source: Sydney Criminal Lawyers

published: 8 August 2023

Image Credit: Sira Anamwong at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

At inception, NSW law enforcement had a focus on quelling First Nations resistance to British takeover of Indigenous land, and, over 230 years later, an excessive and overtly brutal focus on those who never ceded control to the Crown continues to be a key preoccupation of NSW police.

The Redfern Legal Centre released figures just last week that underscore the heightened focus the NSW Police Force takes towards First Nations, as, over the four years to June 2022, 45 percent of all state law enforcement use of force incidents involved Indigenous civilians.

That this figure is disproportionate in nature becomes all the more apparent, when taking into account that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples living within the borders of NSW only make up 3.4 percent of the overall state populace.

And at a time when NSW police excessive use of force is being scrutinised, due to a string of lethal taserings and shootings since May, it must be remembered that the ease officers take to the application of physical force is much more laxed, when the recipient is an Indigenous individual.

The struggle for justice

For almost a decade now, Dunghutti activist Paul Silva has been at the forefront of the struggle for First Nations people to have their rights upheld to the point that law enforcement and corrections can no longer brutally harm or even kill them with impunity.

Silva began campaigning for First Nations justice, after his uncle, 26-year-old Dunghutti man David Dungay Junior, had his life literally forced out of him by a group of specialist Long Bay prison guards, who were called upon to prevent the diabetic inmate from eating a packet of biscuits.

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