TJ was killed February 14 as he was chased on his bicycle by a police car. This sparked a nine-hour street battle next day between a large cop force and residents of a working-class area of Aboriginal housing in Redfern known as “the Block.” The confrontation received national and international media coverage.

A silent vigil was held at the spot where the teenager was impaled on a fence, now a memorial site initiated by Black youth in the area. It is decorated in black, red, and yellow—the Aboriginal flag colors—and covered with hand-written messages and flowers. The demonstrators proceeded to the Redfern police station where they presented a list of 17 demands to secure evidence for the government inquiries.

Police claim they “had nothing to do with” the death of TJ, stating their cars were “blocks away” looking for a different man over a local assault and bag snatching when TJ had his “accident.” The cops’ version of events has been highly publicized by the media.

Virginia Hickey, TJ’s aunt, said in a February 24 interview with the Militant, however, that her nephew had been targeted by the police and recently beaten up by five cops, and became “terrified” of them.

Militant reporters talked to several eyewitnesses February 18. Two boys, who asked that their names not be used for fear of police reprisals, said they saw TJ riding his bike at full speed trying to elude a “screeching” cop car with lights and siren on. The 17-year-old was thrown from his bike and impaled on an iron fence after a cop “bull wagon” rammed his rear wheel, the boys said. The cops then called for “back-up,” not an ambulance. When more police arrived, they pulled him from the fence, held him down roughly, and “searched his pockets,” despite his screams.

“There were too many coppers there for them not to be chasing him,” said another witness, Glen McArthur, a 40-year-old laborer. “They took the bike away but now they’re telling the family they don’t know where it is.”

“He was bleeding to death,” said Lisa McArthur, Glen’s wife. “A little girl had to call the ambulance.”

TJ died in the hospital hours later from neck, chest, and internal injuries. As news of TJ’s killing by the police spread the next day, a flyer was handed out with a picture of three police officers. “Wanted: child murderers,” it said. “There is a gang of child killers operating in the Redfern area. They can be easily identified as they all dress the same.”  
 
A cop riot
Residents say that after TJ’s killing cops stepped up their presence in the neighborhood in cars and on foot, taunting the Black teenagers. TJ’s mother, Gail Hickey, said her son’s friends became “wild” and began throwing things at the police in retaliation. As cops gathered in force, sealing off the area and shutting down the local railway station, the battle began.

Up to 250 cops with riot gear and 15 police vehicles were locked in a running fight into the night with about 100 mainly youthful Aboriginal protesters, according to press reports. Seven fire engines and two ambulances were behind the police lines

Residents used burning car barricades and projectiles to keep the amassed police out of the Block during the running battle. Lines of police cars were attacked with bricks and paving stones, bottles, firecrackers, and some Molotov cocktails. More than 50 police were reported injured, one knocked unconscious. The front of the local railway station, which cops often use to watch the Block, was set on fire.

Cops used high-pressure water hoses to force back the youthful crowd. Riot police then forced their way into the Block, marching down the road in close formation, and lining the footpaths for hours, “like storm troopers,” according to one resident.

New South Wales (NSW) Labour premier Robert Carr blamed the outcome on “heat and alcohol…and orchestration by elements who’ve chosen to urge a major incident.” Parroting “what the police on the ground reported to us,” Carr said “the criminals” who instigated the fighting would be arrested.

Claiming to use video footage identification, the cops planned a sweep of arrests through the neighborhood. TJ’s girlfriend, for example, was arrested as she verbally expressed her frustration and anger at the police over her friend’s murder.

A February 16 Block community meeting of 300 people heard speakers calling for justice over TJ’s death. Several hundred attended a February 18 concert of Aboriginal bands and singers. Three days later, more than 200 silently joined a memorial service for him. Aden Ridgeway, a Democratic senator and the only Aboriginal in federal parliament, pointed to “the alienation of Aboriginal kids” and spoke against the arrest of Black protesters.

Pat Dodson, a nationally known Aboriginal leader, said that there were 20 or 30 Redferns in Australia waiting to explode. Recently, Aborigines in the Northern Territory town of Katherine also protested the police killing of a Black man there. Cops in a patrol car ran over and killed him as he was sleeping in a driveway, then claimed it was an “accident.”

In a crude appeal to anti-Aboriginal racism, NSW Liberal Party opposition leader John Brogden called for the Block to be “bulldozed.” His remarks expressed the interests of profit-hungry real estate sharks who have long eyed the area for “development” of high-priced apartments.  
 
Specter of ‘stolen generations’
Brogden denounced what he called the “softly-softly” handling of the situation by the police. The conservative leader called for removing Aboriginal children from families with problems of alcohol, violence, or drugs. This brought back to today’s reality the specter of the “stolen generations”—the kidnapping by state authorities of “half-caste” Aboriginal children from their mothers, which went on for decades.

Redfern has been an area of relatively inexpensive housing for over a century. Indigenous people, dispossessed of their lands by British colonization, have gravitated here since the Depression of the 1930s. This trend accelerated in the 1950s and ’60s as agricultural mechanization did away with many low-paid rural jobs previously held by Aboriginal people. Government purchase in the 1970s of housing in the Block—passed on to the new Black-run housing service—alleviated some Aboriginal homelessness and related social problems. The project has since been starved of funds.

As a result of chronic discrimination, living standards and conditions for Aborigines are far below those of most other residents of Australia. Their average life span today is 20 years less than for nonindigenous people. Black infant mortality is three times that of other babies. Aborigines make up 2.4 per cent of Australia’s population of 20 million, yet they comprise 19 percent of adults in jail and 41 percent of juvenile prisoners.

Lyall Munro, a longtime fighter for Black rights, said in a radio interview that most Aboriginal kids, “have been bashed by police” and that “harassment and intimidation is an everyday occurrence.” TJ’s death, he continued, “was a preventable death, like most of the deaths of young Aboriginal people today. As far as we’re concerned, it’s an Aboriginal death in custody.”  
 
 
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