Ms Dhu
The Custody Notification System saves Aboriginal lives. Why isn’t it national?
We know that notifying an Aboriginal legal service when an Aboriginal person is arrested saves lives and costs little. The lack of nationwide action is unacceptable
@Gerry Georgatos – The Guardian – 5 Sep 2016
When someone is arrested and detained they are at an elevated risk to life-threatening levels of anxiety. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are at much higher risk than the rest of the population because of the distrust that has developed from generations of racism and marginalisation. Deaths of detainees in police custody led to a royal commission that went from 1987 to 1991. Several recommendations from that inquiry called for immediate support to detainees through skilled advocates.
Today, this support exists through the Custody Notification Service (CNS) but only in NSW and the ACT. The CNS is a 24-hour legal advice and helpline for Aboriginal and Torres Islanders who have been taken into police custody.
Under NSW legislation the police must contact the Aboriginal Legal Service whenever they detain an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. The detainee is subsequently provided with support, with early legal, health and welfare advice. This system has saved lives, and – because anxiety levels have been reduced – has also led to fewer Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders convicted in NSW when compared with other states where there is no CNS.
Since the CNS was implemented in NSW in 2000, there had not been a a single death of an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person in a police watch house until recently. On 19 July 2016, 36-year-old Rebecca Maher died in the Maitland police watch house after the police had failed to contact the ALS advocate.
With so many of the nation’s arrests comprising of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, it is unjustifiable that the rest of the nation has not implemented this service.
It is beyond exasperating that right-mindedness has been sidelined for so many years by one government after another and in turn many lives lost. It is not only the tragedy of lives lost, but of human beings who have been stranded in seriously high levels of distress, who have been hit with further charges, compounded into a constancy of traumas, with some degenerating from broken to ruined lives, to irreparable damage.
Western Australia, the Northern Territory and South Australia convict Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders at among the world’s highest rates. One in six Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders in WA and the NT have been to prison, with one in eight in SA. One in 13 of WA’s Aboriginal adult males are in prison. Nearly 90% of the NT’s prison population is comprised of Aboriginal peoples.
The ALS lawyer is trained in identifying suicidal ideation, in deescalating anxiety, in psychosocially validating people. It is when we are in our direst need that people need people. As a suicide prevention researcher, I know first-hand that threats of self-harm and suicide in detained people are common and authentic.
In NSW, the CNS responds to nearly 16,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who have been taken into custody. Therefore the CNS advocates respond to 300 people on average per week. The CNS costs only $526,000 per year – that’s it! One coronial inquiry can cost as much.
If the CNS has saved lives in NSW and the ACT, year after year, and assisted thousands of individuals in their direst hour, then why isn’t this service national?
The death of 22-year-old Ms Dhu in a WA police watch house should have led to the immediate establishment of the CNS in that state. The memory of Ms Dhu has been betrayed by the WA government. It is my firm belief that a CNS advocate would have seen to the hospitalisation and proper treatment of Ms Dhu.
What often isn’t taken into account is the psychological impact on police officers of being on suicide watch. The CNS relieves police officers of the burden of health and welfare judgments.
A police officer said to me, “We do not want to be making these decisions. We do because we are given no choice. If it works in NSW, [the CNS] will work here too.”
All anti-discrimination, anti-racism and cross cultural training teaches us to recognise that every workplace is tainted by racism and discrimination and only with the first port of call in recognising this can there be striving in managing and reducing the racism and discrimination.
As a profession, police officers are among the most elevated risk groups to suicidal ideation and it is about time that police commissioners and police unions come clean with public support for the implementation of the CNS. Police officers and police unions have contacted me to continue advocating for the CNS. However, if they went public with the call for a national CNS, this service would be implemented without delay.
Recently retired NSW police commissioner Nick Kaldas once said to me during a discussion we were having about the “Forgotten 300” that the CNS should be a must-do, or as some say, it’s a no-brainer. Famed Mabo barrister, Greg McIntyre implores “a custody notification service as an important measure in preventing deaths in custody.”
