Updates and latest news

This is your chance to let Parliament know what you think is needed for a fair, impartial and human rights compliant investigative model in Victoria.

The recent Melbourne nightclub shooting shows exactly why we need independent investigations of critical incidents involving police.
Yesterday’s tragic police shooting in Inflation nightclub in King Street (8 July, 2017) has sparked intense public speculation with significantly differing accounts being reported from police spokespeople and from nightclub staff and management.

The Victorian Parliament’s IBAC Committee has announced an Inquiry into the external oversight of police corruption and misconduct in Victoria.

This very welcome initiative is the first such parliamentary review in several decades. This is your chance to make a submission.

My passion lies with helping those that are most underprivileged and those who experience inequities due to their race, religion, gender, and ethnic backgrounds.

While the NSW LECC model is likely to significantly improve some aspects of police oversight and accountability, there are serious gaps and weaknesses in its structure which do not bode well for the urgently-required reform of police culture, and that risk undermining the overall effectiveness of the overhauled complaints system…

The “Horvath Test” is simple. If Corinna Horvath’s 1996 assault by Victoria police occurred again today, (and many assaults of a similar nature are reported to us regularly) would a new model of police investigation ensure justice or come close to meeting the requirements of the UN Human Rights Committee’s decision on Horvath.

A new study from the United States suggests that police officers are more likely to speak to white community members with a higher level of respect than black community members…

A number of Pasifika youth around Melbourne have shared their experiences, their thoughts and opinions of racial profiling and recorded them on a CD titled ‘I Am Not My Skin”.

Making a police complaint in Victoria is a long, costly and often fruitless experience. Daniel Haile-Micheal speaks about his experiences in this new video launched by the Police Accountability Project.

In between his studies now, he is a volunteer at the Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre’s Peer Advocacy Team, as a Peer Advocate doing mentoring, mediation and advocacy activities. He sees some progress there, but makes mention of the way young African Australians are dealt with by the police.

“We are talking about people who have already served time in custody for a crime they have committed. Subjecting them, upon release, to another punishment which could have implications as grave as death for that person is extremely serious.” – Solicitor Sophie Ellis

Wotton is a landmark case in Australian public interest law. Communities and individuals who believe they have been affected by racially discriminatory policing practices may now draw on Federal Court authority to pursue damages and other relief under the Racial Discrimination Act – a legal development with potentially far-reaching impacts on police accountability and race relations in Australia.

Legal practitioners have responded to an article by General Counsel of of the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission(IBAC), that was published in last month’s Victorian Law Institute’s Journal.

We have got to realise that this kind of policing has no boundaries. There are no limitations…Individuals are meant to try and assert themselves in these spaces and that’s an impossible task….

In this way ‘Apex Gang’ has been made into a substitute word. ‘Apex Gang’ now allows journalists, commentators, and politicians, to use the term instead of “African”, Ethnic, “Black” or “Immigrant” but still provide the same message. It has meant the term has a wider currency and has reached deeper into the public discourse.

More than 100 people attended ‘Without Suspicion – Measuring racial profiling in Victoria’ – a November public forum at Melbourne University. At the forum affected communities and expert academics called on Victoria Police to take urgent steps to measure the extent of racially discriminatory policing.

On 20 December 2016, Victoria Police reported back on its Equality is Not the Same action plan, which was developed as response to recommendations made to them in 2013 after a public inquiry and by two independent reports,

The Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) announced today that “a Victoria Police Leading Senior Constable with assault offences in relation to an incident in Hastings in March 1996.”

An expert panel discussion about the experiences and impacts of racial profiling on individuals and communities, trends in racialised policing and options for Victoria to gather and monitor ethnicity data for all police stops statewide. This will be followed by a Q&A and discussion about stop data and other strategies to prevent racial profiling by police.

IBAC’s special report into Operation Ross, released on 10 November, misses a vital opportunity to look beyond Ballarat to the Victorian police complaints system itself.

The Victorian Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) recently released its review of Victorian police complaints investigation, the Audit of Victoria Police complaints handling systems at regional level (October 2016) The report makes a series of recommendations, for which our summary analysis and position is detailed below. The Police Accountability Project of the Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre identifies that...

‘This disproportionate use of police power against people of colour is unjust. Targeting people because of the colour of their skin is unfair. It is ineffective. It is often counterproductive. And it is against the law. Racial profiling and the abuse of police powers must stop.’

This speech, delivered in Flemington covers the history of racial profiling and the humiliating…

Brisbane Indigenous Media Association worker and Gumbaynggirr man Leon Petrou was tasered, capsicum sprayed and bashed by Queensland police officers, in a case all too common to many Aboriginal people across the country.

The Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre has released its first report on the Police Accountability and Human Rights Clinic’s first year of operations.

The protests in the United States against the killing of black men by police have highlighted the role social media video apps in recording the incidents….

Fourteen Victorian community associations, agencies and peaks have written to the Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police Graham Ashton calling for the statewide rollout of stop and search receipting, introduction of police stop data collection and monitoring and anti-bias training to be provided throughout the service.