Vol. 76/No. 46      December 17, 2012

Two days earlier more than 100 people marched on the police station in Kempsey, a country town some 260 miles north of Sydney, to protest the use of Tasers on a 14-year-old Aboriginal youth by police in January 2011.

In a story aired Nov. 14 on Four Corners, an ABC TV program, Kevin Henshaw from Kempsey Aboriginal Legal Service said the youth’s treatment was “akin to torture.” Footage showed police administering Taser shocks while he was on his knees. As he struggled to breathe and begged for help, cops can be heard threatening, “Keep up the language and I’ll zap you again. Understood? So shut your mouth.”

The outcome of an inquest into the death of 21-year-old Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti at the hands of the New South Wales police was also released Nov. 14. Laudisio died March 18 after police used a Taser on him 14 times and sprayed capsicum (pepper spray) in his face. Police continued to Taser him after he was on the ground, handcuffed, with cops kneeling on his chest.

New South Wales Coroner Mary Jerram said the officers responsible for Laudisio’s death used excessive force in abuse of police powers and were “in some instances even thuggish.” Despite these findings, she recommended only that the five police who attacked Laudisio be subject to internal discipline, without having to face any criminal charges.

Speakers at the Sydney meeting included Ray Jackson from the Indigenous Social Justice Association, Dr. Thalia Anthony, law lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney; David Shoebridge, Greens member of NSW Parliament; and Dr. Carl Hughes, an independent forensic pathologist.

The panelists demanded police be charged and punished for their actions and called for an investigation independent of the police department. At the same time, they put forward the view that better training could help change “police culture.”

Several speakers pointed to an October 2012 report by the NSW Ombudsman. The report said almost 30 percent of police Taser victims are Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island peoples, who make up only 2.5 percent of the state’s population, and 41 youth aged 15 or under had Tasers used against them by NSW police over the last four years.

Jackson read a statement sent to the meeting by the Laudisio family from Brazil calling for the five police involved to be charged with manslaughter and pointing out that Laudisio was tortured with drawn-out Taser shots while handcuffed. The coroner’s “recommendations are too little and too light for what has really happened. Little justice has been done,” the statement concluded.
 
 
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