The CNS has been championed by the federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Nigel Scullion. We have had a number of conversations about the CNS and he gets it, he understands the need for it to be rolled out nationally.
He saved the CNS in NSW and the ACT by funding it to mid-2019, pulling together the $1.8m out of his portfolio, even though it was the responsibility of other portfolio holders.
The CNS has also been championed by WA’s Senator Sue Lines who knows how desperately her home state needs it.
The Western Australian state Labor party has committed to implementing the CNS when elected. It is time every state and territory does the right thing and implements the CNS. There is no greater legacy than to save lives.
I will wrap up with the words of members of Ms Dhu’s family. Uncle Shaun Harris said, “We do not want this to happen to anyone else. Our families are heartbroken and the pain has not left us.” Ms Dhu’s mother, Della Roe, said, “My daughter should be with us today. Her loss haunts me each day and it will remain but it will give me at least an ounce of peace to see the CNS implemented.”
No words or justice for Ms Dhu’s loss but there must be a legacy of change
Gerry Georgatos – November 19th, 2015
I remember when I first looked into the eyes of a mother who had lost her 22-year-old daughter, her last hours of life spent on the floor of a police cell, what came from me was “there are no words for your loss…” There are no words, not any justice to be scored that will ever lessen the toll on the family of Ms Dhu. But there must be changes. The overdue coronial inquiry is taking place in Perth from Monday and the trauma recovery for the family can only begin thereafter the inquiry.
What justice will come for the family of Ms Dhu? None. However in the name of Ms Dhu there needs to be a legacy of change, that others are not brutally lost as was Ms Dhu. The coronial inquiry will produce CCTV footage of Ms Dhu in the police cell. The coronial inquiry will have no option but to describe profound systemic failures that led to Ms Dhu’s death. Ms Dhu should not have been detained and locked up. Police were called out to an incident which should have seen them assist Ms Dhu, instead they locked her up after doing a background check which found she had defaulted on fines totalling $1000. The detaining and jailing of fine defaulters was done away with in NSW in 1988. Western Australia is nearly three decades behind the times. Western Australia continues to jail people too poor to afford fines – which at worst should be a civil matter and certainly not a criminal matter. Western Australia’s prisons are full of the poor and the mentally unwell and not the criminally minded.
The coronial inquiry will find the health system failed Ms Dhu. In turning up to the South Hedland Health Campus, accompanied by police officers, remembering that stereotypes often prevail, it is possible health personnel made assumptions they should not have made. Ms Dhu should have been admitted for a stay, with the full suite of tests and the follow up of treatment and observation. But this did not occur. The coroner may well have more to state.
It is my firm belief that it is near certain that Ms Dhu would be with her family today had Western Australia in place the Custody Notification Service that NSW and the ACT enjoy. The Custody Notification Service would have provided Ms Dhu a stout advocate to defend Ms Dhu’s legal, health and welfare rights and to interface with the police. Had Western Australia a CNS at the time of Ms Dhu’s detainment, the police would have been obliged by law to contact the CNS immediately.
The systemic failures that led to Ms Dhu’s death were so visible, so pronounced, so glaringly tragic that in the weeks after her inexcusable loss in that damn police cell, I flew to Canberra and met with the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Nigel Scullion. I argued for his support in rolling out the CNS in Western Australia and in doing something about pushing the Western Australian Government to stop jailing the poor on fine defaulting. Scullion has been standout in his support for the CNS despite being surrounded by parliamentary colleagues who don’t want to get it, who are bent by misunderstandings of economic imperatives as opposed to moral imperatives. The NSW and Federal Liberal Governments have been in an obscene pitchfork standoff of who should fund the CNS. But the CNS which has led to zero police watch-house deaths since its implementation in 1998 costs only a little more than half a million dollars. Coronial inquiries cost more. But I am sick to death of how much it costs to protect human life; we need discussions to be out human worth and the common good and not about some skewed sense of fiscal benefit.
