To mark the one-year anniversary of the shooting of four Aboriginal teenagers in Kings Cross, a rally will be held on April 26 to demand an end to police investigating cases of police violence.
The rally will gather outside the Kings Cross police station to voice disapproval of the police involved in the shooting of the unarmed youths in April last year.
Since January 1, 1980, over 200 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders have died in police custody.
That deaths in custody total could easily have been increased by a further four deaths. Luckily, none were killed but the driver and front seat passenger were both wounded and bleeding heavily.
Eyewitnesses allege the police punched and kicked the wounded youths and claim the Kings Cross police acted with unnecessary force.
The Indigenous Social Justice Association (ISJA) held rallies outside parliament house and the Kings Cross police station calling on the offending officers to be charged.
Since the shooting, police from another police station “investigated” what had happened on that Sunday morning.
That investigation report was not made public but it did find its way to the department of public prosecutions (DPP).
The NSW DPP found the Kings Cross police had no case to answer. That may be sufficient for the NSW government, the police and their union and the DPP, but what about the victims involved, their families and the public?
Do we not have a right to know the details of the investigating police report and the legal reasons why those police involved in violence cannot be prosecuted?
The ISJA calls on the NSW police minister, Mike Gallacher, to make public all reports, documents, files, police notebooks and any other documentation relavant to the events a year ago at Kings Cross to allow the families and general public to view them.
Gallacher has recently consented to a full and open enquiry to the police violence at this year’s Mardi Gras, so we expect that same open frame of mind for the events surrounding the Kings Cross police.
We also call on the NSW attorney-general, Greg Smith, to order the NSW DPP to publicly release the full legal reasoning behind its decision not to prosecute.
[The rally will be held at 4.30pm on April 26 outside Kings Cross police station.]