Speaker 1: Good.
Speaker 2: Just before nine o'clock last night, the jury returned guilty
Speaker 2: verdicts against all three defendants. It was absolutely shambles, to
Speaker 2: tell you the truth, just absolutely really having.
Speaker 3: Blood on his clothing the day after the alleged a.
Speaker 1: Top on a shallow mud bank and it fits through
Speaker 1: a river.
Speaker 4: Basically, I think most of the people are used to
Speaker 4: me are good people.
Speaker 1: I think a really important question we need to ask
Speaker 1: is how many Indigenous prisoners in Australia are innocent.
Speaker 2: This is Curtain, a podcast where we pulled back the
Speaker 2: blinds to shine a light on the darkest parts of
Speaker 2: our justice system and ask who are the victims. I'm
Speaker 2: Amy Maguire and I'm.
Speaker 1: Martin Hodgson, a senior advocate for the Foreign Prisoner Support Service.
Speaker 1: And a warning, this series contains the names of deceased
Speaker 1: peoples and has distressing content that might upset some listeners.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Curtain the podcast. Over the last few weeks,
Speaker 4: the issue of po shooting and murdering Aboriginal people is
Speaker 4: once again heavily in the media. This comes on the
Speaker 4: back of mister Russell, a gomroy man, being murdered by
Speaker 4: police in Sydney. The acquittal of a police officer for
Speaker 4: the murder of missus JC in Western Australia, and also
Speaker 4: the family protesting over the murder by police of Mark Mason,
Speaker 4: which my colleague Amy Maguire spoke about. So this week
Speaker 4: we're going to speak about all three and particularly the
Speaker 4: issues around police shootings and some of what happens in
Speaker 4: terms of the reporting and how people come to know
Speaker 4: and I say this in inverted commas the facts, because
Speaker 4: these facts tend to paint a narrative all too often
Speaker 4: that blames the person that's dead, the blackfellow, instead of
Speaker 4: ever blaming or questioning the actions of police. And this
Speaker 4: is why five hundred deaths in custody can occur and
Speaker 4: there's never a conviction. So to begin with, we're going
Speaker 4: to talk about what happened in the trial of a
Speaker 4: police officer who was charged with the murder of JC
Speaker 4: in Western Australia. And Amy, I just wondered about when
Speaker 4: you heard the verdict, what were your initial thoughts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think one of the tragic things
Speaker 3: is that I don't think the trial for JC was
Speaker 3: followed in the way it should have been by the
Speaker 3: national media. I know, obviously in Western Australia media were
Speaker 3: following it. But when you have a situation where there's
Speaker 3: an Aboriginal woman being shot by a cop and that
Speaker 3: there's this really historic thing that's occurred where the police
Speaker 3: officer involved is actually charged with their murder, you would
Speaker 3: expect much more attention being paid, particularly, you know, less
Speaker 3: a year or two after Black Lives Matter protests in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, I should say a year after. So it
Speaker 3: was really disheartening for me to see that there was
Speaker 3: that lack of focus on the trial. And I think
Speaker 3: that has to do as well with the silencing the
Speaker 3: family that comes with court cases and the justice system
Speaker 3: and their proceedures and protocols. But I remember I was
Speaker 3: speaking to people who had been at the trial pretty
Speaker 3: much every day on the day of the verdict, and
Speaker 3: it seemed, you know, that the decision could go ive
Speaker 3: a way, and so to hear that the man had
Speaker 3: walked free on charges of murder, the police officer who
Speaker 3: shot and killed Aboriginal women JC and Geraldton was just
Speaker 3: really heartbreaking because we've seen it so many times before,
Speaker 3: and I think the lack of focus and the lack
Speaker 3: of attention from the media has really played a part
Speaker 3: in that. And I should note that I did an
Speaker 3: article on my independent media site, Presence on so Stack
Speaker 3: a few days after that verdict, and I was actually
Speaker 3: meaning to write another piece or publish another piece in
Speaker 3: that very same day, and it was on another police
Speaker 3: shooting of an Aboriginal man in Colorado, Brie in New
Speaker 3: South Wales in twenty ten, Mark Mason Senior. And to
Speaker 3: this day there has never even been, you know, charges laid.
Speaker 3: The coronial inquest was largely just a matter of police
Speaker 3: protocol and was set about legitimating police use of force.
Speaker 3: And so we had these two cases, you know, a
Speaker 3: decade apart or nearly a decade apart, and yet in
Speaker 3: both cases, despite their differences, there was no justice. And
Speaker 3: I think that says so much about what's currently happening
Speaker 3: in this country, but particularly where you have such an
Speaker 3: obvious case of police brutality, police violence, the way Aboriginal
Speaker 3: people are shot in public space, you know, in these communities,
Speaker 3: the fact that there isn't this outrage directed towards it.
