The arrest on Marszałkowska Street

On Friday, 16 October, officers guarding a protest outside the Constitutional Tribunal in Warsaw detained a man on Marszałkowska Street. Police said he attacked a policewoman, who was taken to hospital, and that a search found a knife on him. On Saturday, 17 October, the Komenda Stołeczna Policji (KSP) published a five-minute bodycam recording on X, followed by a second clip filmed at the police station. In the first recording, officers approach him at a pedestrian crossing, ask for his identity document and suggest he step aside. He pushes an officer and a policewoman, then runs into a building, where he is subdued in the entrance vestibule. He shouts that he is being attacked and choked, and an officer replies that he is not choking him.

The police account

KSP says the man resisted passively and actively from the outset, did not follow orders and refused to give his personal details or show identification. The statement adds that people inside the building obstructed the officers and ignored instructions, which police said heightened the sense of threat. Police also reject claims of a cut to his head, saying no such injuries exist, and maintain that they did not block his access to a lawyer, adding that he refused any contact until now.

“He did not follow the officers' orders, refused to give his personal details and to show an identity document.”

The police framed the video as a way to let the public judge the intervention from the footage itself, rather than from reports and comments, some of which the force said may aim to spread disinformation.

Political reaction and the knife

PiS politicians and the Telewizja Republika channel called the intervention unjustified and excessively brutal, and argued that the man's rights were violated. Jarosław Kaczyński described a forceful attack on the office of Adam Borowski, whom he called the Social Ombudsman for Civil Rights, and said:

“Smashed windows, roughed-up associates. This authority's methods are violence and aggression.”

Former culture minister Piotr Gliński, who said he knows the man as a member of the protest camp's civic guard and technical support, wrote that the knife was a small folding pocket knife in a wooden handle, used at the camp to cut an apple. RMF24 reported that early claims that the policewoman had been stabbed proved untrue. PiS MEP Jacek Ozdoba wrote on social media that officers did not tell the man his wife had sent lawyer Magdalena Leszczyńska.

The lawyers' account and the protest

Lawyer Magdalena Leszczyńska has notified prosecutors of suspected exceeding of powers by police officers. At a press briefing on Saturday, 17 October, she said her team was allowed to meet Piotr W. more than 24 hours after the arrest, although they had demanded contact from 15:00 on 16 October. She said five officers remained in the room during the first meeting, that he stayed handcuffed throughout and that his condition was tragic, with a head wound and dizziness. She also argues the knife was found only after the arrest.

Piotr W.'s statement, read at the briefing and issued through Ordo Iuris, says he had no contact with his wife after the detention, wanted the lawyers she appointed, had not received a copy of the detention protocol, and had no medical tests or CT scan at the hospital. He wrote that he had never refused a lawyer, but that he trusts no one, and that he fears for his life, health and family.

At a rally that morning on Saturday, 17 October, organisers told the crowd that lawyers had reached him, and Adam Borowski said the pressure had worked. Borowski had warned that the group would march to police headquarters on Nowolipie Street if no contact was allowed. He also claimed the authorities were trying to arrest Constitutional Tribunal president Święczkowski and were building a case against Piotr W.