The killing of George Floyd, on video, by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer in Minneapolis, and the subsequent police brutality against protestors and journalists across the United States, has popularised longstanding calls to defund or dismantle the police. On Sunday, this call was taken up by the Minneapolis Council, who voted to disband its police force and to 're-create systems of public safety that actually keep us safe.'
It’s a radical approach, but it’s one that is making more and more sense to people who are questioning the purpose of our police forces, after acknowledging that what happened to Mr Floyd, and what is happening to protestors across the United States, is neither an aberration nor something that happens ‘over there’. State violence against Black and brown people is built into the very fabric of our systems, both in the United States and in Australia.
In Australia, our settler-colonial legal system is founded on the dispossession of Aboriginal land and the denial of sovereignty. State violence was used to achieve this dispossession in the frontier wars, and it continues to be used to maintain our inherently unjust claim to sovereignty. As a direct result, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people continue to be harassed and brutalised by police on our streets.
Just last week, a police officer was filmed pinning an Indigenous teenager’s hands behind his back before sweep kicking his legs out from under him, leaving him to slam face first into the paving. When asked about the police officer’s conduct, NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller said he was likely 'having a bad day', while Police Minister David Elliott emphasised that Sydney is 'not Minnesota', before claiming that 'the response from the police was not unprovoked'.
'I was just as disturbed about the threat from a young person to physically assault a police officer as I was with the response from the police officer', he went on to say, before emphasising, 'there are levels of authority there that really command respect'.
Do they, though? Is it reasonable to expect respect for such an unjust system? Is it reasonable to be ‘just as disturbed’ by a teenager swearing and making empty threats, as you are about the systematic use of state violence against Aboriginal people?
It is this very over-policing of Aboriginal people that leads directly to over-incarceration. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the most incarcerated people in the world, making up 27 per cent of our prison population, despite being just 3 per cent of the general population. That’s a remarkable statistic and it gets even worse because the violence continues in custody.
'In the face of such a comprehensive failure of action, can we have any faith that the criminal justice system, as currently conceived, can operate to keep all of us safe?'
In 2015, for example, David Dungay Jr was forcibly restrained by five guards when he insisted on finishing a pack of biscuits. In an earlier echo of Mr Floyd’s killing, Mr Dungay called out 'I can’t breathe' twelve times as he was moved and restrained by guards kneeling on his back. In response, he was told to stop resisting and injected with sedatives. Moments later, he stopped breathing. No one has been held accountable.
Since the completion of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in 1991, at least 432 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people have died in custody. No one has been held accountable.
It’s been almost 30 years since the Royal Commission and things have only gotten worse, with the Indigenous incarceration rate nearly doubling. Many of the recommendations – such as decriminalising public intoxication, not fining people more than they can afford, and not imprisoning people for unpaid fines — have never been implemented. Most significantly, there has been a complete failure to implement the core recommendation to respect the right of Aboriginal people to self-determination.
In the face of such a comprehensive failure of action, can we have any faith that the criminal justice system, as currently conceived, can operate to keep all of us safe?
On Saturday, thousands gathered across Australia to protest ongoing state violence against Aboriginal people. After having originally granted authorisation, police in Sydney sought to de-authorise the protest, claiming that revised crowd estimates created excessive public health risks. Their application in the Supreme Court was successful at first instance, but the Court of Appeal granted a last-minute order authorising the protest. Despite this, the largely peaceful protest concluded with police cornering protesters inside Central Station and pepper spraying several at close range.
And so, we must ask: are our police forces keeping us safe? All of us?
Poverty, discrimination and disempowerment cannot be solved with more policing. What if we took the money that is currently spent on policing and spent it on supporting the community? Surely, we would all be safer if everyone had adequate housing and enough money to pay for their daily needs. What if we employed social workers and health care professionals as first responders, instead of police, and prioritised diversity and representation in their ranks?
It might seem a little too radical, but the status quo certainly isn’t working.
Dr Cristy Clark is a human rights specialist. Her work focuses on the intersection of human rights, neoliberalism, activism and the environment, and particularly on the human right to water.
Main image: Woman holds poster 'No knees on necks' while police stand in background (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)