In 2014, 22-year-old Yamatji woman Ms Dhu was arrested over unpaid fines and died in custody following “unprofessional and inhumane” treatment by WA police. In 2017, 55-year-old Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day was arrested for being drunk in public and died after falling and hitting her head against the wall of a police holding cell – a death that the coroner said “was clearly preventable had she not been arrested and taken into custody.” And in 2019, 37-year-old Yorta Yorta woman Veronica Marie Nelson Walker was arrested for shoplifting, denied bail, and remanded at a maximum security women's prison. She was found dead in her cell less than two days later.As Wayne Martin AC, former chief justice of WA, pointed out in a 2015 speech to the state Law Society: “Over-representation amongst those who commit crime is … plainly not the entire cause of over-representation of Aboriginal people. The system itself must take part of the blame.”“Australian policing is racism par excellence. A textbook exemplar of racist policing.”
“We haven’t had a Derek Chauvin moment here. There have been plenty of cases, but no public display of one police officer ever being held accountable. Ever.”
Police monitor a rally seeking justice for the deaths of members of the Indigenous Australian community, following the death of George Floyd. Photo by SAEED KHAN/AFP via Getty Images
Leetona Dungay visits the grave of her son, David Dungay Jr, who died after yelling “I can’t breathe” while prison officers knelt on his back. Photo by Andrew Potter/VICE
In the two years since, Walker’s death, like JC’s, has become a symbol for countless other families, communities and activists who are advocating for change. It has fomented the #JusticeForWalker movement, which rallies not just against the arrest and alleged murder of this one man, but Indigenous incarceration rates and custodial deaths in general. Meanwhile, from the other side of the line, the case has spurred a different hashtag in support of cops on duty: #BlueLivesMatter.“It’s really hard to convict a cop on civil or criminal charges.”
In the 30 years since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, more than 474 Indigenous Australians have died while interacting with authorities, or as a result of that interaction. Photo by Robert Cianflone / Staff, via Getty Images
Clayton’s lawyer, George Newhouse, told VICE World News that one of the major community objections to the current system is precisely this: the fact that, problematically, it is self-regulating, that police always end up investigating police.“[Indigenous Australians] don't trust the system. Why would you? Look at the results that you get,” he said. “Why can't we see a situation where there's some independent investigation into a death in custody and not the system looking after itself? “The sooner governments around Australia bring in an independent, First Nations–led investigation into Black deaths in custody,” he added, “the sooner you might be seeing justice and profound recommendations that will change lives forever.”There are other changes Clayton wants to see. For a start, she wants the prone restraint abolished, “so that our people are not dying because of asphyxiation.” In the ten years from 2008 to 2018, the controversial restraint technique was implicated in the deaths of at least 24 people in Australia – more than half of whom were Indigenous, affected by methamphetamines, or struggling with mental health problems.“Why can't we see a situation where there's some independent investigation into a death in custody and not the system looking after itself?”
Newhouse told VICE World News that “Quite frankly, the coroner’s reasons for refusing release are a mystery to us and the family of Ms Wynne. We don’t understand the coroner’s refusal to release the CCTV footage when the family of Ms Wynne has specifically asked for the CCTV footage to be released.”Finally, Clayton wants Sgt. Williams to be fined, sacked and potentially face criminal charges. More broadly, though, she wants to see significant reform within Australia’s police culture; an overhaul that addresses any influence of institutional racism and aims at preventing officers from targeting, overpolicing and killing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. “It’s their brutality. When they arrest our people, it’s the brutality and the force they do it with,” she says. “I find that a lot of policemen are prejudiced against Aboriginal people. Don’t get me wrong: There are a lot that are good police officers … [But] it’s racial profiling. We’re all painted with the same brush.”Clayton does hold some hope for retribution. That’s what she says “keeps her alive.” But it is only a sliver of hope.“Aboriginal people have been dying like this for years. I mean, since the Royal Commission into deaths in custody, nothing's changed. After this happened to my son Warren, they put all these recommendations down – well, they're all still sitting on paper and haven't been acted upon. And now what? The coroner is going to put recommendations down for my granddaughter? Nothing's changed.”On September 17, the final day of the coronial inquest, some 40 demonstrators lay face-down on the road outside Perth Central Law Courts, imitating the prone position in which Ms Wynne lost consciousness for the last time: flat on their stomachs, hands behind their backs. Among them was Ms Wynne’s daughter.As a teenager, Ms Wynne attended rallies calling for action on deaths in custody following the passing of her own father. Now it’s her face on the placards, her name on the flags, her blood on the hands of a system that failed her and so many others. Later that day, wearing a T-shirt collaged with photos of Ms Wynne and lofting a sign that read “Mummy Deena my Angel,” a 4-year-old girl who has now lost both her mother and grandfather to police brutality leant her quiet voice to a rousing chorus.“What do we want?” she yelled. “Jus-tice.”CORRECTION: This article previously stated that Ms Wynne was held down on the roadside in Albany, Western Australia, less than a week after escaping from a mental health facility. She was in fact held down on the side of the Albany Highway in Perth just over a week after escaping from a mental health facility. We regret the error.Follow Gavin Butler on Twitter.“Aboriginal people have been dying like this for years … Nothing’s changed.”
