Half Aboriginal youths in custody bashed: committee told
Source: AAP | Published: Friday April 9 1:45:05 PM
Western Australia's Police Commissioner Bob Falconer today urged
Aborigines to officially complain about police
abuse, after allegations that more than half the Aboriginal youths in
custody were beaten.
Aboriginal Legal Service (ALS) chief executive Dennis Eggington, said
the figures showed Aboriginal youths were in
crisis.
An ALS submission yesterday to a state parliamentary committee on crime
said 52 per cent of Aboriginal youths in
custody were beaten and only a third were informed of their rights.
Eighty-five per cent of Aboriginal youths in custody were verbally
abused and 65 per cent were pushed around, the
submission said.
Mr Falconer today said the ALS figures did not match up with official
police complaints.
"If these things are happening, make a complaint and let them be
investigated and the investigation will be
oversighted in every instance by the ombudsman, who is independent of
the police," he told ABC radio.
Mr Falconer said ethnicity did not show up in police complaints and that
political correctness needed to be overcome
to identify complaints from Aborigines.
"In about half of all the complaints over the last three calendar years
we do not know the ethnicity of the
complainant," he said.
"That's something we need to get over. We can't have it both ways if we
need to identify, particularly, Aboriginal
people."
The ALS survey also showed Aboriginal youths made up only four per cent
of the youth population, but accounted for
20 per cent of juvenile court appearances.
The Deaths in Custody Watch Committee today backed the ALS claims,
saying that they referred complaints to the
ALS.
"The Watch Committee frequently receives calls from distressed relatives
who claim ill treatment of Aboriginal
juveniles while in police custody," the committee's executive officer
Kath Mallott said.
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