Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talked to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Today I had a conversation. I wish it wasn't necessary,
Speaker 1: but there's something I think we need to talk about today.
Speaker 1: I sat down with Emily Olie and Douglas Smith. They
Speaker 1: both hosts of a podcast series called Diane Rose and
Speaker 1: the authors of a book of the same name. We
Speaker 1: talked about how families of Indigenous women found to cease
Speaker 1: were routinely let down by those responsible for finding out
Speaker 1: what happened.
Speaker 2: To them.
Speaker 1: I thought this was a thing of the past, but
Speaker 1: it's still happening and it needs to stop.
Speaker 2: This is a conversation.
Speaker 1: This is a different location for an Eye Catch Killers podcast.
Speaker 1: We're on the floor of the Advertiser newspaper down here
Speaker 1: in Adelaide. Before I start, I'm just going to read
Speaker 1: out a listener warning and the podcast addresses sensitive topics,
Speaker 1: including murder and suicide, specifically of Indigenous women in Australia.
Speaker 1: We recognize that these discussions can be deeply distressing.
Speaker 2: And may evoke strong emotions.
Speaker 1: Okay, a police officer has told an inquest she would
Speaker 1: have now done several things differently from when she investigated
Speaker 1: the death of a mother discovered being eaten by dogs.
Speaker 1: That's an extract from a media report of an inquest
Speaker 1: that's been held as we speak into the death of Lassange.
Speaker 2: You're done in Wilkenia.
Speaker 1: These are the type of things that we raised when
Speaker 1: we last spoke, and you covered in your podcast series
Speaker 1: of Dime Rows and covered in your book A Dime Rows.
Speaker 1: Does it shock you that the police officer, the officer
Speaker 1: in charge is making those type of comments.
Speaker 3: Yes and no. I guess no, because I mean as
Speaker 3: an Indigenous person myself, I kind of expect it that,
Speaker 3: you know, but at the same time it kind of
Speaker 3: tells me that the system is still flawed. You know,
Speaker 3: when we talk about, you know, what came out of
Speaker 3: Barabal years ago, and then also when we look at
Speaker 3: this and then we look at all the recommendations. You
Speaker 3: can have so many recommendations that come out of an
Speaker 3: inquest or a parliamentary inquiry or whatever that is. But
Speaker 3: at the end of the day, if there's not a
Speaker 3: change on the ground, and you can have these recommendations,
Speaker 3: you can see that over the years, you know that
Speaker 3: nothing really does change to the extent that it should.
Speaker 3: You know, did you his voices still feel drowned out
Speaker 3: in these these cases and in these situations. As you know,
Speaker 3: we don't have any indigenous homicide detectives. We don't have
Speaker 3: those you know, indigenous people working closely with homicide or
Speaker 3: you have those Indigenous community aison officers, and you know,
Speaker 3: we can teach you know, stuff of indigenous culture in
Speaker 3: police forces, in any organization or an institution. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I think, you know, when
Speaker 3: we look at having more Indigenous people in I guess
Speaker 3: homicide itself or something like that that might make a change.
Speaker 3: But I don't feel like they listen to us and
Speaker 3: our recommendations or any of those cranial inquest, parliamentary inquiries,
Speaker 3: whatever you'll say, said inquiries, and none of it really
Speaker 3: matters if it doesn't actually, you know, take if it's
Speaker 3: not taken seriously, because we'll continue to see what we
Speaker 3: continue to see now.
Speaker 2: And yeah, not ticking and flicking.
Speaker 4: I think, I mean for us, it's unsurprising because it's
Speaker 4: what Keith was telling us three years ago understad. Yeah,
Speaker 4: when we first spoke to him. His concerns were that
Speaker 4: the right questions hadn't been asked, that the right people
Speaker 4: hadn't been questioned, that the investigation felt not properly supported,
Speaker 4: that it felt rushed. So I think to hear that
Speaker 4: stuff come out more formally in court by the people
Speaker 4: who were involved is unsurprising because it is It's what
Speaker 4: he said.
Speaker 1: And here it is a playing out in an inquest
Speaker 1: trying to find out what's happened. I'm sad and I'm
Speaker 1: sitting here speaking to you guys, and I say that
Speaker 1: with the greatest respect, but I'd like not to be
Speaker 1: having these discussions. I'd like to think that on the
Speaker 1: back of you identifying the issues that you saw in
Speaker 1: Dying Rows and things that have happened in the past,
Speaker 1: that we've learnt, we've changed, we've evolved, and these type
Speaker 1: of things wouldn't happen, but seeing it play out in
Speaker 1: the inquest contemporary lo it just brings it back to
Speaker 1: the fact that, okay, we still still haven't got it right.
Speaker 1: Just for the listeners, and I have had you guys
Speaker 1: on the podcast before, but just put in the perspective
Speaker 1: how you became involved in the Dime Rope Rose Project,
Speaker 1: which is a podcast series and also a recently released book.
Speaker 4: I mean that story began an International Women's Day of
Speaker 4: All Days, which was you know, our editor Jemma Jones
Speaker 4: went to an event and Courtney Hunter Heaberman is a
Speaker 4: mother and she was speaking at the event and she said,
Speaker 4: she gave her welcome to country and she said, if
Speaker 4: you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia,
Speaker 4: try being a black woman. And I think Gemma was
Speaker 4: just really captured by that, and she approached Courtney after
Speaker 4: and you know, kind of disasked her what's that all about?
Speaker 4: And Courtney's daughter Rose had died in twenty nineteen in
Speaker 4: what Courtney believed were circumstances that she didn't feel were
Speaker 4: properly investigated, and that sort of center on this. That
Speaker 4: was the first case, and that's what we started investigating.
Speaker 4: And as we investigated, Courtney put us in touch with
Speaker 4: another mom whose daughter had died in circumstances she didn't
Speaker 4: feel we're properly investigated, and then another one, and then
Speaker 4: another family got in touch with Doug.
Speaker 3: For me, it started. I used to work at National
Speaker 3: Indigenous Television and a colleague of mine, Diana, she'd been
Speaker 3: talking to Keith about like, you know, shortly after his
Speaker 3: daughter passed away. So now after she was found, my
Speaker 3: colleague had been speaking to Keith and she needed someone
Speaker 3: with her to go to will Kenya, and you know,
Speaker 3: I put my hand up and I was like, let's
Speaker 3: do it. And that was back in twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: probably in March. It was a month after that, and
Speaker 3: that's when I first went there. It kind of felt
Speaker 3: from the start that this was, you know, a story
Speaker 3: that would you know, follow me in my career until
Speaker 3: we get some sort of answers for the family. And
Speaker 3: here we are.
Speaker 4: Three years later, we ended up with these six cases
Speaker 4: that went hugely similar in the concerns that the families
Speaker 4: had about police not properly looking into, in their eyes,
Speaker 4: the circumstances of these really horrible, tragic deaths of their daughters.
Speaker 2: You see that more more than the coincidence.
Speaker 1: Like we're talking so six indigenous Indigenous women and the
Speaker 1: families all had the same concerns.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and like some of their concerns is that the
Speaker 3: way the police behavior, I guess, responding to their situation.
