Burger King Caught Hiding Evidence Of Assault From Police And Union

Unite Union has accused Burger King of trying to suppress evidence of an alleged assault by a manager on a union member from both the police and the union.

When the victim of the alleged assault Lynette Fray went with her union organiser Gary Cranston to view the CCTV footage of the incident the company tried to hide the fact they had more than one view of the incident from a second camera.

When Lynette realised that only one camera's footage was being shown she demanded to see the footage from the second camera. The company representatives again tried to claim the other footage was not relevant but finally were forced to go and get it. Unite official Gary Cranston said "This additional footage clearly showed that not only was Lynette pummelled by her manager and handled by other members of staff, but that the manager did indeed start the incident by lashing out at her from inside her office."

Unite Union National Director Mike Treen has written to the company to complain that the failure to suspend the alleged attacker from work while the investigation was happening would corrupt the investigation by allowing the manager being complained against to spin her version of the events with other staff. It is also appalling that Lynette has been forced to use up her annual leave because she hasn't felt safe about returning to work when no action has been taken against anyone for the assault which was videoed and witnessed by other staff

"It is now clear that it is much worse than we thought. It appears the company is actively covering up an assault and perverting the course of justice by deliberately concealing evidence from the police." said Mike Treen

Statement By Gary Cranston, Unite Organiser, Who Viewed Video Evidence Of Alleged Assault On Union Member At Burger King

Lynette Fray and I visited Burger King head offices in Auckland this morning to view footage of the incident where Lynette alleged she had been assaulted by a BK manager .

We were led into a room by Jo McMahon of Burger King Human resources and Bernard Oosthuizen the area manager fro Lynette's BK store where we were shown one video, from one cctv camera showing only part of the incident.

Lynnette Fray quickly realised that she was only being shown footage from one of two video cameras that would have captured the incident. She questioned Jo McMahon as to why we were not being shown footage from the other camera which would cover the beginning of the incident, where the first the punches were thrown. McMahon told us that that the other camera showed nothing of the incident and as such was irrelevant. After much debate, McMahon agreed to show both Lynette and I the rest of the footage, which she then obtained from the I.T. department inside the building.

This additional footage clearly showed that not only was Lynette pummelled by her manager and handled by other members of staff, but that the manager did indeed start the incident by lashing out at her from inside her office. The initial footage shown to us which covered the ending of the incident, but not who started it, has been provided to the police, the most important and incriminating footage has been withheld.

Not only did the company attempt to hide the second and most incriminating piece of evidence from the victim and her union representative, but the company also confirmed that they had not supplied both videos which covered the entirety of the footage of the assault to the police investigating the incident. Rather they had only supplied the piece of video which left doubt around who threw the first punch.

The manager who allegedly assaulted Lynette has been left working at BK. She has bragged to staff that she was surprised to still be working at Burger King after throwing the first of a series of vicious punches at Fray and expressing confidence that the video footage provided to police would not incriminate her.

When questioned by myself, McMahon denied that the manager was shown the footage already, before Lynette, the victim, had a chance to view it. This contradicted a claim by the accused manager at Lynette's store on the 18th of August.

ENDS

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