Speaker 3: It's just very telling of the way a Showia still
Speaker 3: viewed black lives, but particularly black lives that are seen
Speaker 3: as criminals through the justice system.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I was just reflecting as you were talking too,
Speaker 4: about the lack of humanity afforded to the Aboriginal victims
Speaker 4: of this police violence and the disparity in the coverage
Speaker 4: when you consider that thousands of articles and radio time
Speaker 4: and TV space in Australia has been dedicated to what
Speaker 4: happened to African American people like George Floyd, Filando Castiel
Speaker 4: and even going back to Trayvon Martin. You know, it's
Speaker 4: discussed on the seven thirty Report and Q and A
Speaker 4: and even Sky News talks about these cases. And yet
Speaker 4: the murder of the twenty nine year old Umatchi woman
Speaker 4: from Western Australia JC, I mean, it really got no
Speaker 4: coverage from the beginning, and there seems is real unwillingness
Speaker 4: from the Australian media to have any accountability in the
Speaker 4: terms of analyzing what's going on or even just giving
Speaker 4: some basic humanity to the indiview joined to their families.
Speaker 4: I mean, you see, George Floyd's family has been all
Speaker 4: over the international media, and Aboriginal victims just never get that.
Speaker 4: And I mean, you're a journalist, why do you think
Speaker 4: that continues to happen in Australian newsrooms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think, particularly when we see the
Speaker 3: case of JC, is that very early on, even in
Speaker 3: media reportage and suppose a good journalism, you know, journalism
Speaker 3: by you know, typical journalistic standards, they still painted her
Speaker 3: in the same way that the criminal justice system was
Speaker 3: painting her. You know, So she was her criminal history
Speaker 3: as told by the white justice system, was basically just
Speaker 3: regurgitated by media who were doing what is considered good jobs,
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. So I think it comes
Speaker 3: down to the way journalism is actually practice and how
Speaker 3: often it works against Aboriginal people. So they're really privileging
Speaker 3: the accounts of the criminal justice system of JC, even
Speaker 3: before she died, or even before she was in the
Speaker 3: sights of the justice system, even before she was killed
Speaker 3: on that street in Geraldton. And I think it was
Speaker 3: a point that was really pertinently made by Professor Meghan
Speaker 3: Davis on Twitter on the same day that the vertical
Speaker 3: was handed down, and she basically said, you know, this
Speaker 3: is what occurred in Jac's case. They forensically raped over
Speaker 3: her criminal record. It was long, and despite her mental health,
Speaker 3: the defense lawyer painted her as more of a lethal
Speaker 3: threat than the constable who took her life. The system
Speaker 3: isn't some abstract thing. And I think that said it
Speaker 3: so much in a nutshell that you know, despite all
Speaker 3: the violence that have been perpetrated against her and that
Speaker 3: she was struggling with, she was seen as violent, and
Speaker 3: she was seen as the threat. And I think the
Speaker 3: other thing is, you know, you mentioned George Floyd, and
Speaker 3: I know we've talked about it before. You know, we
Speaker 3: saw the video footage straight away, and that's what led
Speaker 3: to waves of international outrage, you know, seeing George Floyd
Speaker 3: being murdered on camera. Now with jay Z's case, after
Speaker 3: the verdict was handed down, the CCTV footage of Jac's
Speaker 3: death that day was released to the public, and we
Speaker 3: see a complete disparity in that footage and the way
Speaker 3: she is described and the way the police are described.
Speaker 3: So what I saw in that footage when I watched
Speaker 3: it was she's walking along the street. You know, police
Speaker 3: officers pull up, pull up behind her. She's you can
Speaker 3: tell she's for me. She's not a threat at all.
Speaker 3: You know, she's obviously very mentally young well, and she
Speaker 3: needs support. The first police officer who was going to
Speaker 3: was unarmed, and he actually knew her, he'd helped her
Speaker 3: ten days before, and he had he said that he
Speaker 3: did not think she was a threat. That's why he
Speaker 3: didn't have his weapon. Within I think a very short
Speaker 3: period of time, less than twenty seconds, another police that
Speaker 3: has come over with her gun and has shot her,
Speaker 3: and she's slumped down. And what you know, you hear
Speaker 3: in the media or in the court was actually lunged
Speaker 3: or she wasn't walking, She hadn't stopped walking, she hadn't
Speaker 3: stopped moving her feet. You see the video footage actually
Speaker 3: contradicting that very same account, and yet it wasn't believed.
Speaker 3: You know, they you know, Aboriginal women are not believed
Speaker 3: even when it's on it's court on camera, and so
Speaker 3: I think that raises a whole host of issues about
Speaker 3: the way also Aboriginal women as victims, particularly when police
Speaker 3: are perpetrators, are seen by non Indigenous juries. What did
Speaker 3: you have to say about that mat and when you
Speaker 3: saw the video footage after it was released, knowing that
Speaker 3: there were these other accounts of the last moments of
Speaker 3: Jc's life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, watching these types
Speaker 4: of CCTV footage for the best part of twenty years.
