Call for action against WA officers

Call for action against WA officers

By Leon Harrison

PERTH — The Aboriginal Legal Service has called on police commissioner Brian Bull to discipline officers involved in the 1983 arrest of 16-year-old John Pat.

ALS legal counsel John Cameron said there was no place in the police force for officers who conducted themselves in the way detailed by the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody.

Forty-two Aboriginal people have died in custody since the royal commission began in 1987.

Black activist Clarrie Isaacs said "the rights of Australia's indigenous people must be recognised and implemented ...

"Several indigenous people must be appointed in each state of Australia as judges. All-white juries in must be outlawed."

Isaacs concluded, "I call upon the international community to support such change and for international pressure to be applied against Australia until real change is implemented."

Premier Carmen Lawrence has announced a task force to investigate possible prosecutions or disciplinary action against police and prison officers over black deaths in custody.

From GLW issue 12