By John Tognolini
Leila Murray knows more than most people about police racism. Her son Eddie died in a police cell in Wee Waa in 1983. Her husband Arthur is currently on bail, appealing against his conviction and 18-month sentence arising from a 1987 police attack on Aboriginal mourners in Brewarrina.
"It was terrible after Eddie's death", she told Green Left. "We had racists playing up on our lawn and the cops in the next street doing nothing to stop them.
"I had a heart attack about two weeks after we lost Eddie and was in hospitial in intensive care. The doctor told me that I should be in a rest home. But I told him, 'Until I find the bastard that killed my son, until then I hold out'."
Arthur and Leila decided to leave Wee Waa and move to Dubbo to escape the harassment. "I didn't care about me and Arthur, I just worried about our eight other kids."
They were packed and ready to go when a detective arrived with a search warrant. The Wee Waa police "just stood out on the footpath, like they were going to have a shoot-out or something. I said, whatever you pull apart, you put back. They just got inside and tossed everything out on the porch and threw everything out of boxes. I don't know what they were looking for.
"I rang up our barrister, and he said just as well it happened here and not on the road to Dubbo, where we could have been set up."
After the Brewarinna "riot", they were harassed and threatened by racists in Dubbo. A young white man fired four shots at Arthur. "The police came along and saw this bloke was running away with the gun and refused to arrest him."
Leila and Arthur's daughter Annah was assualted by police. "These two detectives grabbed her and one of them threw her over her shoulder into the gutter" Leila said. "Then they flogged her with the baton and then they threw her into the car and hit her again with the baton.
"After they took her to the police station, she was taken to the hosipital. Then we had visit from a detective who told us that Annah tried to commit suicide. I said, 'Did she? Did the detective try and finish off the job when she got to the police station?' He was one of the blokes in the Brewarinna riot."
When the Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody was announced, the Murrays moved from Dubbo to Sydney, to the inner suburb of Glebe. Police attitudes were no different.
"They had a notice stuck up in the police station, saying anything happening with the Murrays, let us know or ring the housing commission. When the Watch Committee started to get on to it, they took it down.
"We had our two young grandsons hit by local people. The eldest fella was strung up by the neck, and he's 11 years old. The police refused to do anything about that. Our car was hit by a brick and they refused to do anything about it. The little five-year-old got hit by a brick on the leg, and they did nothing about that either.
"When one of my daughters, Eileen, had her baby last year, a housing commission bloke came around when Arthur was in jail in Bathurst, and said they had a complaint from the police that Eileen was pelting bricks.
"I said, 'Excuse me, Eileen's been in King George Hospital for over a week, fighting for her life.' We just stood up to them while Arthur was in jail and showed them that I wasn't going to give in."