Another whitewash of racist cop violence?

Ray Fulcher, Melbourne

On February 1, Victoria Police dragged Raymond Merritt through the broken window of an allegedly stolen car and smashed his head against the roof.

Merritt, an Aboriginal man, is wanted by NSW police as a suspect in a series of robberies. He has been charged by Victoria Police with, among other things, resisting arrest and assaulting police.

"I'm not surprised they charged him with that", said Linda Waldron, the Socialist Alliance candidate for the federal seat of Gellibrand. "The cops do that to justify their vicious racism. Hussein Farah, the Somali man beaten unconscious by Footscray police last year faces similar trumped-up charges."

Acting superintendent John Manley told the February 5 Melbourne Age that no complaints about the police assault on Merritt had been lodged with police. In fact, five independent eyewitnesses filed complaints about the assault on Merritt.

Premier Steve Bracks has called on people to "wait for the outcome" of a police internal investigation.

"That's the mantra the police used on us over Hussein last year", said Waldron. She suggested that the inaction of the police ethical standards department in these two incidents of racist assault suggests that "whitewashes are not a thing relegated to Victoria Police's past".

From Green Left Weekly, February 25, 2004.

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From GLW issue 572