NSW Police and racism in the ranks

The Sydney Morning Herald, 11 August 2020:

Jane Williams was at work, half an hour’s drive from her home in Coraki on the North Coast of NSW, in April 2016 when she got a phone call to say the police had picked up her eight-year-old son for throwing rocks at a car with his cousins.

She raced home in a panic, to find no one knew her son’s whereabouts.

Police said he had been taken to his aunty’s place, but there was no sign of him. Her own house was empty.

Williams rushed to the police station to demand answers, only to be told the officer involved had been called to another job. The officer at the station made a phone call to get to the bottom of it.

"He got on the phone and I just knew from the expression,” Williams says.

The officer rushed outside and found the boy in the back of the police truck, where he’d been left unattended for up to two hours.

“I couldn't believe my eyes," Williams says. "My baby ... his cheeks were that red. It was painful to look at him like that."

With the assistance of Grafton lawyer Joe Fahey, the mother-of-two sued NSW Police for damages last year, resulting in an undisclosed settlement.

Months after the incident, according to court documents, the officer who’d picked up her son pulled her over while driving and asked: “You sure you haven’t got anybody in that boot Jane?”

She says the comment was intended to make her feel hurt, shame and embarrassment.

Four years on, Williams says her son is still distrustful of police.

The Black Lives Matter movement has put a spotlight on interactions between Indigenous Australians and the criminal justice system. In the first of a three-part series this month, the Herald examines how these interactions play out in the Northern Rivers of NSW, beginning with the relationship between Aboriginal people and police.

The investigation found allegations of police misconduct from former officers, while a Herald analysis of data obtained under freedom of information laws suggests the police force is struggling to retain Indigenous officers across regional NSW. Despite increasing recruit numbers there are more Indigenous officers leaving, too, which has stalled the proportion of Indigenous operational officers in regional areas at around 1 per cent - or 183 people in a statewide workforce of 17,111.

Fahey says he has handled “easily 30 or 40” cases where Aboriginal clients have successfully sued the police over the past four to five years, mainly for wrongful arrests and related assaults in the towns of Grafton, Coffs Harbour and Casino, with the odd case from Moree or Sydney…. 

A Herald analysis of police data found officers in northern NSW recorded using force, such as restraints and holds, more often than anywhere else in the state during random breath tests from 2014 to 2018. 

 In the same period, officers in the Coffs/Clarence district used force against people charged with offensive language 147 times over the five years - the fourth-highest occurrence in the state.... 

Read full article here.

The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 2020:

An Aboriginal teenager is suing the state of NSW, alleging that he was assaulted by police in an incident caught on video, which appears to show an officer striking the boy in the head as he was walking home at night in Casino last year.

A statement of claim filed in the Lismore district court described the alleged incident as "abhorrent and racist" and an "oppressive abuse of police powers"....

The Bundjalung teenager, then 17, claims he was walking home at around 12.30am last September in the Northern Rivers town of Casino when he was approached by three police officers.

The recording that emerged shortly after the incident shows police following him for about half a block and then surrounding him and questioning the teenager, who can be heard repeatedly saying "I'm going home."

One officer, who the boy's lawyers allege in the statement of claim to be Senior Constable Benjamin David Chivers, appears to shove the boy in the chest as he attempts to walk away.

Another officer puts their hand on the boy's arm and the boy appears to push his hand away.

The first officer then strikes the boy in the head, knocking his hat off. After police are alerted that the incident is being filmed, the first officer begins asking the boy, "Why'd you have a swing at him?", gesturing to his fellow officer.

The boy replies he didn't "take a swing".

The statement of claim alleges: "Police officers targeted an Aboriginal boy, for no reason whatsoever, and then proceeded to degrade and humiliate him in the most cynical way."

It accuses the officers of acting "in stark indifference" to their duties as guardians.

"The conduct complained of demonstrates a failure by the Richmond Local Area Command to properly train, discipline and educate its police officers to prevent them from racially vilifying young Aboriginal males in the Casino area," the statement says.....

https://youtu.be/R3n9DAIvF7o