Scullion has urged the Western Australian Government to introduce the CNS and to stop jailing fine defaulters. A couple of months after Scullion met with his State counterparts, the Western Australian Government announced a parliamentary working party to potentially introduce the CNS, find alternatives to low level offending and fine defaulting. But hey, it is now November, seven months later and nothing further has been announced. It is a glacial pace of change with backwater Western Australia. Maybe the coronial inquiry will unleash the cultural wave needed to push along the Government, with the footage of the tragic end to Ms Dhu’s life. Compassionate and reasonably minded people will be abominated. The findings of the coroner will indict systemic failures and surely pronounced discrimination.
In August, the family of Ms Dhu – mother Della Roe, grandmother Carol Roe and uncle Shaun Harris – were availed to some of their loved one’s final hours. They learned that on the last day of life of Ms Dhu had begged the police officers on shift at the watch house to take her to the hospital. Other individuals locked up in nearby cells, one of them her then partner Dion Ruffin, and the other one a 61 year old, have stated Ms Dhu was begging for help but that police may not have believed her, telling her to stop ‘acting’. Ms Dhu fell to the cell floor. Police called out to her to ‘get up’. They then found she was unconscious. Ms Dhu was transported in the rear pod of a police vehicle and that on arrival to the hospital Ms Dhu was “unconscious, pulseless and not breathing.” Her body had been carted by the police from the cell to the police vehicle.
At the coronial inquiry next week the health clinic personnel, the police and others will have to respond to questions that many of us already know the answers to – of the detail of what happened and why. Della Roe has said that her daughter should have been taken seriously as should any individual. Ms Roe said an ambulance should have been called, without delay, at her daughter’s first plea for medical assistance on the day. She said that the police should not have gambled on her health to the point that they took her seriously only after her collapse in the cell. Ms Roe said that they then “chucked her in the back of a paddy wagon.”
“That was not right, that was not right,” said Ms Roe.
“How could they not understand that she was sick?”
On the day of her arrest (August 2, 2014) on the bullshit of fine defaulting Ms Dhu was taken by police in the evening, 9:20pm, to Hedland Health Campus. She had complained of pains in her chest. Ms Dhu was seen by a doctor and subsequently discharged with analgesia and diazepam. But the need of those medications impute that Ms Dhu should have been admitted for at least an overnight hospital stay for observation and follow up treatment if required. But at 9:45pm Ms Dhu was discharged from the hospital. Police returned her to the watch house. The next day, Ms Dhu was brought back to the hospital at 5pm complaining of a sore chest. A few tests later she was once again discharged and returned to the watch house. On August 4, at 12.45pm, Ms Dhu was returned to the hospital, she was unconscious and resuscitation techniques were applied by hospital personnel. After intense efforts to resuscitate Ms Dhu at 1:40pm it was all over.
Later that day I was phoned by distressed family members.
The coroner will determine the cause of death. Hopefully the coroner slams the laws in place that had this very unwell woman detained for being poor. Hopefully the coroner slams the health clinic for not hospitalising Ms Dhu. Hopefully the coroner slams the State Government for thus far having failed to enable the Custody Notification Service. As noted it is my firm belief that Ms Dhu would be with us today had she had a stout advocate from a Custody Notification Service on August 2, 2014.
The pressure needs to build up for a comprehensive inquiry into the systemic failures that led to this young woman’s death. Western Australia is indeed the nation’s backwater, where everything for First Nations people is much worse than anywhere else in the nation. One in 13 of the State’s Aboriginal adult males are in prison – from a racialised lens this is the world’s highest jailing rate.
