This week I’m going to start with a first in what I hope will be a running series of interviews with people who are working on some of the issues I am covering in the blog. This will be a way to get some different perspectives on the issues I’m discussing.
With all the discussion about police violence after the shocking footage of brutality came out after Mardi Gras (see my posts The Police: Never Supporters of Mardi Gras, and Taking a Radical Approach to the Police) this week I interviewed the President of the Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA), Ray Jackson.
ISJA was formed in late 1997 after a group of activists made the decision to formally withdraw from the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Watch Committee, but still wanted to continue working on the same issues. ISJA is completely self-funded and works with Aboriginal peoples and their communities to provide support for those who have faced issues with the police (amongst other issues), including writing letters to Ministers and the Police, attending the Coroner’s Court, and helping families in need. With 400+ Aboriginal deaths in custody since 1980 (with only one police officer arrested, and then acquitted), and numerous instances of police violence toward Aborigines people, it is work that is clearly needed.
I started by asking Ray what the issues were that Aboriginal people faced in relation to the police.
“I always start the answer to this question by saying we have to go back in history. We have to go back 225 years to when the boats first sailed into Sydney Harbour. The troopers who were with them were later used to ‘clear the land’, as they were commonly known to do, which meant of course the genocide of the Aboriginal mobs around Sydney and the outlying areas.
“When the police were formed, they were formed out of the troopers. So there’s been, I would argue, a historical ethos of the police in their attitude and their handling of Aboriginal issues. It’s always been a war, and it always will be a war. More bad than good has happened over the years of course.
“Finally, we’ve now come to a situation where the public, and the Magistrates Courts are taking the police on. The Magistrates Courts are not taking the word of the police as said. It’s not sacrosanct. We know that they lie on oath. And people are becoming more socially aware of their power when they see these assaults going on. People are using their mobiles and cameras to take evidence of the police brutality. And more and more we are using these images as evidence to inform people about what is going on and why the police need to change.”
You spoke at the Mardi Gras police violence protest. How do you see the violence at Mardi Gras by the police connected with violence towards Aboriginal people?
“As I said at that rally, I link the gay mobs and the Aboriginal mobs into one basket. For 225 years both our mobs have been discriminated against, ostracised and abused by the police.
“As I said at that rally, it is high time that both our groups worked together. We have one common enemy in this situation and that is violent police. We need to curb the violence of the police.
“Also, not unsurprisingly, in the Aboriginal mobs there’s gay people, so we cross-over. And there’s no use that you fight your battles with the police from the gay point of view, and we fight our battles with the police, which is the same battle, from the Aboriginal point of view. We should be combining and hammering the police and the Government more on changing the violence of the police.”
How well do you think the communities are working together?
“We started our combined work back in 2009 with the death of Veronica Baxter, also known as Paris; a transgender Aboriginal person. She hung herself in the Metropolitan Remand and Reception Gaol and it was the push by the GLBTI groups that got this front page coverage in the gay community. We need to re-raise this issue and again seek justice for Paris to find out why she was allowed to hang herself in Gaol. We know why – she was not given her hormonal medication for over a week. And we know that that can lead to suicide ideation among other problems. We’ve run into a brick wall, and we’re trying to circumvent that, and both groups have worked very well – especially ISJA and CAAH (Community Action Against Homophobia).”
From your opinion, what needs to happen within the police and the Government to solve these issues?
“The Government, especially the Police Minister, has to bite the bullet. Our Police Minister here (in NSW) is an ex-cop himself, so we’re not going to get too much joy from him. But Governments need to bring their police force into line. They are not a force, they are a service. They are there to protect people from criminals – black, white, whatever. But there’s always been this historical marriage between Government and Police whereby they protect each other. This is why you have had over 400+ Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody since 1980 and the only person ever to be dragged into court is Chris Hurley up on Palm Island, but he was allowed to go free.
“The police have to understand that they are public servants. We pay their wages, we buy their uniforms, we pay for their glocks, and tasers and pepper sprays. But we don’t supply them so they can be used against us. They can use them as life-saving stuff when they are chasing criminals. Not the general public. Not young Jamie Jackson at the Mardi Gras who the police were terribly violent to – to the point that they slammed him onto the footpath, they then bashed his head onto the concrete, which caused him to bleed. They then rolled him over, cuffed him, and then an officer stood on his back. Now the copper who done that is not a small man by any means, but what he done to young Jamie then could have killed him. He expelled the air out of young Jamie’s body and that could have triggered death. We’re very very lucky that it didn’t.
“The police have to learn that their brutality against ordinary citizens is not going to be tolerated anymore.”
In the next couple of days, I will aim to provide some comments and analysis of Ray’s interview, and how this links with the Mardi Gras violence this year.