Speaker 4: In so many cases, my mind always goes back to
Speaker 4: the basic issue of how does someone like Martin Bryant,
Speaker 4: who had murdered thirty five people, injured another twenty three,
Speaker 4: had gone on this huge rampage, had to shoot out
Speaker 4: with the police armed with an AR fifteen assault rifle,
Speaker 4: which we've all come to know from all of these
Speaker 4: shootings in schools in America, and yet he is taken
Speaker 4: into custody without injury. And we've seen it time and
Speaker 4: time again, whether it be raids on bikes and shootouts
Speaker 4: and all other types of people. And yet JC had
Speaker 4: done nothing wrong, is walking down the street and she's shot,
Speaker 4: and she's painted as violent and a threat. So to me,
Speaker 4: it just never computes that someone who has massacred dozens
Speaker 4: of people can be taken safely into custody, but these
Speaker 4: same police somehow crap themselves and have to shoot when
Speaker 4: it's an Aboriginal woman. And I guess this is a
Speaker 4: good way of introducing something that we've spoken about a
Speaker 4: lot before, which is, to me, the criminalization of the
Speaker 4: public displays of symptoms of mental illness. And the way
Speaker 4: I would explain it is that if someone had an
Speaker 4: epileptic fit in front of the police and they shot them.
Speaker 4: We would be outraged. If someone had a heart attack
Speaker 4: as a result of coronary heart disease and the police
Speaker 4: shot them. We'd be outraged. If someone was suffering leukemia
Speaker 4: and displayed a symptom of that, perhaps a bloody nose,
Speaker 4: we would be outraged. And yet all JC did was
Speaker 4: display publicly symptoms of her mental illness, in any other illness,
Speaker 4: why is that still okay to be deemed as a
Speaker 4: threat displaying a symptom of your illness something that was
Speaker 4: very well known, as you said, to police, so much
Speaker 4: so that another police officer, a more senior police officer
Speaker 4: who was there on the scene, knew that and was
Speaker 4: trying to calm the situation and said on the stand
Speaker 4: himself that he didn't feel that Joyce was a threat,
Speaker 4: and he was the one standing closest to her. And
Speaker 4: yet the officer who pulled the trigger arrived on the
Speaker 4: scene and within sixteen seconds JC was dead as a
Speaker 4: result of his actions. Now, I just don't know how
Speaker 4: someone can a police officer, can do that and not
Speaker 4: be punished. I mean, I honestly believe that had that
Speaker 4: same action been committed same violence been committed against Martin Bryant.
Speaker 4: That cop would be in deep trouble if they just
Speaker 4: turned up and pulled the trigger, shooting past their own
Speaker 4: colleagues at someone. And that was when you have someone
Speaker 4: who had murdered dozens of people, was armed with an
Speaker 4: assault rifle and was shooting at police, none of which
Speaker 4: JC had done. She'd done nothing wrong but walk down
Speaker 4: the street and display a symptom of her illness. And
Speaker 4: we're often called hysterical and angry and all these things
Speaker 4: when we raised this issue, Well, what else should you
Speaker 4: be if you can receive a death sentence for being
Speaker 4: an Aboriginal woman who displays a symptom of their illness,
Speaker 4: And this is something we have to come to terms
Speaker 4: with as a country. Or there is really no point
Speaker 4: mentioning how many black deaths in custody there have been
Speaker 4: for the broad media to mention that or anyone else,
Speaker 4: because if you can do that, if you can kill
Speaker 4: JC in the manner in which the police did, then
Speaker 4: number is just going to continue to climb and there's
Speaker 4: no way around that. So I think there was also
Speaker 4: again this lack of any real responsibility taken by the
Speaker 4: media any humanity, any decency, any morality. I mean, forget
Speaker 4: calling themselves the fourth estate, when rather than explore these
Speaker 4: issues of the way we criminalize those who are mentally unwell,
Speaker 4: they instead focused on things like a criminal history, which
Speaker 4: I should say are largely inadmissible in a court of law,
Speaker 4: and yet were introduced by the media and taint the
Speaker 4: jury pull en mass as they do with any time
Speaker 4: an Aboriginal person is killed by police, as we saw
Speaker 4: in Sydney with the murder of an Aboriginal man, the
Speaker 4: first thing the police mentioned is the criminal record. Well,
Speaker 4: in court, unless it's relevant, it can't be raised. And
Speaker 4: yet juries are reading article after article, watching program after
Speaker 4: program for months before they ever find out they've been
Speaker 4: called up for jury duty, and they've heard all of
Speaker 4: this prejudice nonsense, and you know it's no wonder, and
Speaker 4: it's just you watch the CCTV and you see that
Speaker 4: people claimed that JC lunged at police. She didn't know
Speaker 4: such thing. I mean for a witness to be able
Speaker 4: to go on the stand and say that when it's
Speaker 4: obvious to everyone, when even the most senior officer on
Speaker 4: the scene, who knew JC the best, who was the
Speaker 4: one standing in front of her said she did no
Speaker 4: such thing. That witnesses are allowed to just blatantly lie.