Speaker 3: Whether it's a death in Indigenous communities, it's anything really,
Speaker 3: but particularly in these cases obviously it's it's death. So
Speaker 3: the way that the police had responded to these families,
Speaker 3: it's quite I don't know what to say put into
Speaker 3: words really. In one case, you know that there was
Speaker 3: it was rules like, you know, the family were comfortable
Speaker 3: that it was a suicide, but the police got there
Speaker 3: instead of helping the family, the arrested the brother and
Speaker 3: bashed him like it was bad while while the daughter
Speaker 3: was on the ground getting resuscitated. Those you know, response
Speaker 3: to police have for our communities just terrible at times. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: That's kind of what, you know, these were six cases,
Speaker 4: but we were only scratching the surface of as was shown.
Speaker 4: You know, there was a sent inquiry into missing in
Speaker 4: murdered First Nations women and children that you were part of,
Speaker 4: and you know we learned of that inquiry through our
Speaker 4: two year investigation into all of these cases. It became
Speaker 4: clearer and clearer that this wasn't just isolated incidents of police,
Speaker 4: you know, maybe one officer not looking properly into something.
Speaker 4: It was a systemic issue that these families and the
Speaker 4: families who gave evidence to the inquiry, and huge amounts
Speaker 4: of other families that we didn't speak to, as Doug says,
Speaker 4: felt was a systemic approach from police towards Indigenous people
Speaker 4: in lots of circumstances, as you say, but particularly when
Speaker 4: it comes to death that they felt were suspicious.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's talk about la Sonya's case. Can you give
Speaker 1: us a background to the circumstances in which Lasnya disappeared
Speaker 1: and where.
Speaker 2: She was found.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Lasnya, you know, thirty one year old bark
Speaker 3: and gy woman from will Kenya in central western New
Speaker 3: South Wales.
Speaker 5: She was on foing discovered on March twenty ninth, so yeah.
Speaker 3: So four days before that, right, So it was a Friday,
Speaker 3: and she'd been having a few drinks with her two
Speaker 3: close cousins. They were in this place like in will Kenya,
Speaker 3: just it's called the they're called it the safe house,
Speaker 3: so it's where women are usually live for scape domestic
Speaker 3: violence or whatever. And she was there and sitting down
Speaker 3: during the day having a drink. She's taken off at
Speaker 3: about by thirty six o'clock in the afternoon. She's walked
Speaker 3: away and she said to all of her family last
Speaker 3: years later, my mom, my family are catches tomorrow. And
Speaker 3: she says she was going home, but she went and
Speaker 3: no one saw her after that. Apparently on that night
Speaker 3: she was seen in another house in the Malley that's
Speaker 3: a part of the community where you know, mostly Indigenous
Speaker 3: people live. She was seeing at another house with someone
Speaker 3: and they were drinking and then they were there to
Speaker 3: the late hours of the night and they've taken off.
Speaker 3: No one's seen them after that. So she's taken off
Speaker 3: Friday night, no one's seen her on Saturday, no one's
Speaker 3: seen her on Sunday, Monday, and then on Tuesday, Tuesday morning,
Speaker 3: at about ten o'clock that's when her body was discovered
Speaker 3: in the backyard of her own home. And like I
Speaker 3: said before, it was just meters away from the back door,
Speaker 3: the back kitchen window, right next to the clothesline, and
Speaker 3: up into this yard. And this yard is it's actually
Speaker 3: where she was found, is probably two three meters away
Speaker 3: from a backway path that people just use, like they
Speaker 3: don't even live in that house. I just use that path.
Speaker 3: They like walk through to the next street so they
Speaker 3: don't got to go the whole way around. So that
Speaker 3: yard is constantly visited throughout the day. And it's loss
Speaker 3: only his grandmother's house, none of norm you know, she's
Speaker 3: a big matriarch there for the family.
Speaker 2: People have dropping people dropped in and gave a.
Speaker 3: Cuppa, you know, sit down, have a yarn. That's where
Speaker 3: a lot of people go. And it's just yeah, for
Speaker 3: the whole community. It's like, well, I'm pretty sure she
Speaker 3: wasn't there yesterday, and I'm pretty sure she wasn't there
Speaker 3: the day before. How is she there today?
Speaker 2: And I asked how her body was found that.
Speaker 3: It had an electrical cable wrapped around her neck. It
Speaker 3: was an Xbox three sixty cord like an audio visual
Speaker 3: AV cord and I think like she was. She was
Speaker 3: found with that wrapped around her neck. She was in
Speaker 3: an advanced state of decomposition. So she'd been dead for
Speaker 3: about all they said around four days, three to four
Speaker 3: days because of the state of her body. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so she had been laying there for that long, and
Speaker 3: there were dogs chewing at her, and she'd been missing
Speaker 3: some limbs, and you know, it looks like they've been
Speaker 3: there a while. And you know when her uncle, her
Speaker 3: uncle just walked in the backyard one morning and just
Speaker 3: found her there and he was, like, he told me,
Speaker 3: he goes, I thought it was a kangaroo at first,
Speaker 3: but then I looked again and he goes, you know,
Speaker 3: don't I realize it wasn't a kangaroo. It was it
Speaker 3: was my niece. And he was just screaming his head off.
Speaker 1: What I can imagine how horrific it would have been
Speaker 1: before him was she reported missing, before her body was found,
Speaker 1: anyone made the inquiries, where where was she living?
Speaker 2: Where was she.
Speaker 3: Change she was at that house where she was found
Speaker 3: in like will Kenya, you know, and even I asked.
Speaker 1: That question provocatively because I want you to explain that
Speaker 1: because people will be young. But yeah, if she didn't
Speaker 1: come home, but explain the community.
Speaker 3: In will Kenya, in my community as well, if I
Speaker 3: went missing for a couple of days, like, oh, he's
Speaker 3: probably just over at cousin's house doing something, you know,
Speaker 3: like he's just staying there. Like we don't think of
Speaker 3: it in that manner, like we don't think of it like, oh,
Speaker 3: something really bad is wrong here, like something is really
Speaker 3: wrong here. And I could see how the family didn't
Speaker 3: see that straight away, because you know, will Kenya is like,
Speaker 3: you know, she might be off at cousin's house or
Speaker 3: they went down to the river, or they were doing
Speaker 3: something like that's just normal for outback country life, you know.
Speaker 3: And so in this case, it's like, no, she wasn't
Speaker 3: reported missing, and I don't think they would have reported
Speaker 3: in missing unless well I don't think anyone in that
Speaker 3: community would report someone missing. And I say, had a
Speaker 3: really really bad feeling that it was wrong, and then
Speaker 3: they had to go to the cots to say something.
Speaker 3: And I don't think they felt that and because to them,
Speaker 3: that's just normal living. And you know, it's just same
Speaker 3: in my community, like my brother goes missing for three
Speaker 3: or four days sometimes and I'm like, hell is he
Speaker 3: you know? Oh, he's at the mission doing something. It's
Speaker 3: the same thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, So the first involvement or notification of the
Speaker 1: police is when Sonya's body has been found. Yeah, they've
Speaker 1: contacted the police. Found by her husband. Her husband, her
Speaker 1: uncle Merle and he's got in contact with the police. Then,
Speaker 1: as my understanding, homicide detectives of local police would.
Speaker 2: Have come out.
Speaker 1: I'm just surmising here, but I know from the report
Speaker 1: that homicide detectives attended that day, so they would have
Speaker 1: would have flown up.
Speaker 2: I'm very cautious.
Speaker 1: This matter is before an inquest and the coroner hasn't
Speaker 1: handed down findings at this point in time. So what
Speaker 1: we're talking about here is what's been reported at the
Speaker 1: inquest and reports that have come from the inquest. The inquest,
Speaker 1: my understanding, has been held at will Kenny.
Speaker 2: Okay. Some of the things that come.
