Former Queensland police officer Chris Hurley was in court again this week.
He was found guilty on
two counts of dangerous driving during a
high-speed police pursuit in the suburb of Pacific Pines on the Gold Coast
in May 2015.
The 49-year-old ex-senior sergeant is no stranger to the courtroom. In
February this year, he pleaded guilty to assaulting a female police officer in a Gold Coast shopping centre twelve months earlier.
But Hurley’s career in the force really came to a halt
in December last year,
after he was found guilty of assaulting Luke Cole during a roadside
arrest in November 2013, when he unjustifiably put the driver in a choke
hold.
At the time of his hearing for that offence, Hurley was already
suspended without pay due to a string of charges against him. He has since taken “medical retirement”.
However, if one takes a closer look at Hurley’s police career – or
rather the times he’s been on the wrong side of the law – what one finds
is an example of the systemic racism that pervades the Queensland
police service, and on a broader scale, many other Australian
institutions.
The Palm Island tragedy
On 19 November 2004, Mr Doomadgee – or Mulrunji – died in custody at
Palm Island police station.
The 36-year-old Indigenous man had been arrested by sergeant Hurley
for allegedly being drunk and disorderly. One hour after being taken
into custody, Mr Doomadgee was dead.
During
the ensuing criminal trial,
Hurley claimed Mr Doomadgee had fallen, after the two had scuffled. The
prosecution had alleged the sergeant kneed the detained man in the
stomach, causing serious damage to his liver.
The pathologist who conducted the post-mortem
compared
Mr Doomadgee’s injuries to those of plane crash victims. He suffered
broken ribs, a ruptured spleen and his liver was so damaged it was
almost split in two across his spine.
In June 2007, Chris Hurley was acquitted by an all-white jury of the manslaughter of Cameron Doomadgee.
Less
than a month after Mr Doomadgee’s death, Hurley was transferred to work on the Gold Coast.
He even
received
a $100,000 compensation payment after his house was burnt down during
the unrest on Palm Island following the news of the autopsy results.
And therein lies the inherent racism in the system. An Indigenous man
dies in custody and an officer is acquitted of manslaughter by an
all-white jury, despite what seemed to be overwhelming evidence of
guilt.
But now, that very same policeman’s career is in tatters after being
convicted of the relatively minor assault of an Anglo Australian man.
Blatant discrimination revealed
Due to the unrest that broke out on the island, Lex Wotton, a Palm
Island local, was charged with inciting a riot and sentenced to six
years in prison in September 2008. He served 19 months before being
released on parole.
In 2014,
Mr Wotton launched a class action against the Queensland government
over the racially discriminatory way it handled the death of Mr
Doomadgee, as well as the subsequent unrest on the island.
According to Wotton’s lawyers, the police had contravened
section 9(1) of the
Racial Discrimination Act 1975 by conducting themselves differently during the unrest because they were dealing with an Aboriginal community.
In December
last year,
the Federal Court found that Queensland police had indeed acted with
unlawful discrimination when failing to suspend Sergeant Hurley after Mr
Doomadgee’s death.
The court also found there was a “disproportionate show of force” by police on the protesting Aboriginal community.
“Paternalism and racism”
But it didn’t stop there. The Palaszczuk Government, along with
Queensland police, decided to file an appeal against the landmark
Federal Court decision, as they claimed there was not enough evidence to
support it.
Central Queensland University professor Gracelyn Smallwood launched a
successful campaign against the government’s appeal in February. Her
online petition garnered
close to 18,000 signatures and led politicians to drop the appeal.
As for the example of Hurley’s career, Ms Smallwood said it reveals
the “paternalism and racism” that’s inherent not only in the Australian
criminal justice system, but throughout the whole of Australian society.
“It was so blatant and open what happened to our brother on Palm Island,” the professor told
Sydney Criminal Lawyers®. And Hurley “got a smack on the hand and then a promotion.”
She added that our nation has “a long way to go in terms of justice.”
Discrimination at every level
“There is no doubt that Australia is still a very racist country,”
the Birrigubba elder said. “We’re three percent of the population and
we’re fourteen times more likely to be locked up in prison.”
Indeed, the 2016 Census figures reveal that there were 649,171
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the country, which
accounts for just
2.8 percent of the population.
However, in June 2016, there were 10,596 Indigenous prisoners in
Australia, which is 27 percent of the adult prisoner population.
“And a lot of our people are not there for very violent crimes,” Ms
Smallwood continued. “They’re there for the unresolved grief, loss and
trauma of colonisation.”
The professor of nursing and midwifery also pointed out that when it
came to the Howard government implementing “special measures” in remote
Aboriginal communities during the initial stages of the
Northern Territory Intervention, the
Racial Discrimination Act actually had to be suspended.
Ms Smallwood also questioned the reasoning behind the alcohol
management plan that was implemented as part of the Intervention. After
two years of the emergency measures, it was found that alcohol-related
crime had risen
by 34 percent, and this was thought to be because possession had become illegal.
“People, like myself, warned the government that prohibition has
never worked anywhere in the world,” Ms Smallwood said over the phone
from Palm Island. “Why would it work on communities that are suffering
all the dysfunctions of… colonisation?”
Justice on the horizon
Despite all that has occurred, Ms Smallwood believes change is
coming. Proof of this is that the majority of people who signed her
petition against the state government’s attempt to overturn the Federal
Court ruling that authorities had acted with extreme racism were
non-Indigenous.
For the professor, it’s all about recounting the truth of what has occurred on our continent.
“Once the true history of this country is told, we can reconcile. I’m
very optimistic that will happen.” In relation the success of the
campaign, Ms Smallwood remarked, “So that was a great outcome. But we’ve
got to keep speaking out.”
Source: sydneycriminallawyers.com.au