Speaker 4: And you know, again, it really troubles me that Australia
Speaker 4: as a country, and media as a whole in Australia
Speaker 4: can feel a great deal of sympathy watching what happened
Speaker 4: to George Floyd and feel troubled enough and guilty enough
Speaker 4: to want to write about it and talk about it
Speaker 4: and do all those things, and yet feel nothing for
Speaker 4: an Aboriginal woman who had the same thing done to
Speaker 4: her in the country in which they live, on her land.
Speaker 4: And to me, it's just there's this sick lack of
Speaker 4: humanity that continues to live inside most Australians. And it's
Speaker 4: easy to point the finger at the justice system, but
Speaker 4: the justice system is run by people, whether they're the judges,
Speaker 4: the prosecutors, or the jury. And this again was an
Speaker 4: all white jury, and these are all things we're going
Speaker 4: to have to seriously grapple with.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think particularly, you know, it doesn't
Speaker 3: the history in the criminal justice system does not affect
Speaker 3: police culpability whether they should or should not have pulled
Speaker 3: that trigger. So it was amazing to me to see that,
Speaker 3: you know, the only thing it does is to make
Speaker 3: JC look to be a criminal, which she wasn't, you know.
Speaker 3: And I think the other point to make is that
Speaker 3: Aboriginal women are ultimately, even as victims, seen as perpetrators.
Speaker 3: And you're totally right about the criminalization of those symptoms
Speaker 3: of mental illness or symptoms of trauma, because as you spoke,
Speaker 3: I also thought of another case in Western Australia around
Speaker 3: Baby Charlie. And for our listeners who may not know,
Speaker 3: Baby Charlie was a young not even one yet, little
Speaker 3: baby boy. Original baby boy and his mother had been
Speaker 3: the victim of an assault by her partner. At the
Speaker 3: time when the police turned up, she was actually displaying
Speaker 3: trauma symptoms. She'd just been assaulted by that partner. Instead
Speaker 3: of helping her and keeping baby Charlie safe, the police
Speaker 3: arrested the mother and baby Charlie ended up with that
Speaker 3: man who ultimately, and this is a really tragic case,
Speaker 3: ultimately killed him in a really horrendous way. And at
Speaker 3: that time, the mother and the grandfather we're trying to
Speaker 3: get help. We're trying to get help. The grandfather was
Speaker 3: going to police station and was being accused of being
Speaker 3: a drunken Aboriginal man, you know, which is another way
Speaker 3: that this racial violence, you know, operates, and that ultimately
Speaker 3: ended in the loss of baby Charlie. And there's been
Speaker 3: no justice over this case and no police accountability of
Speaker 3: this case. But if the police had understood and not
Speaker 3: criminalized the mother for displaying those symptoms of trauma, you know,
Speaker 3: the symptoms that she was displaying, then Baby Charlie would
Speaker 3: likely very well be still alive, you know. And I
Speaker 3: think that's that's the really tragic thing, is that people
Speaker 3: don't ask the right questions, and when it's been confirmed
Speaker 3: in court, you know, this man is seen to be innocent,
Speaker 3: this cop who killed jac even though he definitely killed her,
Speaker 3: and we have the footage to show that, we have
Speaker 3: the fact that jac is no longer here to show that,
Speaker 3: you know. I just feel like the right questions and
Speaker 3: the logics are just not put up, and they're seen
Speaker 3: as culpable for their own deaths, and sadly, in baby
Speaker 3: Charlie's case, were culpable for the deaths of their children.
Speaker 3: And I just think that's so outrageous. So it's not
Speaker 3: even just you know, JC walking along the street as
Speaker 3: a black woman. She was seen as inherently threatening, but
Speaker 3: she was seen as inherently threatening by displaying the symptoms
Speaker 3: that should have afforded her help. Not should have led
Speaker 3: to her death, Not should have led to wider police surveillance,
Speaker 3: wider police brutality. It should never have happened. And then
Speaker 3: that violence has been recompounded in the justice system and
Speaker 3: in the court trials where the families were effectively silenced.
Speaker 3: And when you know, it's supposed to be a two
Speaker 3: side situation, but really it's weighted in favor of the
Speaker 3: police officer, you know what I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think what you said is a really
Speaker 4: important point to it that goes to the heart of
Speaker 4: all of the which is that j C should have
Speaker 4: been afforded help. And you spoke about Baby Charlie's mother,
Speaker 4: who should have been afforded help. You know, we've spoken
Speaker 4: about Miss Dew who should have been afforded help. We've
Speaker 4: spoken about Miss Wynn who should have been afforded help.
