the court to consider, as no similar applications had been made in recent times to anyone’s knowledge within the court.
‘I have seen the grounds for appeal and these include consistency in sentencing. I sentenced another police officer for one month for a driving offence but I was aware of that when I sentenced Hobson…
‘In all the circumstances I cannot see any basis on which I can accede to this application today. I accordingly refuse the application,’ said the Assistant Magistrate.
When Hobson was sentenced, Mr Harris ruled that he would have to retake his driving test when the ban ended.
Hobson was prosecuted after his marked police car drove into a Mini Cooper at about 1.30 am on 24 October 2016 at the junction of David Place and Stopford Road. Both cars were written off.
The court heard that the defendant and a colleague were responding to a call to go to Bath Street, where other officers were in ‘personal danger’ dealing with an ‘escalating’ incident outside the Havana nightclub.