Speaker 1: Out to have caused me concern. When you've had the
Speaker 1: officer in charge of the investigation in the witness box
Speaker 1: said that she wasn't even aware initially that she was
Speaker 1: in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 2: Is that correct?
Speaker 1: And she has also expressed as I read out at
Speaker 1: the start of the podcast that would have done things differently.
Speaker 2: What's your take on that.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, look, I think, as I mentioned before,
Speaker 3: flawed system when it comes to you know, historically, you know,
Speaker 3: when we look at other cases like this, you I
Speaker 3: go back to Barville again. My take is nothing is
Speaker 3: like changed enough. You know, we're looking forward, we're fast
Speaker 3: forwarding here, and it's like what's been identified as you know,
Speaker 3: gaps and you know police have done the wrong thing
Speaker 3: or you know, like unintentionally you know, missed things in
Speaker 3: the past because either they're unconscious bias, they're like, oh
Speaker 3: it's you know, that's probably not something that we need
Speaker 3: to look at or whatever, blah blah blah. Like that
Speaker 3: is still playing out as we've talked about, like that
Speaker 3: will bring it forward to this police officer right unaware
Speaker 3: that they were because where was the communication within the
Speaker 3: police force, or where was the organization to get a
Speaker 3: proper task force there or you know, team of detect
Speaker 3: homicide detectives to look at this properly, I mean thoroughly right. Well,
Speaker 3: I also.
Speaker 4: Think it speaks to the difference as well. I think
Speaker 4: there's a couple of factors at play the remote community.
Speaker 4: It's massively a factor. But also you know, if a
Speaker 4: white woman's body was found decomposed being eaten by dogs
Speaker 4: in the middle of the Adelaide CBD, there would be
Speaker 4: streets blocked out, there'd be one hundred of coppers, hundreds
Speaker 4: of cops crawling the streets. You know, I think that
Speaker 4: those concerns that she's raised about that response, the fact
Speaker 4: that you know there was a fairly junior comfortable at
Speaker 4: the scene is pretty bathelic given the circumstances that she
Speaker 4: was found.
Speaker 1: In breaking it down and this is this is me
Speaker 1: joining joining the pieces from a next homicide detective understanding
Speaker 1: the working to New South Wales homicide squad and what's
Speaker 1: been reported in the media from the inquest into Lasagna's death.
Speaker 1: A homicide of attended if we accept how it's been
Speaker 1: reported in the media on the day. So I'm assuming
Speaker 1: they ever flew up or drove up, drove up the
Speaker 1: moment they were notified.
Speaker 2: So that's a tick.
Speaker 1: The first mistake you could make is we won't send homicide.
Speaker 1: There's nothing, nothing to nothing to see there and that
Speaker 1: could potentially be.
Speaker 2: Where a problem is.
Speaker 1: So the first step is right they've sent homicide team
Speaker 1: up there. They're treating it seriously initially, but there's also
Speaker 1: reports of the lack of CCTV footage gathered. I think
Speaker 1: it was at the club or the location she was
Speaker 1: drinking that on the Friday, but only the CCTV footage.
Speaker 2: From that period of time was gathered.
Speaker 1: From a homicide investigation point of view, it's crucial the
Speaker 1: last sighting. The last sighting is basically your starting point
Speaker 1: to do the investigation. There seems to be some problem
Speaker 1: problems there is that your take on.
Speaker 5: It, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 4: One of the things that was raised in the inquest
Speaker 4: is that Lasagna's ex partner was asked to provide CCTV
Speaker 4: for the four day period that she was missing, and
Speaker 4: when that cc he was handed to USB stick and
Speaker 4: he gave it back, and when that.
Speaker 5: CCTV was handed over Friday.
Speaker 4: Night and Saturday morning and all of Monday that we're missing.
Speaker 4: And you know, I think that the detective said that
Speaker 4: she kind of brushed up off as a technical issue
Speaker 4: or you know, there's all sorts of reasons that footage
Speaker 4: could be corrupted. But you know, having spoken to Keith,
Speaker 4: who's got so many doubts about the way that this
Speaker 4: was approached. Something like that only raises more questions because
Speaker 4: when you've got an incomplete picture, for whatever reason, it
Speaker 4: could be completely innocent. It could you know, it could
Speaker 4: absolutely be the far was corrupted, but you then sort
Speaker 4: of opened that door to questions being asked that now
Speaker 4: can't be answered because that hasn't been provided. And I
Speaker 4: think that that's one of the things that we're now
Speaker 4: seeing play out in this inquest is all of the
Speaker 4: concerns that the family had that you know, maybe corners
Speaker 4: had been cut or things haven't been sort of properly
Speaker 4: looked into, seemed to becoming somewhat to fruition.
Speaker 1: Well, and we're getting this because the police are actually
Speaker 1: under oath giving evidence, and this is where this information
Speaker 1: is flowing out up until that point. Correct me if
Speaker 1: I'm wrong. When you when you guys were looking at
Speaker 1: and you're making inquiries with the police, and the response
Speaker 1: you got back, well, you explained to me.
Speaker 3: The response, I've got the same response a year year,
Speaker 3: I think it was. It was the exact same response
Speaker 3: from the cops. There was any any any questions, any
Speaker 3: assertions that we put to the police from the family,
Speaker 3: their concerns, not none of it was answered. They had
Speaker 3: a strike force there and they were looking into this death,
Speaker 3: and that they had spoken extensively with the family and
Speaker 3: that was it. There was no other nothing from the cops.
Speaker 3: I even went to the cops shop in wil Kenya
Speaker 3: to speak to the cops and that was a bit
Speaker 3: of a tense moment itself. But yeah, that the nothing
Speaker 3: at all.
Speaker 5: No we uh we.
Speaker 4: Actually, at the end of the podcast process ended up
Speaker 4: dubbing at the wall of silence because each of the
Speaker 4: I we had cases across different states and territories, and
Speaker 4: each of the police institutions that we approached came back
Speaker 4: with much the same responsors, which were m no comment
Speaker 4: or you know, we're we're investigating, or we've spoken to
Speaker 4: the family, but you know, we weren't really given any
Speaker 4: sort of insight into those processes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and look, playing Devil's advocate, the police could say
Speaker 1: it's an ongoing investigation, we can't speak to the media. Yes,
Speaker 1: you can go down that path occasionally, but I've spoken
Speaker 1: more detail to you guys and seeing the response and
Speaker 1: it was a generic sort of blame response that gives
Speaker 1: no comfort to the family. Or to yourselves investigating it
Speaker 1: from a journalistic point of view, that things have been done.
Speaker 1: And I've got to say, and you know, you were
Speaker 1: predicting this two years ago when you were saying that
Speaker 1: the family was saying they've got concerns, And now we've
Speaker 1: got police officers in the witness box acknowledging that things
Speaker 1: could have been done differently and getting an emotional about
Speaker 1: the way the investigation has been done. The USB that
Speaker 1: was provided to the ex partner, and I think we
Speaker 1: need to clarify that he's not considered publicly, he's not
Speaker 1: considered a suspect in this matter, but the police thought
Speaker 1: it important enough to gather cc TV footage from from
Speaker 1: his place and the US that provided him a USB
Speaker 1: stick and that's come back and there's significant portions of
Speaker 1: the footage missing from a homicide. To take this point
Speaker 1: of view, that would cause me concern. Now there's technical
Speaker 1: glitches that you can have in computers. What's what's your
Speaker 1: take on that?
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess.
Speaker 4: It's hard not to look at that and have questions.