Speaker 4: These are all cases in Western Australia, and just recently
Speaker 4: we have seen the West Australian police treated as heroes
Speaker 4: because they afforded the help to little Cleo and found
Speaker 4: her and got her home to her family, which is
Speaker 4: what they are supposed to do, so they're clearly capable
Speaker 4: of it. And yet when they murder an Aboriginal woman,
Speaker 4: as you know, I just run through these cases that
Speaker 4: have happened in Western Australia in the same period of time,
Speaker 4: they're not even punished for it. You know, it's no
Speaker 4: different that someone who is vulnerable requiring help. Little Cleo
Speaker 4: she got it and thanked God that she did. But
Speaker 4: why can't JC get it? Why can't miss Win have
Speaker 4: got it? Why couldn't missed you have got it? Why
Speaker 4: couldn't Baby Charlie's mum have got it? You know, and
Speaker 4: these endless cases we could go on with, you know,
Speaker 4: staying in Western Australia, we previously spoke on this podcast
Speaker 4: about a mother who rang the police on behalf of
Speaker 4: her daughter who was experiencing domestic violence. And this mother
Speaker 4: who rang for help for her daughter was also a grandma.
Speaker 4: And when the police arrived, they didn't do anything about
Speaker 4: the man committing domestic violence. They took the grandmother away
Speaker 4: because she had unpaid fines relating to her dog. And
Speaker 4: that tells you all you need to know about the
Speaker 4: Western Australian Police Department that they are more concerned about
Speaker 4: fines relating to a dog than they are Aboriginal women
Speaker 4: because they are clearly capable of rendering help when it's required.
Speaker 4: We've just seen it with little clear they found there.
Speaker 4: She's home, thank God, and yet an Aboriginal woman can't
Speaker 4: even walk the street. And I think one of my
Speaker 4: takeaways from not just Jc's case, but listening to Amy
Speaker 4: speak on this podcast for the last five years, is
Speaker 4: imagine being an Aboriginal woman in this country, especially if
Speaker 4: you are dealing with trauma and grief, and you should
Speaker 4: happen to display a public symptom of that this country
Speaker 4: just said once again cops can shoot you for it
Speaker 4: and there's no punishment, and you wonder why that grief
Speaker 4: and trauma continues. I mean, it's hard to know where
Speaker 4: to go other than I think to heed the calls
Speaker 4: of what many abolitionists say. But I think what was
Speaker 4: also telling about that week was also was the daim
Speaker 4: He had written this piece about Mark Mason Sr. Who
Speaker 4: had also been murdered by the police, a Gomroy man.
Speaker 4: So Amy, I'm wondering if you can tell us more
Speaker 4: about Mark Mason Senior and his family's fight for the truth.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And as I said before, I was actually going
Speaker 3: to publish my piece on Mark Mason Senior on the
Speaker 3: same week that the cop who killed JC was acquitted.
Speaker 3: And the reason I was publishing it is because there
Speaker 3: was it had been eleven years, the eleventh year anniversary
Speaker 3: on November eleventh, So I was doing it in the
Speaker 3: lead up to there of Mark Mason Senior's death. So
Speaker 3: I spoke to the children of Mark Mason. So he
Speaker 3: had four children. And basically what had happened was in
Speaker 3: twenty ten in Colorinda by the police had chased him
Speaker 3: into a small house in Colorindo Brier and five police
Speaker 3: officers had cornered him in that house and one of
Speaker 3: them they tased him, they capsicum sprayed him, and then
Speaker 3: they shot him, not once but twice. And their claim
Speaker 3: was that they were under threat because he was holding
Speaker 3: a tire on him and he was someone who was
Speaker 3: in his forties. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he
Speaker 3: didn't have any sort of there was no reason for
Speaker 3: this intense police surveillance on him. And also he was
Speaker 3: in ill health. So when it happened, the family had
Speaker 3: to wait three years for a coronial inquest that ultimately
Speaker 3: cleared the police and said that their use of force
Speaker 3: was legitimate. But they didn't question raised the valid questions
Speaker 3: that the family had. You know, why was Mark Mason killed?
Speaker 3: Why was he such a threat? Why was he shot twice?
Speaker 3: Why was he capsicum sprayed? Why was he tasered? They
Speaker 3: wanted the right to question every every version of the
Speaker 3: police events. But from the very first moment that Mark
Speaker 3: was killed, they were totally they were sort of gaslighted
Speaker 3: to you know. The police were holding community meetings in Morgut,
Speaker 3: where Mark Mason was from, and they didn't want the
Speaker 3: children to turn up because they they were scared that
Speaker 3: the children would stage a riot. On the day of
Speaker 3: Mark Mason's funeral, I was actually in Mortgat that day
Speaker 3: and I attended the funeral. The streets were filled with
Speaker 3: right squad police cars because they anticipated that there would
Speaker 3: be a rite in what a and there was no
Speaker 3: such thing. I took to Mark Mason, seeing his son
Speaker 3: who's named after him, Mark Mason, he said, we just
Speaker 3: wanted to bury our father, you know, say, at the
Speaker 3: very beginning, their pursuit of justice was hindered by these
Speaker 3: really horrific views of their community and their right to protest.
