Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Deputy-President) Share this | Hansard source

On the night of 22 August last year a resident of Hillside, in Melbourne's western suburbs, was turning his car into his driveway when he was rammed from behind.    The force of the impact slammed his car into his corner fence, causing extensive damage to his car and property.    The driver of the other car then leapt out and assaulted Mr Vittori, including punching him in the face up to six times.

What makes this case so disturbing is that this attack was carried out by members of the Victorian police force. Police officers had been following Mr Vittori for around two kilometres because the car he was driving was unregistered at the time. Mr Vittori testified that he was unaware that he was being followed. After the vicious assault Mr Vittori was taken back to the station and left in a police cell for four hours. He was then charged with reckless conduct endangering life by the local police.

The truth of what actually happened that night may never have been known if it was not for the confession made by one of the police officers four days after the incident. The junior officer confessed to a supervisor that he and the senior officer had concocted a story.   What actually happened that night was partially revealed via the onboard camera in the patrol vehicle.

Footage shows the police car ramming Mr Vittori's car into the brick fence. However, before he jumped out of the car and assaulted Mr Vittori, the senior constable and driver of the car deliberately switched off the patrol car camera. He then, at a later date, tried to delete the footage, but investigators found a copy on a backup disk. Footage then captured audio of the senior constable telling his partner what to tell their boss, ordering him to say the victim had aimed his car at them and had heavily rammed their car while they were in it. This concocted story would explain the damage to the patrol car and justify the charges laid on the victim.

On 16 October this year, the junior officer faced court for his role in fabricating the story. He was fined $3,000 and released without conviction on a charge of making a false report. In handing down his decision, Magistrate Charlie Rozencwajg said Victoria Police appeared to suffer from a similar culture of silence to the criminal world. Magistrate Rozencwajg said that, in the criminal underworld, informing on a colleague was known as being a 'dog'. 'A similar culture for whatever reason existed in the police force,' Magistrate Rozencwajg said. The junior officer's defence lawyers said that, if not for Roberts coming clean to a supervisor, it would have been unlikely the truth of the incident would have ever have emerged. The victim, Mr Vittori, was charged by police for ramming their patrol car when, in fact, the opposite was true. Police were comfortable fabricating the charges and would have assumed that their joint testimony would see the victim prosecuted. They would have put Mr Vittori through months, if not years, of pain and suffering as he tried to defend himself against the charges that may have even seen him sent to jail.

As I have said in previous speeches, it is common for individuals to be further charged by police where there are complaints made about police assaults. The Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre says there have been 10 cases since 2006 in which African-Australians were charged with hindering police after they made an official complaint. In the subsequent court cases, magistrates ruled that officers had used inappropriate force against them, entered property without proper warrant or stopped suspects without due cause. In every case, police charges were thrown out of court and compensation paid to the victims.

Another example of violence concerns a case in April 2009. Eight police officers investigating the theft of two bags of chips from a nearby 7-Eleven entered the rear of a Williamstown property without a warrant. They attacked three teenagers of African descent who were hanging out in the rear bungalow. According to one of the victims, Kenyan-born Zacharia Matiang, a police officer demanded he tell him who stole the chips and then assaulted him. He said:

Out of the blue he took a pepper spray can and put it into my face and just started spraying, like I was some type of insect. Everything went blank in my head. There was screaming and yelling and pepper spray cans going off like fire hoses.

I saw them drag one of the boys out of the room and they were stomping the hell out of him, kicking him on the floor and everything.

A police officer was on my back putting handcuffs on me, dragging me to the front yard and he did assault me with his baton and punched me, too. He took me to the side of the house and punched me.

In addition to the attack on the individuals in the bungalow, an officer sprayed capsicum spray into the main house. A mother and three infant children, the youngest of whom was just three months old, were in the room at the time.

Lawyers from the Flemington & Kensington Community Legal Centre assisted the victims to make an official complaint and launch a civil case against the police involved. The complaint was ultimately investigated by the Office of Police Integrity. They dedicated two full pages of their 2010-11 annual report to the matter. To quote the report:

This case study clearly raises concerns about 'over-policing' associated with racial targeting. Eight police personnel and two paramedics were involved in pursuing a shoplifter who had been caught on CCTV stealing goods worth $10.65 … The leading senior constable knew the occupier of the bungalow was a minor, but rather than approach him in the presence of his mother, he initiated a confrontation that involved four innocent young people.

The OPI found that the officers had used excessive force and forwarded its investigation to police for action. However, even after the damning findings of the OPI, the force ethical standards division conducted its own review and found that many of the OPI findings were not valid. No officer was charged or reprimanded for their role in the assault. Victoria Police completely ignored the findings of the body established to oversee its activities. The civil lawsuit launched in parallel to the complaint was settled confidentially before it reached court. We do not know if compensation was paid to those assaulted by police but what we do know is that no police officer has had to answer for their actions.

Fitzroy Legal Service, another community legal service, raises the case of a Somali man, Mohamed Hassan. Mohamed Hassan was pulled over for speeding by a senior constable. Mohamed was punched in the head, which fractured his jaw, was forced to the ground, was handcuffed and then taken to a police cell. Hassan faced several charges from police, including disturbing the good order or management of the police jail—and that was for spitting blood on the floor of a holding cell. Mohamed made a complaint against the police, which was investigated by the police ethical standards division. The complaint was not substantiated after the local police were tasked to investigate it. But, in 2012, Magistrate Peter Couzens ruled that Hassan had been unlawfully punched by the senior constable. Magistrate Peter Couzens told Mr Hassan:

I'm satisfied that you were a victim of an assault on that day by a police officer.

He found that the senior constable had acted unlawfully. Still, to this day, no action has been taken against the police officer who assaulted Mohamed.

I think it is clear from these cases and the other cases I have previously raised in the Senate that we have a systemic problem in the Victorian police force. The lack of an independent investigation of complaints made against police has led to a culture where it appears some police feel their actions are not subject to any real review or oversight, and, in the case where they overstep the mark, they can lay charges on the victims of their assaults and rely on support from colleagues to back their version of events. In this culture, most victims are unwilling to press charges or make complaints. Victims are all too aware that the most likely outcome will be further charges laid against them.

The power granted to police by the community must not be abused. Policing can—and must—be done with integrity. No-one in our state should be above the law. Police will continue to operate without the threat of real penalties for their actions until we have an independent investigation of complaints made against them. I again call for the establishment of a fully independent body to oversee the complaints against police and that this body be well funded and have a number of investigation teams that have the power to press charges against police for misconduct. What we know in Victoria is that if we expect justice to prevail, we cannot rely on police to investigate police. We must have an independent body that can not only investigate police but lay charges against police for their misconduct.