Western Australia has paid little attention to the more than two decades old Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody – I’d say the majority of our parliamentarians have never read the recommendations from the inquiry. This is racism. When you choose to neglect understandings of underlying factors to the disproportionate burdens and statistics on our First Nations sisters and brothers then for goodness sake this is more than just discrimination, it is bloody racism – end of story.
There are no words or justice for the loss of Ms Dhu. If Premier Barnett wants at long last to start doing some of the good he promised more than year ago in responding to deaths in custody and the State’s high incarceration rates, then do not delay even a day in implementing the no-brainer Custody Notification Service, now.
– Declaration of impartiality conflict – Gerry Georgatos, a suicide prevention researcher and prison/custodial systems reform advocate, has lobbied the Federal Government for the Custody Notification Service and alternatives to the jailing of people for fine defaulting. He has also lobbied for other recommendations and outcomes on behalf of the family of Ms Dhu.
Ms Dhu killed by negligence and racism – dragged, carted and dumped to her death
Gerry Georgatos – November 23rd, 2015
Ms Dhu was dragged and carted to the pod of a police vehicle. Ms Dhu was dumped into the pod like some would say “a dead kangaroo” and shut inside, alone. No police officer demonstrated the common sense or compassion to ride with her in the back of the van where likely her last breaths were taken. There is no doubt that the police contributed to the death of Ms Dhu, be it by a combination of neglect, stupidity and racism. I was at the first day of the coronial inquest this morning before catching a flight to Canberra.
Coroner Ros Fogliani heard from counsel assisting the coroner, Ilona O’Brien, that Ms Dhu died of a staphylococcus infection, pneumonia and septicaemia.
An hour long compilation of CCTV footage described the deplorable last 40 hours of Ms Dhu’s life. Yes, police and the health clinic have a lot to answer for – in terms of negligence and racist assumptions.
I spoke with her grieving Mother, Della Roe, and her Uncle, Shaun Harris. Ms Roe said, “How could they treat my child like that, how could they drag her and throw her around? It broke my heart to see this. The police should have called the ambulance when she first complained of pain. Why wouldn’t they do this?”
“I can’t believe Julieka is no longer with us. Every day the pain is the same. To see her suffer like this hurts all over again.”
“I can’t sleep and when finally I do I wake each morning without Julieka.”
Ms Dhu’s Father, Robert Dhu, and her Grandmother, Carol Roe left the coroner’s courtroom prior to the release of the footage, not being able to withstand seeing the torment of their loved one’s last hours.
Mr Harris said, “It was disgusting, and everyone has a lot to answer for.”
“What will come of all this, what will they change? We know what changes are needed, we know the the racism, we know we need cultural training, real training of police and others to clean them up and make them understand. We have fought from the beginning for the truth.”
Ms Dhu was hurting from comments by the police officers captured on CCTV, after dumping the possibly lifeless Ms Dhu in the rear pod of the police vehicle. A police officer is heard “Oh, shut up”. Some of the gallery thought he was telling a ‘moaning’ Ms Dhu to ‘shut up’ but her mother, Ms Roe, and others, believe the officer said this to another police officer who may have quipped taking Ms Dhu “to the morgue”. I believe Ms Dhu was unconscious by the time she was placed into the pod. However Ms Roe has asked the lawyers representing the family to ask the Court for clarification on the comment.
The CCTV footage, an hour long, showed Ms Dhu physically suffering and pleading her case to police. “I am hurting,” said Ms Dhu.
“I am in so much pain.”
“Oh God, someone please help me.”
Counsel O’Brien effectively damned the Hedland Health Service, describing medical staff reporting that Ms Dhu was a perpetrator of “behavioural issues”. The racist presumption of an Aboriginal woman in the company of police went straight to ‘disorderly’. To make it worse a police officer said to a nurse that he believed Ms Dhu “was faking”.