Speaker 3: So they felt that they couldn't protest. They felt that
Speaker 3: they had to speak in a form of silence and
Speaker 3: let the system sort of play its course. But that
Speaker 3: was because of the way they had been viewed as
Speaker 3: an Aboriginal family and grief. It comes back to, as
Speaker 3: he was saying before, the way we criminalize, you know,
Speaker 3: very humane responses to things, very human responses to things.
Speaker 3: You know what I mean, The way the justice system
Speaker 3: views Aboriginal people is inherently violet, just for expressing grief,
Speaker 3: just for expressing more, just by protesting. And so on
Speaker 3: November eleventh, and the eleventh anniversary of Mark mason sing
Speaker 3: is death, his children, led by his children and the community,
Speaker 3: they protested outside the gates of New South Wales Parliament House.
Speaker 3: And they just want they want an independent investigation, They
Speaker 3: want the right to ask the questions. And you know,
Speaker 3: people might say it's been eleven years, but it hasn't
Speaker 3: been eleven years for them, you know. There was also
Speaker 3: footage of Mark Mason's death taken from the end of
Speaker 3: the daser which some of the family have seen and
Speaker 3: some can't see. Because it's so traumatic. But I was
Speaker 3: talking to the daughter and she couldn't ever watch the footage,
Speaker 3: but she could hear it at the coronal inquest and
Speaker 3: she still hears those cries, her dad's screaming. It sticks
Speaker 3: with her every single day. You know, there's no time
Speaker 3: to stop mourning or to stop grieving in the face
Speaker 3: of such an enduring injustice and at the moment, as
Speaker 3: we've seen with Jac's case, which is such an obvious
Speaker 3: case of police brutality, you know, the court systems aren't
Speaker 3: set up to provide justice for Aboriginal people, and so
Speaker 3: now I'm looking at ways, you know, I think they
Speaker 3: need the right to have their claims heard, but I'm
Speaker 3: also looking at other ways that we can form our
Speaker 3: own articulations of justice because we can't find it in
Speaker 3: this system. It's just not set up to deliver justice.
Speaker 3: It's set up to protect those who are powerful and
Speaker 3: are enacting forms of violence against us, and that's what
Speaker 3: the police have been doing for two centuries. But it's
Speaker 3: just very tragic to think we have the case over
Speaker 3: it on the other side of the country ten years previous,
Speaker 3: and you know, there was no charges la, there wasn't
Speaker 3: even a proper coronial inquest into it. And then on
Speaker 3: the other side of the country, just this year, we
Speaker 3: have an acquittal of an obvious case of brutality against
Speaker 3: an Aboriginal woman and you know, in the end, the
Speaker 3: results end up the same, regardless of the protest, regardless
Speaker 3: of whatever strategy is run. So it says to me
Speaker 3: there's no one right strategy to fight. It's justice can
Speaker 3: be found in the fight, I think, And I think
Speaker 3: that's what Mark Mason's kids are doing right now. They're
Speaker 3: finding some form of justice in expressing their live for
Speaker 3: their father, but fundamentally finding the truth of what had
Speaker 3: happened to him, so they can say, no, Mark Mason,
Speaker 3: our father wasn't a threat, he wasn't violent, he wasn't
Speaker 3: responsible for his own death. These are the people who
Speaker 3: are responsible and this is what has been denied to us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think one thing I read in your
Speaker 4: article that about Mark Mason Senor that I wasn't aware of,
Speaker 4: was that a relative of his was TJ. Hickey, who
Speaker 4: was killed by the police. And we you know miss
Speaker 4: Wing in Western Australia, one of her very close relatives
Speaker 4: died in police caussidy and almost all of the cases
Speaker 4: we've mentioned, these same Aboriginal families have suffered multiple debts
Speaker 4: at the hands of police. And as you say rightly
Speaker 4: that people will say, oh, well, why eleven years later, Well,
Speaker 4: when your family members are being routinely killed by police,
Speaker 4: I mean, wouldn't you want answers? And I think some
Speaker 4: things that I don't know if you know, Amy, or
Speaker 4: if it's possible to know. But other than the police
Speaker 4: version of events, do we have any independent evidence that
Speaker 4: Mark Mason Sr. Was even wielding a tire? Right?
Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing. There isn't other than the video footage,
Speaker 3: and I haven't seen the video footage either. But I
Speaker 3: think in situations like this, I think we have to
Speaker 3: question every possible thing the police have said, because pretty
Speaker 3: much the same day Mark was killed, they were out
Speaker 3: absolving themselves before any independent investigation, and that should never happen.