Speaker 4: I think any person would look at that, and you know,
Speaker 4: whatever the reason you then it just creates questions. You go, well,
Speaker 4: why was that portion missing? What happened during that time?
Speaker 4: Is there something that we're missing?
Speaker 5: Is there?
Speaker 4: And I think that, you know, particularly for her family,
Speaker 4: you know, you will always have questions. Those sort of
Speaker 4: things are what's viiral into those questions of well, what are.
Speaker 5: We missing, what's not being provided, what's not being said.
Speaker 3: It's also because they're missing in specific times where like
Speaker 3: we really are looking to know what happened on those
Speaker 3: days or where she was on those days. And again
Speaker 3: like we're not saying that this person is you know,
Speaker 3: like in any way you know, the person that's done
Speaker 3: anything to her. But it's just that it raises questions, right,
Speaker 3: It just raises so many questions because the specific all
Speaker 3: the times of where that footage is missing is really concerning.
Speaker 1: Like it's yeah, I look, yes, yeah, and you would
Speaker 1: have to get to the bottom of it. Like I
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as overly concerned if the police were in
Speaker 1: the witness box at this inquest and said, yes, there
Speaker 1: is footage missing. We've provided the USB stick and we've
Speaker 1: examined the computer and it shows that there was a
Speaker 1: technical difficulty between this period and that period. But what
Speaker 1: I'm getting and I preface that with any reports from
Speaker 1: the media, there's been no explanation on.
Speaker 2: Why that's forgotten.
Speaker 1: The officer in charge also made a comment I'm just
Speaker 1: looking for it here.
Speaker 2: I haven't got the I haven't.
Speaker 1: Got the specific quote, but it was along the lines
Speaker 1: the officer in charge was. I saw it, and this
Speaker 1: is my interpretation of it. I saw it as her saying, well,
Speaker 1: it was all a bit confusing the structure of who
Speaker 1: was leading leading the investigation. I'll say, I'll call you
Speaker 1: guys outside this. I understand the organization, the way things work.
Speaker 1: What with that type of commentary? Does that cause you
Speaker 1: concern massively?
Speaker 4: I mean, look and again it's not and at no
Speaker 4: stage I think is anyone putting any and nor should
Speaker 4: they put any blame on this officer when you're you know,
Speaker 4: it's it's hard.
Speaker 5: To imagine in a circumstance.
Speaker 4: You know, allegations of murder is the worst crime, So
Speaker 4: it's it's hard as an outsider to understand why you
Speaker 4: wouldn't have a pretty solid set of systems and processes
Speaker 4: in place when you know a possible even a whiff
Speaker 4: of murder, is homicide, or suspicious circumstances is raised. How
Speaker 4: someone could walk into that scene and be like, I'm
Speaker 4: really sure who's supposed to be looking at what here?
Speaker 4: It's I find that pretty hard to fat it really.
Speaker 3: I mean I just think that that was that they
Speaker 3: would just rock up. No, I mean as a police officer, right,
Speaker 3: I mean if it was as we say, as if
Speaker 3: it was a case here at Adelaida in Sydney, that
Speaker 3: would probably be the case, right, they'd rock up. They
Speaker 3: would know who's in charge, who's doing what? You would satis,
Speaker 3: how do you think you would run an investigation of
Speaker 3: that manner or that type? You would you would be
Speaker 3: the leader of You would be the leader I know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, there is experience officers and inexperience officers. I
Speaker 1: know from experience how you run investigations, and there's a
Speaker 1: clear structure and things need to be set in place.
Speaker 1: So you don't want to see a police officer in
Speaker 1: the witness box acknowledging mistakes were made in an investigation
Speaker 1: where the family have been flagging. We've got concerns about
Speaker 1: the way this is going to be investigated. From the outset.
Speaker 1: You've got you guys doing stuff in the media expressing
Speaker 1: concerns and the very concerns that you've expressed, and then
Speaker 1: fast forward we get to the inquest and the evidence
Speaker 1: that is coming out of the inquest, and we preface
Speaker 1: that with the coroner hasn't handed down the finding, so
Speaker 1: this has just been reported.
Speaker 2: You've got all this.
Speaker 1: Concern about the way the investigation has been conducted. I
Speaker 1: see that the homicide detective also gave evidence that the inquest,
Speaker 1: and the homicide detective said, I didn't have concerns about
Speaker 1: Broken Hill or Barrier Police District being able to carry
Speaker 1: out the investigation.
Speaker 2: She told the court again.
Speaker 1: Yeah, then you've got the local police saying, well, would
Speaker 1: have done things differently. So there's a failure without putting
Speaker 1: blame on the individuals, because I don't think anyone sets
Speaker 1: out to not do an investigation properly. But there's a
Speaker 1: failure there somewhere, isn't it.
Speaker 4: I Mean it's like in a newsroom, right, if you
Speaker 4: have your big breaking story today, you're not sending your
Speaker 4: cadet out to do it. And if you are, you're
Speaker 4: making sure that you've given them all of the training,
Speaker 4: all of the advice, You're checking their work, You're making
Speaker 4: sure that someone experience is looking over that. So I
Speaker 4: think you know, it's hard to it's hard to understand
Speaker 4: how someone could look at and again it's not speaking.
Speaker 5: To the skills or the capabilities.
Speaker 4: Of any individual officer, but Tidler's look at that and go, well,
Speaker 4: you know, why was it just a matter of Okay,
Speaker 4: they've got it.
Speaker 5: Seems good now, no worries.
Speaker 1: Well, looking from the outside the investigation, this is me
Speaker 1: speaking with the Bete hindsight, but based on years of
Speaker 1: experience as a homicide detective, crucial that you would lock
Speaker 1: in the person that found the Sogna's body, details of
Speaker 1: where you were, who was around the house, or that
Speaker 1: a statement her last movements would be crucial.
Speaker 2: In this day and age, that's quite often.
Speaker 1: CCTV footage, so that's a high priority interviewing people and
Speaker 1: following up those type of investigations. I got to say,
Speaker 1: from looking from the outset, bearing in mind the coroner
Speaker 1: hasn't come back with the findings yet, that doesn't appear
Speaker 1: to be a peer to be the case.
Speaker 3: I can say that I've spoken a peace that as
Speaker 3: I think about it now, because I did mention before
Speaker 3: when she left on the Friday night, no one really
Speaker 3: knew where she went, but there were actually people that
Speaker 3: reported sightings of her late into the night, and police
Speaker 3: never spoke to them as far as I'm aware, because
Speaker 3: I know cops went back a second time. It was
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three that they'd gone back there. They'd
Speaker 3: conducted I don't know how many interviews after it, but
Speaker 3: they'd gone back to have a second stab at this case.
Speaker 3: Right but before that, there were a few people that
Speaker 3: had seen her late in that night. All said that
Speaker 3: they'd seen her later on that night walking along the
Speaker 3: main street at the local football oval. None of them
Speaker 3: had ever Cops had never get a statement from any
Speaker 3: of them. And I'd spoken to one of them and
Speaker 3: he was like, no, cops never came to me and
Speaker 3: ask many of these questions.
Speaker 4: I think one of the ones that you know, I
Speaker 4: think we struggle with is Mele, her uncle who discovered
Speaker 4: her body. He says he was a question by police,
Speaker 4: And to me, that's I don't understand how the first
Speaker 4: person to discover the body could have never been asked
Speaker 4: the question.
