In the case of 40-year-old Tomasz K., the Lubin court issued a penal order finding the mayor guilty. The ruling:
- a PLN 10,000 fine;
- a ban on driving all motor vehicles for a period of 3 years;
- a payment of PLN 7,000 to the Fund for Assistance to Victims and Post-Penitentiary Assistance;
- forfeiture to the State Treasury of the Porsche Macan passenger car driven by the accused;
- compensation payments to the injured seven police officers and the paramedic—PLN 700 for each of them;
- court costs of PLN 4,560.47 payable to the State Treasury and a fee of PLN 1,000.
The Legnica Regional Prosecutor’s Office on the court’s decision:
The prosecutor found the sentence imposed in the ruling too lenient and filed an objection.
According to the prosecutor, there is no doubt about the factual findings made by the Court, leading to the conclusion that the accused, Tomasz K., committed the offenses with which he was charged.
Nevertheless, the aggregate sentence consisting of a fine of only 200 daily rates of PLN 50 each, a payment of PLN 7,000 and compensation payments to the injured parties of only PLN 700 each was assessed by the prosecutor as disproportionate to the degree of guilt and the social harmfulness of the acts charged against the accused.
Investigators:
In the prosecutor’s view, the sentence imposed does not fulfill the preventive and rehabilitative purposes it was intended to achieve with regard to the convicted person, nor does it have a preventive effect on society, namely creating the conviction that crime does not pay.
In the prosecutor’s view, the accused’s conduct—driving a motor vehicle while highly intoxicated and making criminal threats, insulting police officers and a paramedic, and violating their bodily integrity while they were performing their official duties—was characterized by a very high degree of guilt and social harmfulness and demonstrated a blatantly contemptuous attitude toward the legal order. Moreover, Tomasz K.’s conduct is particularly egregious because he committed the alleged acts while serving as mayor and therefore as a public official. This circumstance should also be reflected in the criminal response to the accused’s conduct.
Filing an objection means that the penal order loses its force and the case must be heard under the ordinary procedure.
Let us recall. On February 21, 2025, the Lubin District Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment against 40-year-old Tomasz K., the head of Chocianów, who on June 10, 2024, drove a Porsche Macan under the influence of alcohol through the streets of Lubin.
At the beginning of March, prosecutor Liliana Łukasiewicz, press spokeswoman for the Legnica Regional Prosecutor’s Office, reported:
The above-mentioned person was charged with:
- on June 10, 2024, in Lubin, on the section of road between the intersection of Jana Pawła II Street and Krupińskiego Street and Platynowa Street, driving a Porsche Macan motor vehicle in road traffic while intoxicated, as shown by three blood tests with the following results: test I: 2.6‰, test II: 2.5‰, test III: 2.4‰ blood alcohol (…).
- on June 10, 2024, in the building of the Lubin County Police Headquarters and the Regional Health Center Hospital in Lubin, using unlawful threats to force five police officers intervening in the matter to refrain from carrying out a lawful official act, by invoking his position as Mayor of the Town and Municipality of Chocianów and personal connections and threatening the officers with dismissal if they continued the lawful official act of arresting him and collecting blood; moreover, insulting the four aforementioned police officers and the paramedic performing medical procedures, during and in connection with the performance of their official duties, by using words commonly regarded as offensive toward those persons, and violating the bodily integrity of one of the female officers by pushing her with his elbow (…).
On June 10, 2024, after 5:00 p.m., the accused—after hitting the rear of another vehicle, speaking with its driver and assuring him that he would stop in a safer place—quickly drove away to his property in Lubin. The spokeswoman said: “There, after approximately 20 minutes, he was found by a police patrol notified by the man driving the damaged vehicle. The intervention took place because the injured party claimed that the driver who had fled the scene of the collision clearly smelled of alcohol and that he had seen the man was incoherent.
The accused was clearly intoxicated and, when the police arrived, did not want to undergo an alcohol test. Invoking his influence and connections with well-known people, he tried to persuade the officers to stop the actions they had undertaken. After another patrol was called, the man was taken to hospital for a blood test.
The situation was repeated there. The accused still did not want to undergo the test, put up passive resistance to the officers and insulted them and one of the paramedics with vulgar words. Moreover, invoking his position and personal connections, he threatened the officers with dismissal if they continued carrying out lawful official duties.
K. did not admit to committing the alleged offense and refused to provide explanations. During the proceedings, he apologized in writing to all the injured police officers. In the course of the investigation, the vehicle belonging to the suspect was seized and secured as property in connection with the possible forfeiture of the vehicle. The prosecutor explains:
Such forfeiture is possible because the above-mentioned person was charged with an offense against safety in land traffic, namely driving a motor vehicle while intoxicated, where the alcohol content in his body was found to be higher than 1.5‰ or 0.75 mg/dm³. Under Article 178a § 5 of the Criminal Code, the court must order the forfeiture of the vehicle in such a case. The court may refrain from ordering forfeiture only if an exceptional case justified by special circumstances exists.