Redfern Riot

[Falchoon]

I thought this may be of interest, especially to Plonky

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/02/18/...7072708219.html

Between the rocks and a hard place

By Miranda Devine

February 19, 2004

This is how racist the police at Redfern are: in the mornings a police youth liaison officer rides in a community school bus through the suburb, which picks up children at their houses. If a child wasn't waiting, former liaison officer Raquel Hassett used to even go inside the house and help him or her get dressed and ready for school.

On Sunday mornings police take three children to Nippers at the South Maroubra Surf Club. The Police and Community Youth Club in Elizabeth Street serves breakfast to children before school. In January, 12 police officers took 20 children from Redfern on a four-day camp to the Myuna Bay Sport and Recreational Centre on Lake Macquarie. That's on top of two other camps last year. Keep in mind the officers get paid only for an eight-hour shift.

In the past 12 months they have taken six Redfern children to meet Sydney Roosters players, 50 children to Redfern Oval to meet Souths players. They have taken them on board a Navy ship, to Australia's Wonderland, to Homebush Aquatic Centre, the NSW Gymnastics Academy in Miranda, mini-golf at Fox Studios, movies and lunch at Miranda Fair, to the theatre, and for swims on hot days to the Victoria Park pool in Darlington.

For their efforts, much done in their own time, they have Aboriginal activist Lyall Munro this week calling them "marauding racist police from Redfern", and applauding the "brave stance" of the rioters. "If Palestinian kids can fight ... war tanks with sling-shots, our kids can do the same," he told ABC radio.

For their trouble, the police have the Greens senator Kerry Nettle writing letters to newspapers this week complaining about the "enormous police presence" around Redfern station during Sunday night's riot. "The simple fact that young Aboriginal children are taking flight when they see police officers in the area is an indication that there is a problem. Such a flight response is generated by fear, and more heavy police tactics will not solve the distrust and understandable anger."

Understandable anger at being taken to Nippers on Sunday morning?

For their trouble, Redfern police have been attacked with bottles and rocks about 40 or 50 times in the past year. There was the incident last Thursday in which an officer attempting to arrest one youth was surrounded by a dozen youths and his Glock pistol was grabbed from its holster. Last month, while trying to arrest a 13-year-old wanted for robbery, two officers were surrounded by youths and attacked. One officer had his shoulder dislocated. The youth went to court and was released on bail on condition he not go to Redfern's Block. Police soon picked him up in the Block, but he was just bailed again.

"Police feel really let down," said the Police Association executive officer, Paul Huxtable, who was on duty in Redfern last night. "It's not just a clock-on clock-off job. We like to think we are friends to the community, not enemies. But some people down there treat us like an occupying force."

One aspect of Sunday night's riot that most disillusioned police at Redfern is that two of the most energetic brick and paver throwers have benefited the most from police generosity. What's more, a policeman who has received death threats and the most vitriolic abuse, is part-Aboriginal.

Sunday night's riot was not an aberration, just an enhanced version of business as usual for Redfern police officers, who have to tread on eggshells even to begin to do their jobs. They have to balance the desire of their political masters for no controversy in Redfern, with the demands of law-abiding residents, taxi and bus drivers, train commuters and victims of crime that they enforce the law, with compassion for the disadvantaged children as young as six or seven they see on the streets at 3am, and for the 13-year-old third-generation heroin addicts. They do this in the face of a prevailing attitude, from the social welfare industry, some Aboriginal leaders, some in the legal profession and the media, that they are racist brutes, largely to blame for the social dislocation and anger on their patch.

"We've had a gutful of being the political footballs," said one angry Redfern officer, who asked not to be named. "We have gone above and beyond our roles, extending into the field of social work, where we shouldn't have to go. We have had to do it because no one else is."

Even with a glut of agencies in Redfern supposedly to help the underprivileged - 80 in total, says the Reverend Bill Crews - police say they are left to pick up the pieces.

"DOCS [NSW Department of Community Services] is a joke," said the officer. "We do our job and refer matters to them and it's up to them to act ... and all I can say is we've been disappointed." So afraid are they of being accused of creating another "stolen generation", welfare agencies are loathe to interfere with Aboriginal families, no matter how dysfunctional, they say.

For instance, officers have been trying in vain to get DOCS to intervene in the case of a nine-year-old boy in the area living in a violent and chaotic environment. They say the child was at the forefront of the riot, allegedly throwing petrol bombs, jumping up and down on a police car and stealing a police baton.

The Premier, Bob Carr, blamed the riot on hot weather, grog and grief over 17-year-old Thomas Hickey who died after he came off his pushbike and was impaled on a metre-high fence. Carr's response has been to order three separate inquiries.

Huxtable says police are upset that one is a "critical incident" inquiry, which is supposed to be for cases in which someone is killed or injured as a result of police pursuit or police shooting. Considering the police maintain they were not chasing Hickey, they feel they have been considered guilty from the start. "Straight away there is an atmosphere that they've done something wrong ... They feel totally and completely abandoned by their Premier," Huxtable says.

He says the police were outnumbered and underequipped on Sunday night. In the end all they could do was form a "human brick wall so [the rioters] didn't rampage against the rest of Redfern".

It gives thin blue line a new meaning: a thin red, black and blue line, as police were knocked unconscious, cut, bruised and had limbs broken. You can only hope the residents of Redfern appreciate the effort.

devinemiranda@hotmail.com

[Rusty05]

Hear Hear well posted

[plonky]

Totally agree

However it is a subject I will go into further.

[sixfan]

What a racist post.

did you know how many young persons got muscle strain from having to throw bricks 30m? If the police had shown some consideration and lined up closer, they could have avoided these injuries to the people throwing the bricks.