Throughout the CCTV footage it was clear that Ms Dhu was in rapid physical deterioration but police who had taken Ms Dhu twice to the Health campus till her third and final journey were reticent to believe her. They should have called for an ambulance on each occasion Ms Dhu complained of being terribly unwell, but they did not call for an ambulance. A female police officer is captured on CCTV footage telling Ms Dhu to relax her breathing and that this will relieve her chest pains. All of a sudden this police officer is a physician!
Ms Dhu’s cries for help were relentless. The neglect and stupidity by both the police and health mob led to Ms Dhu’s death.
Police do have a lot to respond to. The systemic underlying factors that were on the occasion of Ms Dhu’s death evident, visible right from August 4 last year to all who cared to notice were even more damning following the CCTV footage screened in the coroner’s court. Police officers had failed to respond to Ms Dhu’s pleas. At the end of it all, they went to check on her possibly lifeless body in the cell. They lifted her arm and it dropped. The police officers stepped outside the cell to discuss what next. Instead of calling an ambulance they went back inside the cell and dragged Ms Dhu to the cell floor. One officer dragged Ms Dhu by the arms along the floor out the cell door. Then they lifted her by the arms and legs and carted her through the police station, outside, and to the police vehicle. They lifted her into the rear pod of the police door and shut the door on her. None of them wise or compassionate enough to ride with Ms Dhu in the back, to keep her steady and safe from being tossed around. It was shameful, outrageous.
A young woman died because of unpaid fines. We should never damn the impoverished as such but in Western Australia, Australia’s backwater, we do.
And what of the Hedland Health Campus? Some of their health staff had presumed of Ms Dhu “behavioural issues” and discharged the young woman.
Counsel O’Brien said, “By the morning of August 4, 2014, Ms Dhu’s clinical state rapidly worsened, and although it was not appreciated by the police officers involved, some of whom believed that Ms Dhu was feigning her illness, she was in an advanced state of septic shock and only hours from death.”
In August last year, weeks after the tragic, outrageous death of Ms Dhu I flew to Canberra to meet with the Federal Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Senator Nigel Scullion and argue the case to him for the roll-out of the Custody Notification Service in Western Australia (and in the rest of the nation), alongside to an end to jailing fine defaulters (the poor). Minister Scullion saw the merit, agreed and has been a standout in his support and lobbied, urging his Western Australian counterparts to do so. But Premier Colin Barnett who in October last year promised to give everything to reducing incarceration rates and deaths in custody has to date done next to nothing. The Custody Notification Service would have probably saved the life of Ms Dhu.
The coroner’s court today was full to the brim with lawyers – eleven representing affected parties plus four other lawyers as interested parties. The doctors, nurses and police officers are being represented by lawyers. But Ms Dhu had no-one to represent her interests when she was pleading, begging, crying for her life. A Custody Notification Service would have provided a humble advocate at her hour of need.
The police officers should just admit they screwed up and that they made assumptions about her health they had no right to, and delved into racist stereotypes no doubt. The Custody Notification Service will relieve them of the burden and impacts of judgments to which they have no expertise. The health personnel should admit they too made assumptions they never should have made, that they may have presumed of ‘behavioural issues’ with this young woman because she was a young Aboriginal woman escorted by police. Racist stereotypes. This State Government should also scrub up with apologies, compensation to the families and with immediate actions – the implementation of the Custody Notification Service, an end to jailing fine defaulters (the poor) and alternatives to low level offending. If the State Government fails to immediately implement the CNS then they should be called out for what they will be, racists. If the State Government fails to put to an end to the jailing of fine defaulters (the poor) then they should be called out for what they will be, bastards.
There are no words for the loss of this young woman, no words to comfort her mother, her father, her grandmother, her uncle, family members but for goodness sake there must now surely be a legacy of immediate and significant systemic changes.
– Declaration of impartiality conflict – Gerry Georgatos, a suicide prevention researcher and prison/custodial systems reform advocate, has lobbied the Federal Government for the Custody Notification Service and alternatives to the jailing of people for fine defaulting. He has also lobbied for other recommendations and outcomes on behalf of the family of Ms Dhu.