Speaker 1: Well, I can't be And look, people might think how
Speaker 1: we're sitting here, we're beating up on the investigation that's
Speaker 1: before the coroner. The families flagged this. You guys flagged it,
Speaker 1: you spoke to me about it. I had concerns, and
Speaker 1: that's why I say I'm sitting here wishing I wasn't
Speaker 1: sitting here talking to you because I'd liked all those concerns.
Speaker 1: The police have done a thorough job and the family
Speaker 1: now know what happens to what happened to Lasagna, but
Speaker 1: that hasn't been the case, and that's why I want
Speaker 1: to talk about That's why I wanted to sit down
Speaker 1: with you guys and talk about it, because how many
Speaker 1: times are we going to let this happen? And how
Speaker 1: can you have confidence in an investigation if you're the family,
Speaker 1: if you've got a family member that side, how can
Speaker 1: you have confidence in an investigation when you've got police
Speaker 1: acknowledging that they could have could have done things better.
Speaker 1: I'm all for admitting we make mistakes. We all make
Speaker 1: mistakes time and time time again. But these are pretty
Speaker 1: simple things that it should have been done and should
Speaker 1: have been properly. Not blaming the individual offices, but what
Speaker 1: it's a structure that this is allowed to happen, given
Speaker 1: the fact that there's been warnings about this. Let's call
Speaker 1: it from the bearable time, because the bearable time should
Speaker 1: changed the landscape. We should not be making these mistakes.
Speaker 1: And that's why that's why I'm so passionate about it.
Speaker 1: I think, well, stuff this. We identified all the problems
Speaker 1: back there, and look what's happened there, and here we are,
Speaker 1: thirty thirty five years down the track, we're still making
Speaker 1: those mistakes.
Speaker 4: So well, we've got it's thirty years later, and we've
Speaker 4: got a book filled with we'll take out Shannaro because
Speaker 4: she the circumstances of her death, but the same thing,
Speaker 4: the response to her death thirty years later, and we've
Speaker 4: got a book filled with the stories of six families
Speaker 4: who have gone through essentially the exact same thing, those
Speaker 4: the families of the Bowerville cases.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Senate inquiry, the Senate Inquiry into
Speaker 1: Missing the murdered First Nations Women and Children. Do you
Speaker 1: guys know how that came about or what generated that,
Speaker 1: how that inquiry started? I do.
Speaker 5: It's been so long since I've covered it.
Speaker 3: I've actually had a blank.
Speaker 1: Not the specific individual that's initiated, but I think it
Speaker 1: was because of all the dramas. It was collectively like
Speaker 1: one situation after another that it was decided the Senate
Speaker 1: inquiry and they don't have a whole a federal Senate inquiry.
Speaker 1: Lightly Statistically, just if we look at things from a
Speaker 1: statistic point of view, have you got a focus on
Speaker 1: the statistics of murdered Indigenous women or missing Indigenous women?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the rates are I think on average
Speaker 4: it's about eight times high for Indigenous women murder rates
Speaker 4: in Western Australia. It's actually about seventeen point five times
Speaker 4: higher than non Indigenous women.
Speaker 5: And there's also a lot of other statistics that come
Speaker 5: into play.
Speaker 4: Four times more likely to be hospitalized due to domestic
Speaker 4: violence and six times more likely to die of family violence.
Speaker 5: And I think a lot.
Speaker 4: Of those figures as well, unfortunately, are the best that
Speaker 4: we can get. But the reporting around the deaths and
Speaker 4: the instances of missing persons, particularly in the cases of
Speaker 4: Indigenous women, is actually not there's no solid reporting structures
Speaker 4: around it. So that's the best that they can glaim
Speaker 4: of those stats, but there's still a lot of question
Speaker 4: marks about them.
Speaker 5: They could be hindy just.
Speaker 3: Say something is those statistics themselves is right? So you've
Speaker 3: got you know, you talk about the one of suicide,
Speaker 3: and then you talk about the one of family violence
Speaker 3: domestic violence itself. So if a cop or a detective
Speaker 3: rocks up to a case, you know, and they think
Speaker 3: likes or and that it, you know, they might think, right,
Speaker 3: suicide or they had that assumption in the back of
Speaker 3: their mind that this is probably a suicide, they should
Speaker 3: also have the other statistic in their head that yeah,
Speaker 3: Indigenous women do experience domestic violence at higher rates as well.
Speaker 3: So it's like these two statistics themselves is has she
Speaker 3: done something to yourself or has someone done something to her?
Speaker 3: They both go hand and hand in a way that
Speaker 3: they're both something that should be in the back of
Speaker 3: a detective's mind when it comes up to well.
Speaker 1: I think the part when I gave evidence at the
Speaker 1: inquiry was talking about where assumptions have made, where misunderstanding
Speaker 1: about things and on that basis go down a path
Speaker 1: or ignore lines of inquiry. That's where problems often occur.
Speaker 1: I just the inquiry's terms of reference focused on missing
Speaker 1: the murdered First Nations women and children sought to examine
Speaker 1: the extent of the problem, comparing investigative practices between First
Speaker 1: Nations and non First Nations cases. Examining systemic causes, the
Speaker 1: effectiveness of existing policies, and exploring actions to reduce violence
Speaker 1: and improve safety. After two years and sixteen, here in
Speaker 1: sussending inquiry into Missing the murdered First Nations Women handed
Speaker 1: down its report. While important, it's not the moment of
Speaker 1: reckoning many of us had hopedful. So that is an
Speaker 1: extract again, and I think you guys met that while
Speaker 1: we're just sitting here talking about it, that Okay, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to have the inquiry, but are people going
Speaker 1: to react react to it?
Speaker 2: One thing I.
Speaker 1: Thought interesting and I think there was a flow and
Speaker 1: I haven't got the details here, but the important role
Speaker 1: that media play on it, playing this we identified here
Speaker 1: sitting talking about it, and clearly the Senate inquiry have
Speaker 1: come up with the same same view that the media
Speaker 1: play a part. We need and here we're sitting in
Speaker 1: the news office, so it's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 2: But we need to play a part in it.
Speaker 1: We're working in the media that these cases are not forgotten.
Speaker 2: These cases are focused.
Speaker 1: When someone when someone's found in tragic circumstances, dead in
Speaker 1: the backyard just near it, near the family home, being
Speaker 1: eaten by dogs, you'd think there'd be some attention to it.
Speaker 1: So thirty one year old woman and there wasn't. You said, Doug,
Speaker 1: you're up there, and there was no one.
Speaker 3: We were the first to report on it, I believe
Speaker 3: an ITV that was Yeah, So there were none and
Speaker 3: that's just great. I mean, we can talk about the
Speaker 3: remoteness of the community, but what's two hours away is
Speaker 3: a broken Hill, right. They should have heard about this.
Speaker 3: I don't know if they did or not, but I
Speaker 3: didn't hear anything or read anything from that from Broken
Speaker 3: Hill media.
Speaker 5: Well.
Speaker 4: I think a really good example of that was one
Speaker 4: that we investigated as well here in South Australia, Sharan Warrior,
Speaker 4: who was missing for nine days before her body was found,
Speaker 4: and it was only once the media got involved that really,
Speaker 4: you know, sort of kicked into gear. But I mean
Speaker 4: it was a when we looked at sort of even
Speaker 4: and I think we can. I think we have to,
Speaker 4: as you said, you have to admit your mistakes, and
Speaker 4: I think that we have to admit our mistakes as
Speaker 4: well as a media as a whole. That we didn't
Speaker 4: pick up on that case until much later down the track,
Speaker 4: because I think that you do see I think those biases.
