‘Drink drive suspect showed false CCTV footage’, trial told
A SUSPECTED drink driver perverted the course of justice by producing ‘false’ CCTV footage for a magistrates court trial, a jury heard.
David Aitken, 40, was arrested by police officers outside his home on Jubilee Close in Haslingden after they saw him in a car on the drive ‘moving the vehicle’, a court was told, and that officers believed he was driving ‘while over the alcohol limit’.
Prosecutors claim that when the matter came to trial four months later Mr Aitken produced false CCTV footage which showed the car stationary and not moving and with no police officers or other people at the scene.
Mr Aitken denies the claims and has pleaded not guilty to a charge of committing an act tending or intending to pervert the course of public justice.
Hayley Bennett, prosecuting, told the jury at Preston Crown Court that officers were called to Mr Aitken’s home on November 29, 2015, and that he appeared for trial at Burnley Magistrates Court on March 14, 2016.
The court was told that the footage produced by Mr Aitken had ‘no date or time stamp’, but that the file showed it was created on the day of the incident.
Miss Bennett told the jury that PC Hayley Rimmer claimed the footage was false because ‘at no point did she see herself approaching the car, being anywhere near the car or searching the car and couldn’t see [the defendant] in the footage’.
The initial trial was adjourned following concerns raised by the prosecutor and Mr Aitken was later arrested, the latest hearing was told. The judge heard officers seized the CCTV footage and SD card and searched his address where they found a CCTV unit inside.
The jury was told that the date and time on the CCTV unit ‘could easily be set by anyone who used it’ and when it was tested by a police officer ‘the date on the system was inaccurate by a number of months’.
During an interview, Mr Aitken ‘refused’ to tell police where the CCTV camera was located on the house and also didn’t confirm the CCTV system found in the house ‘was the system which it had been recorded on’, the court heard.
Miss Bennett told the jury that CCTV footage was ‘false and created deliberately to mislead the court’. She said: “In essence the evidence the Crown will rely on are the evidence of PC Rimmer, the lack of CCTV cameras attached to the defendant’s home and the ability to enter the time and date onto the CCTV system.”
Mr Aitken denies the charge.