By Barry Healy
SYDNEY — Following a police raid on January 14, there has been a flurry of publicity about crime problems in the Aboriginal community centred on Eveleigh Street, Redfern, known as "the Block". Forty police sealed off the area and systematically searched every house, supposedly looking for drugs and stolen goods. Their haul was one hapless youth, charged with affray, assaulting police and resisting arrest. Smaller raids have followed.
The raid was supposed to have resulted from rising local crime rates, but a nun living nearby says she saw television cameras being erected just before the police arrived. The police action bears all the marks of a set-up designed to pressure the community.
Far from condemning the assault, Premier Bob Carr commented afterwards, "Get used to it!" Police commissioner Peter Ryan has promised "positive policing" on the Block and a police shop-front presence at Redfern station which will mean more cops picking up people for petty crime.
The raid and ongoing publicity coincides with efforts by large corporations to clear Aborigines from the Block and develop it in their own interests. These efforts have focused on splitting the community and generating negative publicity about crime.
It is true that the Eveleigh Street community is plagued by many problems generated by racism and poverty. There is enormous pressure on families just to survive and many buckle under. An indication of the scale of heroin addiction is the number of clean needles distributed to the Caroline Lane "shooting gallery": 1800 syringes are delivered for the weekend alone. Heroin is being blamed for the recent "crime wave" but local observers report that the police never target the known dealers when they raid.
There are often large numbers of young people who have nothing to do and end up committing petty acts of anti-social behaviour ranging from graffiti to bag-snatching or just being cocky and rude to people on the street.
Begging, breaking and entering, muggings and children mischievously roaming the streets at night can make the lives of nearby residents a misery. Some have been whipped into a state of near hysteria by the recent police activity and have been ready to supply the media with lurid stories.
Is the government sincerely trying to address the sources of these problems?
Last year, I was part of a community delegation to NSW deputy-premier Andrew Refshauge to seek government funding to address youth problems in Eveleigh Street. Refshauge is also the minister for Aboriginal affairs and the local MP.
We suggested a well-funded, Aboriginal-staffed youth activity centre to get the kids off the streets after dark. We said that there needed to be training and jobs created for the unemployed. We pointed to the need for an Aboriginal detoxification centre in the area, linked to the successful Bennelongs Haven at Kempsey. We pointed to the enormous strain on mothers and grandmothers trying to hold their families together. These suggestions were interim measures, of course, because ultimately Aboriginal poverty in Australia can only be attacked within the struggle for land rights.
We were told that there was no money. Refshauge referred to the hospital dispute that was then in full flight (he was trying to close down services for budgetary reasons), and claimed his hands were tied. He also stated that the Eveleigh Street Aboriginal community "is dysfunctional and always has been". Shortly afterwards, "hollow logs" of money magically solved his hospital dispute; none was found for Redfern.
As Refshauge spoke, I contrasted him in my mind with the Aboriginal elders who took direct action when heroin dealers first appeared in their community many years ago. They collared the dealers and forced them to eat their supplies! Unfortunately, they couldnt stem the tide because police officers deliberately fostered the Sydney drug trade as an avenue of bribe farming.
Now the police have raided Eveleigh Street again in a blaze of publicity. Their failure to arrest real criminals shows that the problems are of a social nature, not some form of Aboriginal criminal conspiracy. The Eveleigh Street community has many problems, but the NSW police force, with its record of racism and corruption, is not capable of solving any of them. [Barry Healy is a long-term resident of Redfern and was a youth worker in the area.]