Speaker 4: And I think I mentioned earlier that the you know,
Speaker 4: it's not necessarily it's not just the police that have
Speaker 4: issues with biases. And I think it's we have to
Speaker 4: acknowledge that. You know, we will see police releases put
Speaker 4: out about missing women, and I think there is a
Speaker 4: tendency in an.
Speaker 5: Unconscious bias to go, oh, well, it's.
Speaker 3: An Indigenous woman, so it should probably.
Speaker 5: Turn up or you know, And I think that that's
Speaker 5: that's what happens.
Speaker 4: And I think that the media is just as complicit
Speaker 4: a lot of the time in not not really focusing on.
Speaker 1: Those stories, with the with the book that you've got
Speaker 1: and the and the podcast series and I know you
Speaker 1: too are passionate about it and the whole team that
Speaker 1: you've worked on this.
Speaker 2: Do you think we can make a change?
Speaker 3: Oh man, that's a big one. A. I think only
Speaker 3: time will tell. To be honest, it's going to take
Speaker 3: an effort from everyone. And I guess the media itself
Speaker 3: to have a look at itself in the way that
Speaker 3: they report. As you know, Emily has said that admits
Speaker 3: to your in the States. I think the media do
Speaker 3: play a big role in not covering these stories. Properly
Speaker 3: and or giving it even attention as they would a
Speaker 3: non Indigenous person or And one thing I did find
Speaker 3: is well, as socio economic status does play a big
Speaker 3: role in how much time media or police are going
Speaker 3: to spend in someone's case, you know. So, and that's
Speaker 3: regardless of skin color, I believe as well, but it
Speaker 3: just happens that Unfortunately for Indigenous women, it's more more often,
Speaker 3: it's more common in our communities, and that we don't
Speaker 3: get that media attention, that we don't get that police
Speaker 3: response that you know, we desire, that we need that
Speaker 3: is you know, to correct it, to make things. It
Speaker 3: just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4: So I think as well, particularly for audiences and particularly
Speaker 4: you know, as white people, I think that people can
Speaker 4: have a tendency when you have these conversations to feel
Speaker 4: like they're being attacked or they're being blamed for something, right,
Speaker 4: you know, like white people here, someone say, you know,
Speaker 4: policing is a the institution has racial biocense, right, and white.
Speaker 5: Police officers might go, oh, but not me.
Speaker 4: And I think that people it's really important for people
Speaker 4: and something that I hope that can happen is to
Speaker 4: be able to separate out and go, this isn't an
Speaker 4: attack on me. Think that people need to separate out
Speaker 4: and go just remove yourself. No one's having a go
Speaker 4: at you. You can acknowledge that we as a society
Speaker 4: and as Australia have made mistakes. We need to fix
Speaker 4: those mistakes. And the only way that you can fix
Speaker 4: those mistakes is to acknowledge that they have happened. And
Speaker 4: so I think that acknowledgment and then that listening, and
Speaker 4: then that understanding, and then that change has to come
Speaker 4: right from the start of recognizing that something is wrong
Speaker 4: in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what you've said is one hundred
Speaker 1: percent correct. I think police have to also acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there has been problems in the past. I'm talking from
Speaker 1: a police point of view, and we're going to overcompensate
Speaker 1: for that. We're going to make sure we do it properly,
Speaker 1: because time and time again we've shown that we haven't
Speaker 1: done it, done it properly, and it's just not good enough.
Speaker 3: I can tell you that sitting in that Senate inquiry
Speaker 3: the day that we did, the head of the New
Speaker 3: South Wales Police Force was there, the homicide squad. They
Speaker 3: didn't really admit to anything like wrongdoing on their side.
Speaker 3: On their part, nothing was really you know, they hadn't
Speaker 3: made that many mistakes. Or when it comes to you know,
Speaker 3: like how do you deal with this case, they always
Speaker 3: bring up cultural sensitivity training. We do enough cultural awareness
Speaker 3: training that it's like cultural awareness training is not going
Speaker 3: to solve a murder, right, So it's like and then
Speaker 3: they even asked it the head of this somermicide squad
Speaker 3: or you know, how many Indigenous people do you have
Speaker 3: in the homicide squad? You couldn't answer that question. And
Speaker 3: it's also there was one big question I think it was,
Speaker 3: is do you think that I don't know after the
Speaker 3: senator or in the Cox axit or not. Was there racism?
Speaker 3: Was it rife in the South Wales Police Force? And
Speaker 3: that no, Like they were just saying no, like straight up,
Speaker 3: like there's no, But there was no room for them
Speaker 3: to say that it is. But it's you know, we're
Speaker 3: trying to address like it was just no, it was
Speaker 3: they don't want to admit to it.
Speaker 2: And that's one of.
Speaker 4: The criticisms of the recommendations of the findings from the
Speaker 4: Senate inquiry was that they didn't go far enough During
Speaker 4: the Cox Senator during the came out and said, you know,
Speaker 4: one of the main ones was the Police Minister's Counsel
Speaker 4: to review existing police practices towards first Nations people.
Speaker 5: Right, sure, that is important.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think that even because even then
Speaker 4: a Senate inquiry is being held within a system, within
Speaker 4: a you know, system that was created by white Australia
Speaker 4: to cater to you know, like, I think, until there's
Speaker 4: that cross the board recognition that we have made mistakes,
Speaker 4: we have all made mistakes as a society, we are
Speaker 4: going to acknowledge them and we're going to do something
Speaker 4: about them. Until police, you know, senior police officers can
Speaker 4: sit in front of an inquiry and say yes, we
Speaker 4: acknowledge that, you don't really see how you've moved forward
Speaker 4: in a meaningful them.
Speaker 1: And what saddens me saddens me about that when we
Speaker 1: had the parable Parliamentary inquiry and the recommendations that came out,
Speaker 1: one of the first one of the first recommendations was
Speaker 1: training the education of police. But they went further to say,
Speaker 1: not we all sit in the room and watch a
Speaker 1: PowerPoint presentation and we all know that like if they
Speaker 1: do the training here and the media, you just sit
Speaker 1: there and not They wanted something that was meaningful, and
Speaker 1: they created a training film with me narrating it, speaking
Speaker 1: with the passion, speaking with the anger about what happened
Speaker 1: unbearable and so people should watch that to change that culture.
Speaker 1: And we've got to push police and not just police.
Speaker 1: If we're educating everyone, you don't just learn just sitting
Speaker 1: there and going okay, cultural competency and awareness. It's got
Speaker 1: to be lived experience, and you've got to see how
Speaker 1: this impacts so problems that occurred. What happened, Well, someone
Speaker 1: has still got a way of murdering three children in
Speaker 1: the Vowerable case. So yeah, it's definitely something that we
Speaker 1: need to need to fixed.
Speaker 4: So it's interesting you mentioned anger as well, because I
Speaker 4: think that's something that you know, the response when journalism
Speaker 4: one one one when you want someone to you know,
Speaker 4: you don't use statistics to get someone across the line.
Speaker 5: You could have faced a story. And that's the case study.
Speaker 4: And I think when people saw the cases that we
Speaker 4: presented in Diagos, there was outrage. People how could this
Speaker 4: be happening under our noses? And I actually think in
Speaker 4: this instance that's what people should be feeling they should
Speaker 4: be anger and they should be outrage that these systems
Speaker 4: are still failing these people in this way.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I know what you're saying. It's probably
Speaker 1: not a good terminology, but you need to hit people
Speaker 1: over the head with a baseball bat to get it in.