Who or what killed Ms Dhu?
Gerry Georgatos – November 27th, 2015
I have attended nearly three of the four days thus far of the coronial inquest into the police watch house death of 22-year-old Ms Dhu. I walked away today somewhat disenchanted at the prospect of substantive systemic changes. Yes, hopefully the long awaited end to the jailing of fine defaulters will come and we will also see the speedy implementation of the Custody Notification Service. But what of the racism, the classism, the negative stereotypes disconnecting society? I walked out of the court dejected by the reductionist testimonies, the blame shifting, the less than honest responses, the ‘cannot recall’ line.
I am one of these types who believes that people should be honest, and where it can make a difference then account for their every word and deed. However that is not the society we have geared ourselves towards or that our legal systems prosper from. Interest groups and individuals are about covering their back and their lawyers respond accordingly to their direct needs. People make mistakes, people make poor decisions and people are vulnerable to biases, prejudices, racism, classism, the whole lot. But we need to admit our mistakes, so we do not keep on screwing over others. Everyone is entitled to redemption, or should be. Outside the likely implementation of the Custody Notification Service and a possible end to the jailing of the acutely poor (fine defaulters), this coronial inquiry because it is high profile could have generated an in depth insight into systemic, structural, institutional racism – but alas another missed opportunity.
Today, I heard a medical director of the Hedland Health Campus “categorically reject the notion of institutional racism” at his hospital. Well, that’s bullshit. He claimed that there has been significant cultural awareness training at his hospital. He stated that 70 per cent of patients at the hospital are Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. He does not understand what institutional or structural racism is and means. Cultural awareness and anti-discrimination training require one to acknowledge that racism exists in every institution, in every workplace, among the most well-meaning and best of people. All structures are people. Of course there is racism at Hedland Health Campus, just like there is at the South Hedland Police station.
Racism has many veils and layers. Racism is not limited to the overt and often visible harm that one can do to another but includes also what people think of others. Classism has fundamental similarities, from the presumptions of people as lowly or as scum, and of perceived affectations from their marginalisation. Racism and classism, just like ageism and sexism, perniciously assert within even those who presume themselves ‘progressive’. There is nowhere I have never seen racism, classism, sexism and ageism, not even in coalface social justice and human rights groups. They are often impossible in the immediate to cull but can and should always be managed or worked through. The coronial inquiry has this opportunity – this in terms of the systemic racism that led to Ms Dhu’s death.
Today, the coroner’s court heard that medical staff failed to properly investigate the vital signs of Ms Dhu during her two brief presentations. No-one took her temperature. Yet she was found to be ‘warm’ when touched. No-one ordered a chest x-ray. Yet she complained of chest pains and reported a recent rib injury. In the tumult of triage, with rapid assessments generally the go, medical staff failed to insist on a full suite of medical tests, despite Ms Dhu complaining of unbearable pain, weakness, chest pains, and despite tachycardia – she recorded a pulse beat of 126 per minute. The racism and classism coupled, Ms Dhu was seen as a drug using impoverished Aboriginal person. She was not taken as seriously as she would have been had she been a working or middle class non-Aboriginal person.
If you are a young Aboriginal person, you are more likely to die in a police watch house than anyone else. When it comes to prison deaths, there are more non-Aboriginal deaths in custody than Aboriginal deaths in custody but once again if you are a young Aboriginal person, you are more likely to die in custody than anyone else. Aboriginal deaths in custody, whether in police watch houses or in prisons are more likely unnatural deaths than when compared to non-Aboriginal deaths in custody.
