'I won't deport you, but don't come back'

Friday 29 March 2019

Guernsey's Magistrate has decided not to deport a Polish man who committed a series of offences over the course of last summer, on the presumption that he would not be able to get a licence to stay in the island anyway.

Rafal Ratajczak, 43, said he will be leaving the island because he doesn't have any links with Guernsey, but does have a job and some family in Jersey.

If he was deported, he would have been unable to return to the other island either, so Judge Graeme McKerrell decided to give Ratajczak the benefit of the doubt, and allow him to stick to his word that he would leave Guernsey.

But he faces five months in Les Nicolles first, for driving while disqualified and assaulting three police officers.

"I have had to balance the fact that we don't want you here on Guernsey and that you have work in Jersey today," Judge McKerrell said, "I cannot imagine you would get work here in Guernsey, so I am satisfied you won't or can't come back, and on that basis I am not going to deport you.

"If you do come back before me because you have somehow remained here though, you will find yourself in deep trouble."

Ratajczak was sentenced to five months in prison and a three year driving ban yesterday. He was caught on 29 July 2018 driving his car to the Jamaica Inn, even though he had been disqualified from driving for 14 months in January. As a result, Ratajczak was also charged for driving without insurance. 

Then on the 19 August, Police were sent to arrest the defendant at his home address in Le Bouet, but when they found him asleep, he put up a fight, kicked one officer, head butting the other and also attempting to bite them. In total he faced three separate charges of trying to assault the officers, and also a charge of resisting arrest.

Finally, on the 19 September, having been granted bail, Ratajczak failed to appear in court, and was eventually found and arrested on warrant in Southhampton. It was believed he had been in Jersey for some of that time, however. He was first remanded in custody on the 4 March this year, the date his five months prison time will run from.

Judge McKerrell concluded: "You committed a number of offences on separate occasions, and that in itself is an aggravating factor. When you were disqualified from driving you would have been warned about the risk of going to prison if you were caught again. If the court says things they have to have meaning, and not be empty words.

"I believe you have little appreciation of what you did."

Pictured top: Les Nicolles prison in Guernsey.