Comment: The fist of the law still hits hard

Benjamin Thomas Price, an ex Queensland police officer, is now safely behind bars after being found guilty in Townsville Court of at least two vicious assaults upon a male and female supposedly in his care. The publicity arising from the videos of those two assaults shows Price brutalising his victims while other police merely watched in a most undetached manner at the Airlie Beach police station during 2007 and 2008.

Further video footage made public but from an East Perth police station clearly shows the criminal assault by up to nine police officers against Kevin Pratt, an Aboriginal man, in 2008. Kevin is seen to be writhing in the utmost agony on the floor as he is tasered by two officers a total of 13 times.

Whatever the private thoughts and possible reservations the onlooking officers in both assaults may have had there was no attempt by any officer to raise objections or even to leave the precincts of the assaults. All of them, the onlookers, were trapped by their need to show solidarity to the officer(s) perpetrating the actual physical assaults. All were bound by “the Culture” that is stronger than any other vow.

Very few, too few, come forward to report such criminal acts of bastardisation by fellow officers and those who do whistleblow become very much persona non grata to their fellow officers. The vow is that strong. Regardless of the wrong doing, fellow officers are always protected even from the hierarchy of the police or outside investigative bodies.

The only reason we know of these and other assaults is because an insider has made a complaint. In the case of Price the complaint was made by a female probationary constable; in the Spratt event it was made by the leaking of the video by an unknown person. We as the public owe a great debt of gratitude to both.

Police violence is nothing new; it has been spoken of and suffered since the police forces were first formed. The police have always been a law unto themselves and in that they are protected by their executive officers, politicians, the mainstream media and by their Unions who can only be described as being of the fundamentalist kind. They are fanatical to the extreme in protecting their members. The protection given to Queensland’s Acting-Inspector Christopher Hurley over his direct involvement in the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee in 2004 on Palm Island is a fine example.

The most disturbing recognition arising from these videod assaults is the cold hard fact that the police took no notice that they were being taped at the time of the assaults. It was as if the cameras were non-existent and they were free to do what ever they wanted to to their victims. As was always the case. Very few complaints by the victims were upheld by the police investigating the police. As a general rule the police became ‘the untouchables’.

Normally it was found that the cameras were not switched on or were in some way defective. Added to this lie was the corroborative evidence from other police that nothing untoward had happened except perhaps the victim had become the aggressor! No amount of swearing on bibles in Courts of Law swayed the police witnesses from protecting their own.

Of the tens of thousands of police officers in this country we must accept that not all of them are demented, arrogant bullies and thugs; we must accept that not all of them accept comfortably “the Culture” that forces them to protect their Brother and Sister officers who continually by their actions bring nothing but shame upon the many good officers in the police forces of Australia.

Such protection only allows all to be tainted by the same criminal acts. Guilt by association.

Police are recruited and trained to stop criminal acts in society but it is well past the time where they must police their own backyard. Those criminals who are obviously unfit to serve as police must be reported and dismissed.

One is tempted to say, “Police, heal thyself.”

The brave and moral actions taken by the Queensland Probationary Constable in the Price events and the unknown leaker in Perth must become the standard bearer for the future.

Otherwise police violence and criminal acts will continue unabated.

Ray Jackson is the president of the Indigenous Social Justice Association based in Redfern-Waterloo. He has dedicated his life to fighting Aboriginal deaths in custody and supporting familes who face this tragedy.