In February 2016, there will be another opportunity in the coroner’s court to address the same systemic issues that led to Dhu’s death. Another Aboriginal woman, 44 year old Maureen Mandijarra, died in a Broome Police watch house cell on November 30, 2012, after being detained for being drunk in public. The next morning she was found dead in her cell. There are also three more Aboriginal prison deaths in custody waiting coronial inquest dates in Western Australia. All three committed suicide – Jayden Stafford Bennell, 20 years old, who died on March 6, 2013, Aubrey Wallam, 31 years old, who died on October 22, 2014 and Mervyn Bell, 28 years old, who died on September 8, 2015.
Next week, the Hedland police officers will have to account to their every word and deed. Will they be honest? Who knows? They should if they want to see a difference made. A high level insider has stated to me that the police officers and the Police Commission have been asserting that in effect Ms Dhu’s deterioration and death was not their fault. They have shifted blame to the medical personnel. They argue that they presented Ms Dhu twice to the Hedland Health Campus but that the medical personnel “gave the all clear”. Yes, the medical personnel failed Ms Dhu. Yes, the medical personnel could have saved Ms Dhu. But they did not, and yes, the medical personnel need to be honest here – that they disastrously screwed up. They did not take an impoverished Aboriginal woman in police custody as seriously as they should have. The nurses and doctors can argue all they like, but these otherwise very good people should call in the racism that clouded their thinking and judgments. But hey, that is not the society we live in. I’ve understood racism since a young child, it is my lived experience – this has never been a society where individuals and institutions come out with the admissions. You need everyone to come together if you’re going to resolve racism – does not happen any other way.
Police officers failed to respond to the relentless cries for help by Ms Dhu. They took her twice to Hedland Health Clinic where she was reduced to, assumed to be, an impoverished, substance misusing Aboriginal person, and as though unworthy of proper care, and soon after discharged. The coronial inquiry can delve into the detail of what was said by police to Ms Dhu and what was not done by medical personnel for Ms Dhu. The coronial inquiry can delve into the incomplete medical assessment of Ms Dhu but what the coronial inquiry must drop all onus onto is the why this occurred, and it must deliver substantively its findings and rulings from this premise. We are hearing a lot of what should have been done but not enough on why it was not done.
Next week the police officers involved have the opportunity to rise to the occasion – I am sure most if not all of them are very good people. Unlike the medical personnel thus far who have failed to apologise and admit their errors, the police officers can lead the way, apologise for their mistakes – that they had no right to not take seriously Ms Dhu at all times, that they did see her as ‘just’ an impoverished Aboriginal person. The police officers have nothing to lose by being honest, they have in fact everything to gain. Just like the medical personnel did.
The causative factor that led to Ms Dhu’s death was not the alleged domestic violence between Ms Dhu and her partner, Dion Ruffin – this is not relevant to the coronial inquiry. The police officers and the medical personnel per se were not responsible for the death of Ms Dhu. But the underlying reasons behind some of their actions were responsible for the death of Ms Dhu. Who and what killed Ms Dhu? The causative factors were racism and classism, institutional and structural racism and classism. Where the police and medical personnel do not rise to the occasion and admit this, they then become complicit in entrenching racism.
The State Government, Hedland Health Campus and the Western Australian Police should also scrub up a significant compensation package for the affected family members – particularly the five siblings of the late Ms Dhu – to assist them through trauma recovery, healing, and to send the vital message “that we care” and “are sorry”.
Declaration of impartiality conflict – Gerry Georgatos, a suicide prevention researcher and prison/custodial systems reform advocate, has lobbied the Federal Government for the Custody Notification Service and alternatives to the jailing of people for fine defaulting. He has also lobbied for other recommendations and outcomes on behalf of the family of Ms Dhu. Georgatos is a prolific writer on racism and discrimination and his two Masters and PhD racism have delved deeply into identifying and understanding racism and the ways forward.