Speaker 3: You know, a man has been killed by a police officer,
Speaker 3: there needs to be an independent investigation, and the police
Speaker 3: were out there absolving themselves saying that no, the police
Speaker 3: use of force was legitimate, and that hindered any form
Speaker 3: of independent investigation, and that's what needs to happen. There
Speaker 3: needs to be independent investigations of every death in custody,
Speaker 3: and you talk also about the intergenerational nature of a
Speaker 3: lot of these cases. We think of Annie Tenure Day,
Speaker 3: whose uncle Harrison Day died and police custody, but also
Speaker 3: the most recent death by police shooting in Sydney, Stanley Russell.
Speaker 3: His brother had died in custody as well, and his
Speaker 3: parents had been mourning his brother for so long and
Speaker 3: never achieved justice for his brother, eiver Ted and Helen Russell.
Speaker 3: And so it's just it's not even you know, white
Speaker 3: people can't understand that this is actually a real fear
Speaker 3: for black fellows, you know, death in the justice system,
Speaker 3: because it has happened so many times and everyone has
Speaker 3: had relatives or themselves being in contact with police where
Speaker 3: where there's been allegations of brutality. You know, every black
Speaker 3: family in this country knows this to be true, and
Speaker 3: yet they're not believed. And we're not seeing White Australia
Speaker 3: afford us the same dignity as other cases when it
Speaker 3: happens that the perpetrator is a cop. And I think
Speaker 3: the other thing interesting about this Mardin is you know,
Speaker 3: we had this thing and we talked about it a
Speaker 3: lot about how a lot of these cases we you know,
Speaker 3: there's all of these deaths and there's no perpetrators, and
Speaker 3: a lot of the time there's so many perpetrators, and
Speaker 3: that's the problem. It's the system that's made this environment,
Speaker 3: you know, for this to happen. But in these cases
Speaker 3: there are clear perpetrators. These are police officers with badgers
Speaker 3: and with names and with numbers, you know, like Chris
Speaker 3: Hurley was at four six sixty sixty four was his
Speaker 3: police but he was there. He bashed Molargy to death
Speaker 3: and was let go. These are cases where there are
Speaker 3: clear perpetrators and yet they're still you know that the
Speaker 3: cop in Jc's case, his identity was suppressed. So you
Speaker 3: have this issue where Jac's criminal history is raged through
Speaker 3: and she's put on trial and the man who killed
Speaker 3: her and shot her has his identity suppressed. He's afforded
Speaker 3: an anymenity and anonymenity. Sorry I can never say that word,
Speaker 3: but you know, these are cases with police shootings where
Speaker 3: there are clear alleged perpetrator and yet they're still not
Speaker 3: looking at it as such, and yet Aboriginal victims Mark
Speaker 3: Mason sein is perpetrator JC is seen as a perpetrator.
Speaker 3: You know, we see the difference in the way Aboriginal
Speaker 3: victims are seen as perpetrators when they're their deaths are
Speaker 3: at the hands of the justice system, but most particularly
Speaker 3: by police and by prison guards as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think another thing that's really important to mention,
Speaker 4: and I would encourage everyone who's listening to go and
Speaker 4: read Amy's substack, all the articles there, and particularly the
Speaker 4: one on Mark Mason Senior, because another thing I learned was,
Speaker 4: and I think it's very relevant to what you've just said,
Speaker 4: is that he was a subject of the Suspect Targeting
Speaker 4: Management Plan STAMP and yet the police and which affords
Speaker 4: the police this extraordinary powers to surveil someone, follows someone,
Speaker 4: detain them, question them, search their house, all of which
Speaker 4: they did to Mark Mason Senior, and yet they've never
Speaker 4: presented any evidence as to war he needed to be
Speaker 4: on that list. And in New South Wales's Aboriginal people
Speaker 4: make up about three percent of the population and yet
Speaker 4: are fifty four percent of that list. Now to me,
Speaker 4: this is really no different. And I know historians and
Speaker 4: the media in Australia like to talk about the colonial
Speaker 4: days as if that was the eighteen hundreds. But how
Speaker 4: is this any different to issuing a hunting certificate because
Speaker 4: we do know that Mark Mason Senior knew the police
Speaker 4: were after him for no good reason. They'd been issued
Speaker 4: this green light, this STMP to follow him and basically
Speaker 4: do whatever they wanted, harass him endlessly. And you know,
Speaker 4: whether he had a tire iron or not. I think
Speaker 4: if he did, he was more than justified in defending
Speaker 4: himself because he had been labeled a target for no reason.
Speaker 4: I mean, you shouldn't be for any reason. As we've
Speaker 4: spoken about with Mark and Bright, how did they manage
Speaker 4: to take him away peacefully? And yet with Mark Mason Sr.