It's about time we respected aboriginals as equals, same law, same welfare ect. It's demeaning to treat them any different because of race

[Velvet Glove]

Something out of tabloiud trash that I actually totally agree with....whats the world coming to ?

Unfortunately the vocal minority always scream loudest. Walk a mile in a copper's shoes (or half a day with a Redfern beat copper) and the opinion's will change rapidly.

Funny how so many experts feel free to speak on subjects they have no 1st hand knowledge of (I.e. the increasingly irrelevant Green party members).

1 set of rules for everyone in the country would be great, true equality. But the people who scream equality don't want their advantages gone

[Redhawk]

  sixfan said:

What a racist post.

did you know how many young persons got muscle strain from having to throw bricks 30m? If the police had shown some consideration and lined up closer, they could have avoided these injuries to the people throwing the bricks.

It's about time we respected aboriginals as equals, same law, same welfare ect. It's demeaning to treat them any different because of race

sixfan,

I am totally appalled by your blatant ommission of the fact that these brutal, sadistic thug police had the audacity to wear helmets and carry shields!!!!

Those poor under fed emancipated youths had to throw those bricks so much harder to compensate for this!

I find it absolutly incredulous that an Aboriginal (so called) elder can draw comparisons with the Aboriginal youth and Palastinian youth. Gezzus if the Palastinians got the same benefits the Aboriginals get, the bloody Israelis would be sending out suicide bombers!!!

[Guest cul08r]

I will throw a different light into this conversation.

1 Thomas Hickey 'died' on the way to hospital on saturday evening.

2 Jimmy Little (Aus country music star) got a kidney transplant in a Sydney Hospital on sunday evening, after a phone call from his team on saturday evening.

3 Due to the fact that Australian Aboriginals have a genetic marker that means that they can only get an organ from another aboriginal, I am banking on the fact that Thomas' organs were donated to save other peoples lives.

Regardless of his 'crimes', regardless of the circumstances of his death, this young man and his family have possibly saved up to 10 Australians from death with this gift

Please do not generalise about other people. There are ratbags and trouble makers in all walks of life, and there are many fine hard working examples of Aboriginals and other ethnicities.

Andrew - waiting for a kidney transplant since April 03.

[hypnodoc]

  cul08r said:

I will throw a different light into this conversation.

1 Thomas Hickey 'died' on the way to hospital on saturday evening.

2 Jimmy Little (Aus country music star) got a kidney transplant in a Sydney Hospital on sunday evening, after a phone call from his team on saturday evening.

3 Due to the fact that Australian Aboriginals have a genetic marker that means that they can only get an organ from another aboriginal, I am banking on the fact that Thomas' organs were donated to save other peoples lives.

Regardless of his 'crimes', regardless of the circumstances of his death, this young man and his family have possibly saved up to 10 Australians from death with this gift

Please do not generalise about other people. There are ratbags and trouble makers in all walks of life, and there are many fine hard working examples of Aboriginals and other ethnicities.

Andrew - waiting for a kidney transplant since April 03.

Totally agree cul08er.

Perhaps its time for the police to refuse to continue carrying on the farce of speed cameras and thereby allow their public image a MUCH NEEDED boost in the protect and serve arena. I have heard (or read) that most police detest what these money grabbing devices are doing to their public image in most states.

Then again, there is no way that any person in any job (especially the Police , considering what they must put up with on a day to day basis) should have to be confronted with such a rediculous backlash, whether the offenders were Aboriginal, Italian, Greek, Yugoslav, Kiwi, or bloody Eskimo for that matter. Time to give all of theses opportunistic academic do-gooders a bloody good dose of ECT (at about 150volts) and issue the police with rubber bullets or stun guns. Totally unacceptable in the lucky country. But even in the 70s Redfern didn't have the best of reputations, so in 30 odd years things obviously have gotten much worse. Sort of a microcosim of the macrocosm I reckon. And, Eewwwwww Gggggggggg, isn't wasting a couple of million dollars on 3 enquiries going to make a huge difference Mr Carr.

In this case the coppers get my vote 100%, and the offenders should be slammed 100% IMHO. What the hell is happening in this wonderful post de-regulation country of ours. De-regulation (dictionary interpretation) The removal of rules. Any Government that sells out any nations soverignty and expects to keep civil order is kidding itself. Time for we the people to all wake up me thinks.

[BrentS]

Agree totally with virtually all of the points raised in this thread. The sort of behaviour that was present in Redfern is stuff I expect to see in some far less fortunate 3rd world stinkhole..........certainly not in Australia. As somebody else has already said, I couldn't give a stuff if the perpetrators were black, white, European, African, American or whatever..........you just can't carry on like a friggin rabble and then take the moral high ground.

As is usually the case with such incidents, ther'll be a core group of half a dozen or so thugs and hellraisers who are already well known to police, and who specialise in this sort of rubbish. Those bleeding hearts who think that its just a purely random collection of innocents are seriously kidding themselves.

I'm not for one moment saying that there arte not Aboriginals (and others for that matter) out there in the community who are doing it tough. That's a given. However, instead of throwing naieve bleeding heart responses at these things and pissing more taxpayer funding up against the wall, we really need to take a closer look at what's going on. A good start would be a Royal Commission into ATSIC............I've yet to have somebody explain to me how several billion dollars per year can be spent on what amounts to less than 1% of the Aussie population, yet the intended end ricipients still remain stumped-up in ghettos and under cardboard boxes. Where the hell is this money going?

There's never been a fair dinkum enquiry into these things because the minute you call such things into question, you're labelled as a racist. It's this mindset that is crushing accountability, and ultimately the values that every society needs.

[curious]

what happened to plain respect for your elders. IF I ws caught doing this my old man would have flogged me senceless and then watched as the coppers did the same.