Speaker 1: But what I say with Boarable like I can talk
Speaker 1: about Barable, you know, in day out and people go, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's terrible, And I say, okay, if the police responded
Speaker 1: properly when the first child disappeared, Colin Walker, the other
Speaker 1: two children could quite possibly still be alive to this day.
Speaker 1: So that's the consequences if you don't do an investigation.
Speaker 2: Probably does that bring it home hard enough? Do you understand? Now?
Speaker 1: So that's the type of thing. And as I said,
Speaker 1: we all make mistakes, and here we are. I'm criticizing
Speaker 1: the cops and the media.
Speaker 2: You're criticizing the media, which starts.
Speaker 1: But it's an important thing and unless unless we push
Speaker 1: it and push it, it's.
Speaker 2: Not going to not going to change.
Speaker 3: And I've got to have those hard conversations, you know.
Speaker 3: And it's in all aspects of life in Australia. I
Speaker 3: believe politics when it comes to that or media or
Speaker 3: whatever it may be, having hard conversations about it and
Speaker 3: acknowledging your fuck ups, let say that, but acknowledging it
Speaker 3: and then working to fix it. That's what needs to
Speaker 3: be happening more more often.
Speaker 1: Okay, I'm going to ask you this question, and forget
Speaker 1: I'm a former cop and homicide detective. I'm asking you, guys,
Speaker 1: why do you think this occurs?
Speaker 2: Big question?
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess one of you know, and I
Speaker 4: can only speak to what I learned through this process,
Speaker 4: and Doug can speak much better to know lived experience.
Speaker 4: But I think that there's a there's a series of
Speaker 4: issues in sort of entrenched biases, and it's not just
Speaker 4: within policing.
Speaker 5: I think it's, you know, within society more broadly.
Speaker 4: But entrenched biases towards Indigenous people on a lot of fronts,
Speaker 4: in terms of rates of suicide, murder, rates of domestic violence.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I think that there is this underlying and it's not
Speaker 4: necessarily a conscious bias. I think there's plenty of conscious
Speaker 4: racism within the police forces, but I also think there's
Speaker 4: this sort of underlying, unconscious bias in the way that
Speaker 4: a lot of police officers approach cases involving Indigenous people,
Speaker 4: and that clouds the way that they feel that they
Speaker 4: need to investigate them. And then there's the other layer
Speaker 4: that we sort of touched on as well, and that
Speaker 4: you've spoken about previously as media interests. And you know,
Speaker 4: I think the media plays a role in putting a
Speaker 4: lot of pressure. Cleosmith in w A was a great
Speaker 4: example of when the media gets involved a little girl
Speaker 4: who went me seeing and was found. When the media
Speaker 4: gets involved in that, pressure is put on police step
Speaker 4: up because they know they're under the spotlight. A lot
Speaker 4: of these cases don't get media interest, and so I
Speaker 4: think that there is kind of, again maybe an unconscious
Speaker 4: feeling that police go, oh, well, you know, we did
Speaker 4: our beds.
Speaker 1: It could even and I don't disagree with what you're
Speaker 1: saying that all on that, but human nature, if you're
Speaker 1: not being pressured to do something that okay, well if
Speaker 1: I don't attend to it today, I can do it tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Pull off.
Speaker 1: No one's actually asking and it gets shelved in the
Speaker 1: two hard basket, or you're just touching the surface and
Speaker 1: not doing it properly. I as I said, I hoped
Speaker 1: with what happened with Boarable and the things that were said,
Speaker 1: and I thought there were some watershed moments that, you know,
Speaker 1: where the police had the commission to come up and
Speaker 1: actually apologize.
Speaker 2: Skippy One.
Speaker 1: Commission of Skippy One came up and apologized to the
Speaker 1: Bearable community and acknowledge that we could have done it
Speaker 1: better back when the children disappeared.
Speaker 2: But the fact that there's still these.
Speaker 1: Situations going on, and you said you just scratched the
Speaker 1: surface in regards to the six cases that you identified
Speaker 1: in Diane Ray's I can I can say here I
Speaker 1: get phone calls from people that are expressing the same
Speaker 1: concerns from across the country, not just New South Wales,
Speaker 1: that these matters aren't being looked at, looked that properly.
Speaker 1: Having put the effort into the podcast series, which congratulations
Speaker 1: to believe it won a Walkley Award, which is which
Speaker 1: is a prestigious award.
Speaker 2: I've learned that in the time of the working well,
Speaker 2: I've learned a lot of them. I've hearned a lot
Speaker 2: of good journalists on the Walkley But you guys have
Speaker 2: actually got it.
Speaker 1: I say it's almost sad in a way that a
Speaker 1: Walkley Award winning podcast series and still perhaps a message
Speaker 1: didn't get out there. Do you do you find that
Speaker 1: because I found I've found that on the Bearable Thing,
Speaker 1: where you think, okay, it's here, it's on sixty minutes,
Speaker 1: on four corners, it's on then ITV, people are going
Speaker 1: to listen, but it just sort of slips away.
Speaker 3: I think it's it's an issue that I guess Australia itself,
Speaker 3: like as a whole, you know, we don't really identify
Speaker 3: with it completely. Like it's not something that you know,
Speaker 3: that's an issue that we need to address, Like that's
Speaker 3: something that we should be working, like we should all
Speaker 3: be collectively trying to you know, make that a better
Speaker 3: situation for families. But that's not something you know, And
Speaker 3: like your question before is what do you feel it is?
Speaker 3: Is like it's for me, it's the history of this
Speaker 3: country as well. It's the history of policing in Australia,
Speaker 3: and it's the history of relationships between policing and Indigenous
Speaker 3: people and that's always going to be, you know, a
Speaker 3: bit of a shaky relationship no matter what. And this
Speaker 3: type of stuff is, you know, it shows that it's
Speaker 3: still there. You know, what happens in dying roads is
Speaker 3: because there's no communication between the Indigenous community and the
Speaker 3: police to the level that I think there needs to be,
Speaker 3: especially in my community where I'm from, and you know,
Speaker 3: we see a lot of issues there as well. But
Speaker 3: it's also you know, I've grown up with police, you know,
Speaker 3: knocking on my door all the time. I've been arrested
Speaker 3: as a teen myself. You know, I've had police. I've
Speaker 3: had a police slag on me, call me a boom,
Speaker 3: a nigger. You know, I've had that happen to me.
Speaker 3: I've had you know, I've had racist police at me
Speaker 3: since I was about ten years of age, and for
Speaker 3: no reason at all, I could tell you that, and
Speaker 3: I responded in a way whereas I hate the police
Speaker 3: now because I'm only a young Aboriginal kid and the
Speaker 3: way that they've treated me, and I've been traumatized from
Speaker 3: the cops, like believe me, and I've had to sort
Speaker 3: of fight back. And how do I fight back is
Speaker 3: with you know, doing the wrong thing. And that's because
Speaker 3: you know, if I would have had a good copper
Speaker 3: walk up to me and treat me good as a kid,
Speaker 3: I wouldn't have saw them as you know, the enemy
Speaker 3: growing up. And I'm not saying the enemy. I'm just
Speaker 3: saying like, that's how it felt, and that's how it
Speaker 3: feels in indigit communities. Cops something there to help us,
Speaker 3: they're there to police us, and that's how it's always
Speaker 3: going to fill with us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that that communication breakdown. It can go both ways,
Speaker 1: like the police will be you know, they'll have their
Speaker 1: point of view, You've got your point of view, And
Speaker 1: I think that presents part of a problem with these
Speaker 1: investigations to where that communication isn't a forthcoming between the
Speaker 1: two groups. But I say that with the fact that
Speaker 1: you're the police, you're there to serve the public, the
Speaker 1: public being everyone in the community, not selected people you
Speaker 1: want to help. So we what we saw with diing
Speaker 1: Rose covered in the book and the podcast is this
Speaker 1: and you described as systemic type of type of situation. Doug,
Speaker 1: you're talking from a black man's point of view and
Speaker 1: the relationship between the police that all plays a part.
