BY RUSSELL PICKERING
PERTH A report tabled by Western Australia's Ombudsman on April 30 has revealed the violent and uncontrolled practices of the police who patrol the city's railways. As a result of the report, several cops are to appear before a police disciplinary tribunal.
Operation Safe Trains, established by the WA railways and the police to supposedly improve public safety on Perth's trains, has resulted in a series of unprovoked police attacks on passengers.
From August to November 2000, a poorly trained and largely unsupervised group of specialist officers applied the no-nonsense, zero tolerance brand of policing to rail commuters.
Numerous unlawful arrests and incidents of excessive force during the three-month operation have resulted in many charges being withdrawn or dismissed, and thousands of dollars in costs being awarded against the police. Thousands more have been spent investigating police conduct. The government is considering $20,000 ex-gratia payments for the victims of unlawful police activity.
One attack, captured on a train surveillance video camera, was on an Aboriginal woman and her daughter who had found a lost purse. Witnesses later confirmed the women were going to hand the purse in. Police officers provoked a dispute with the women, more police arrived as back up and the women were charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and failing to give names.
A man who intervened to explain the situation was also arrested and handcuffed. Police failed to present the compromising tape as evidence. As a result, all charges were dropped and $3225 in court costs were awarded against the police. A recommendation that an officer be charged with unlawful arrest and using unnecessary force was also made.
A senior police officer informed the Ombudsman that Operation Safe Trains officers used a method known as the trifecta to secure arrests. The practice involves the laying of a minor charge designed to incite the offender so that charges of resisting arrest and assault can also be laid.
Other arrests involved: the beating of a man with batons after he was accused of carrying a concealed weapon later revealed to be a mobile phone; spraying a man accused of swearing in the face with capsicum spray; the throwing of a witness face down onto an escalator and kneeing them in the back while being handcuffed.
Despite being under the public spot light, police on Perth's rail system are still using unprovoked violence against passengers. In a recent incident reported to Green Left Weekly, an Aboriginal man was violently wrestled to the ground in a rail carriage on the pretext that he was intoxicated. The man had done nothing to warrant arrest, a witness told GLW.
Another Aboriginal man who intervened was also arrested. Both were taken off the train at the next stop, where one of the victims escaped and the other ended up semi-conscious on the train tracks with profuse bleeding from a head wound.
Police provocation was also a feature at May 1 rally in Perth. Cops, for no apparent reason, demanded the names of several Iraqi men who attended the rally. Later in the day, they were also questioned by police as they were waiting to catch a train home. They were given no satisfactory explanation for the police harassment.
Meanwhile, state Labor government is seeking to give police greater powers under the widely criticised anti-gang laws (supposedly to be used in the fight against organised crime).
From Green Left Weekly, May 22, 2002.
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