Updates and latest news

The Loddon Campaspe Community Legal Centre (LCCLC) has made submission to the Parliamentary inquiry into the external oversight of police corruption and misconduct in Victoria. The submission draws attention to the experiences of complainants who may be considered ‘marginalised Victorians’ by virtue of their living in regional, rural or remote parts of the state.

Assistant Commissioner Brett Guerin, head of Victoria Police’s internal investigations unit is quoted in the recent Fairfax article (Police complaints process overhauled after a decade of criticism, 17 September 2017) that the “vast majority of complaints … relate to service delivery issues.” One of the examples he provided is “police pushed me when they didn’t need to.”

The ‘Make Victoria Safe Again’ protest event on Sunday 17th September 2017 provides the latest example of how law and order populism and racialised perceptions of crime are being used by the far-right in Australia as a means of mobilizing and building political strength.

I became involved in the Peer Advocacy team because I wanted to end racial profiling and be the voice for those whose voices aren’t heard…

Victoria Police must take urgent steps to monitor racial profiling by members in police stops, say experts in a report released today

“Victoria Police have policies against racial profiling, but have no measures in place to track or measure monitor when it occurs,” said report author Tamar Hopkins.

Monitoring Racial Profiling – Introducing a scheme to prevent unlawful stops and searches by Victoria Police
A report of the Police Stop Data Working Group
Executive Summary & Key Findings

All Victorians are stakeholders in ensuring a robust, effective and human rights oriented police accountability system. In this updated Briefing Paper, we seek to give voice to the experience of many Victorians we have assisted navigate the current police oversight system.

This exciting event features Police Accountability Project founder, and now PHD Candidate, Tamar Hopkins, along with former Police Accountability Project volunteer, PHD Candidate, Tallace Bissett presenting before a talk by visiting Professor Ben Bowling from the United Kingdom. This is a not to be missed event.

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.