Speaker 4: It's the pepper spray, it's the taser. They're pulling the
Speaker 4: guns out, and again it go I think it goes
Speaker 4: to the trauma of the families too, that you can
Speaker 4: be the subject to these orders where the police can
Speaker 4: sit outside your house day after day, where they can
Speaker 4: raid your house day after day, where they can intimidate you,
Speaker 4: prevent you from really living any sort of decent life
Speaker 4: without living in fear. Then they kill you and nothing happens.
Speaker 4: And you know, as Amy said, these are perpetrators with names,
Speaker 4: badge numbers, faces, all of which get hidden and protected.
Speaker 4: Why can't that be exposed? Why can't we see that
Speaker 4: if we can see all this evidence in inverted commas
Speaker 4: about the victim, if Mark Mason Sr. Had done something wrong,
Speaker 4: put him in a courtroom and put him on trial.
Speaker 4: If JC had done something wrong, which she hadn't, and
Speaker 4: there wasn't even a suggestion that she had. But even
Speaker 4: let's pretend there was, put her on trial when I
Speaker 4: shouldn't say when I was going to say, when did
Speaker 4: the police get the license to be judged dury and executioner? Well,
Speaker 4: I guess the truth is they got it in seventeen
Speaker 4: seventy and it's never been taken away. And you can't
Speaker 4: say that it has because five hundred deaths since the
Speaker 4: Royal Commission and not one of them have been held accountable.
Speaker 4: And that's where we stand. And so I think the
Speaker 4: onus is on people to listen to what the families
Speaker 4: have to say and heed their call. Mark Mason's seeing
Speaker 4: his family is calling for justice and for this to
Speaker 4: be reviewed and looked at again, and it has to be.
Speaker 4: And I think if there's any members of the media
Speaker 4: with any position of influence they need to do their job.
Speaker 4: I'm so sick of the hand ringing that goes on
Speaker 4: about the United States and other countries and the way
Speaker 4: they treat their minorities, while those same journalists turn a
Speaker 4: blind eye to murder on the streets of the country
Speaker 4: in which they live. And until that changes, we probably
Speaker 4: will never know the truth of any of these matters,
Speaker 4: and it will continue to happen. And then you can't
Speaker 4: ask why because we've just told.
Speaker 3: You and Martin, you just reminded me of one of
Speaker 3: the most legendary black truth tellers, journalists, ID B. Wells,
Speaker 3: who was writing, particularly and campaigning against the violence of
Speaker 3: lynching in America back in the nineteenth century. I just
Speaker 3: wanted to put a call out to a lot of journalists,
Speaker 3: particularly you know, black journalists, but also non indigenous journalists.
Speaker 3: You know, listen to Aboriginal people and they tell you
Speaker 3: that you may not be doing the right job. You
Speaker 3: may be doing the job that you were taught in
Speaker 3: journalism school, that you were taught in extreme newsrooms. But
Speaker 3: if it doesn't benefit blackfellows, if it doesn't aid the
Speaker 3: pursuit of justice, if it doesn't advocate for mob it's
Speaker 3: really meaningless. And so I just wanted to end on
Speaker 3: Ida B. Wells, who wrote this back in the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: To read the white papers, the Afro American is a
Speaker 3: savage that is getting away from the restraint of the
Speaker 3: inherent fear of the white man which controlled his passions,
Speaker 3: and from whom white women and children now flee from
Speaker 3: a wild beast. This impression has gained ground from the
Speaker 3: white papers and has blasted race reputation in many quarters.
Speaker 3: But she directly criticized the Black papers who had not
Speaker 3: troubled itself to counteract this opinion, and said, the clearing
Speaker 3: of this odium attached to the race name is not
Speaker 3: only the duty of one section, but belongs to all,
Speaker 3: and the National Press Association should no longer sit idly
Speaker 3: waiting for the garbled accounts of the Associated Press, which
Speaker 3: in turn gives the world gives it to the world.
Speaker 3: So that was a clear calling out from Ida B.
Speaker 3: Wells of what she was seeing at the time where
Speaker 3: the Black papers, particularly but journalists, were not calling out
Speaker 3: the obvious violence that they were perpetrating, which was leading
Speaker 3: to legitimizing this form of violence in the form of
Speaker 3: lynching and so I think that's a lesson for all
Speaker 3: of us. You know, we don't have the time or
Speaker 3: the luxury to be objective. If black fellows are saying no,
Speaker 3: we need you to stand up and advocate, you know now,
Speaker 3: then we have to do it. Because this is part
Speaker 3: of the reason why these cases, we're not getting justice
Speaker 3: for these cases, is that because we're not resisting, you know,
Speaker 3: the way black fellows are being viewed, the way they're
Speaker 3: being seen as worthy unworthy, the way they're being seen
Speaker 3: as threats. The situation isn't up to us to be
Speaker 3: good journalists in the white sense. We have to be
Speaker 3: good journalists to our communities in the black sense. And
Speaker 3: I think that's the most important thing we can do.