Speaker 1: How do you guys like and I'll talk about my
Speaker 1: thoughts on it from a homicide or ex homicide the
Speaker 1: technique point of you, how do you guys think it
Speaker 1: should be fixed? What what would you like to see, like,
Speaker 1: when this came out, do you think the world would change?
Speaker 2: And with all the cops to go we get it now.
Speaker 4: I thought there'd be a few more people nodding their
Speaker 4: heads and going, yeah, that is. And I think that's
Speaker 4: the thing that was that we saw is the response
Speaker 4: was massive, the listenership, the readership, the you know, the comments,
Speaker 4: the outrage. People were outraged. They couldn't believe that this
Speaker 4: was how these families had been treated. So I think
Speaker 4: we did get quite hopeful that you know, there was
Speaker 4: this sort of rumbling that there would be a bit.
Speaker 5: Of pressure put on and then there kind of wasn't.
Speaker 4: And I think that there's you know a lot of
Speaker 4: ways to address that, and you know, I can't speak
Speaker 4: to the best ways for the police as an institution
Speaker 4: to address that. That's something that people fast mo other
Speaker 4: than us can you know, come up with ways. But
Speaker 4: I think you know, communication understanding at starting point. I
Speaker 4: think the media has a huge role to play in
Speaker 4: coverage of these issues, in continuing to bring them to light.
Speaker 4: And I think particularly you know, we've got amazing services
Speaker 4: like in our TV, but it shouldn't just be up
Speaker 4: to indigenous people to tell stories of Indigenous people. It's
Speaker 4: the same as police. You know, police are there to
Speaker 4: serve all of the public. The media is here to
Speaker 4: serve all of the public. And I think we need
Speaker 4: to do a better job of being being more aware
Speaker 4: of which stories we're choosing and you know, which ones
Speaker 4: we're bringing to the fore, and you know, drawing attention
Speaker 4: to to make people realize.
Speaker 1: To get that awareness, I think from a policing point
Speaker 1: of view too, there should be sort of you call
Speaker 1: it affirmative action or understanding that if you're investigating the
Speaker 1: death of an Indigenous person, you've got to look at
Speaker 1: things a little bit differently and treat things a little
Speaker 1: bit differently. Not you know, it's the same rule for everyone.
Speaker 1: We're not saying completely different practices, but understand that there's
Speaker 1: going to be a barrier to communecsion.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's going to be hard.
Speaker 1: And I think La Sonya's father said that, you know,
Speaker 1: he was worried that because of his past history with
Speaker 1: conflict with police and the fact that they've done time,
Speaker 1: but the police were just going to go, well, who cares,
Speaker 1: it's his daughter, that type of attitude. We've got to
Speaker 1: way overcome that attitude haven't we.
Speaker 4: And I think that also comes from putting you know, Doug,
Speaker 4: you've spoken before like you need indigenous homicide detectives. You
Speaker 4: need to have that lived experience there to understand and
Speaker 4: build those relationships.
Speaker 3: And obviously they've got to put their hand up for it.
Speaker 3: But I don't know, you know, what the situation it
Speaker 3: is with policing, and you know, if like any original
Speaker 3: police officer I know is usually a community constable, none
Speaker 3: are really sworn in officers to fully sworn in officers,
Speaker 3: I've known a few in my time, and I don't
Speaker 3: know how the police recruit and what they do there.
Speaker 3: You know, like maybe there needs to be a drive
Speaker 3: to push to get more Indigenous homicide detectives because you know,
Speaker 3: we know that Indigenous well there's a lot of death
Speaker 3: in our communit, you know, and this book shows it well,
Speaker 3: you know, and what we've talked about just shows it. Really,
Speaker 3: So why wouldn't they get an indigenous more Indigenous homicide
Speaker 3: detectives such trying to help with these cases? You know,
Speaker 3: Like that is one thing. I think that's only one thing.
Speaker 3: Like there's a whole lot of like and I think
Speaker 3: what you said about the media and what, you know,
Speaker 3: making that story a lot bigger for people to like,
Speaker 3: this is serious, Like it's not just an indigenous girl
Speaker 3: from the from the outback. This is actually a person, right,
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of times where we're not really
Speaker 3: looked at as well. I feel that we're not looked
Speaker 3: at as actual people when it comes to these type
Speaker 3: of cases. We're just another statistic. We're another statistic, you know,
Speaker 3: and because there's so many of it, or there's so
Speaker 3: much of it, we're just another statistic. Whereas you know,
Speaker 3: we're not like, we don't want to be treated that way.
Speaker 3: You know, we want to be we want the full investigation.
Speaker 1: It made me think they're doug about more homicide, indigenous
Speaker 1: homicide detectives or different things.
Speaker 2: There's a structure you've got to go through to get.
Speaker 1: To that that position working in homicide. But when a
Speaker 1: homicide is set up in I'm speaking for New South Wales,
Speaker 1: but I know it's pretty similar in all the other
Speaker 1: states around the country, a strike force is formed, so
Speaker 1: you bring in, yeah, you bring in some homicide detectives,
Speaker 1: You'll bring in some general detectives. If it involves a child,
Speaker 1: you might bring in a child sex crime detective, you
Speaker 1: bring in analysts, you bring in a whole range of
Speaker 1: people to form a strike force to investigate a death
Speaker 1: or a suspected suspected murder.
Speaker 2: It lends itself.
Speaker 1: We have liaison officers in New South Wales and have
Speaker 1: similar things across the country potentially, And it just made
Speaker 1: me think, why you're talking. You could if I was
Speaker 1: heading up a murder investigation, let's say, heading up this
Speaker 1: investigation into Lasagna, we could have had someone appointed to
Speaker 1: the strike force as the liaison officer, because we appoint
Speaker 1: family liaison officers when you've got a murder investigation, someone
Speaker 1: that might be the officer in charge, the person with
Speaker 1: appropriate skills to liaise and keep the family informed because
Speaker 1: there's a lot happening with investigations. Just made me think
Speaker 1: it's probably not a bad way that you could overcome
Speaker 1: those barriers of communication, understanding where the community's are coming
Speaker 1: from and their distrusted police, that.
Speaker 2: Type of thing.
Speaker 1: So that's that's something that perhaps we should should flag something.
Speaker 3: You've got to change the perspective of young Indigenous people too,
Speaker 3: and you've got to do that by going into community,
Speaker 3: learning the dynamics of the community and working with indigenous people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, breaking breaking, breaking those barriers down.
Speaker 1: Well, I hold the book up if people want to
Speaker 1: dive in to what we're talking about here, Dieing Rows.
Speaker 2: But I've read it.
Speaker 1: Cover to cover, listen to the podcast, and everything you
Speaker 1: speak is so important that people have just got to
Speaker 1: hopefully change our ways, admit that we could do things better.
Speaker 2: So we're not having this discussion. Going to be really
Speaker 2: pissed off if I'm here in two years talking to
Speaker 2: you guys.
Speaker 1: But look, thanks for coming on the eye catch killers,
Speaker 1: and thanks for bringing the attention to something that is
Speaker 1: great concern to a lot of people.