Why didn’t police attempt to resuscitate Ms Dhu? Treated like less than nothing
Gerry Georgatos – December 2nd, 2015
The coronial inquest into the death of Ms Dhu has degenerated into a farce. We do not need coronial findings to let us know whether racism and classism led to Ms Dhu’s death. This is as clear as the light of day. Even if the findings are muted or otherwise they cannot deny what every reasonable minded person knows. If it was not deplorable racism and classism that led to this young woman’s death then it was incompetence of such abysmal magnitude that would insist every police and medical officer involved is unfit to continue their service.
If the police and medical personnel cannot admit to the racism and classism that washed through their veins and that reduced their capacities and judgments, then they should be stood down. The disgraceful low level care dished out by medical personnel warrants responses. Nurses and doctors failed to do the baseline stuff, failed to take temperature, failed to check the respiratory rate, failed to do blood pressure and heart rate. It stinks.
The police can argue that they took Ms Dhu twice to Hedland Health Campus before returning her to the hospital more than likely dead. They should have taken her every single time she complained of being unwell. They should have called the ambulance. They should have organised for a nurse or doctor to attend Ms Dhu in her cell if need be. But they did not. Instead some of them accused Ms Dhu of “faking”.
What shocked me was the CCTV footage on the first day of the inquest. I was stunned by the footage of the police officers ‘responding’ to Ms Dhu in the watch house cell just prior to her body taken to the hospital for the last time. Ms Dhu was motionless. Did they check for a pulse? No. Did they check if she was breathing? No. One officer lifted Ms Dhu’s arm and let it go – it dropped. What do you think they did next?
They stepped outside for several minutes to yarn about what to do next?
What would you have done? You would have checked for a pulse, breathing and for any vital sign of life. We are educated to understand that where someone appears to be without vital signs of life that we do not waste a second. Even someone without First Aid skills, without cardiopulmonary resuscitation training can save someone’s life. But police are actually highly trained in how to respond to someone in distress or with CPR. I am waiting to find out what they have to say about why they did not attempt to resuscitate Ms Dhu. Why they did not check for pulse and breath. Disgracefully, they went back into the cell and dragged Ms Dhu by the arms along the cell floor into the corridor and then picked her up the arms and legs and carted her to the pod of a police vehicle. Their training should have required of them to keep Ms Dhu stable, comforted and where no breathing or pulse could be detected to apply CPR.
An officer should have put in an urgent call for an ambulance while they received further advice from medical personnel by phone.
None of this occurred. Duty of care whatever, for myself it was dignity and compassion, common decency and right-mindedness just tossed to the wind.
Medical staff have already testified that they believe Ms Dhu was ‘lifeless’ upon arrival at the hospital. They have described ascertaining that she had gone ‘blue’. Nevertheless they gave resuscitation a shot, 45 minutes. But at the end of this Ms Dhu was pronounced ‘dead’. What if the resuscitation had been applied an hour earlier in the watch house cell?
The family of Ms Dhu will be tormented till March next year – the coronial inquest will not finish this side of Christmas. Too weeks was not enough for all the witnesses and the coronial inquest adjourned to March. Right around the nation many were waiting to hear what the ten police officers had to say.
Would they too have done the reductionist crap of the medical personnel and “categorically reject” there was any racism? Probably, and this is why we continue to go around in circles. Western Australia is the mother of all jailers of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander peoples. One in 13 Aboriginal adult males in Western Australia is in prison today – an abomination, moral, political and otherwise. The more west we journey across this continent the worse it gets for the descendants of First Nations peoples – with the whole gamut of issues worst in Western Australia. Western Australia arrests and jails Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples at the nation’s highest rates, among the highest jail rates in the world when peering from a racialised lens. One in four suicides of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples occurs in Western Australia.
Twenty-seven years after NSW outlawed the jailing of fine defaulters, Western Australia continues this classist, racist and inhuman madness. Police were called out to a disorderly where they should have assisted Ms Dhu, but finished locking her up after a background check found outstanding fines. Their priorities screwed over by draconian protocols. These protocols cost Ms Dhu her life. Racism finished her off.
I speak and write with some on authority on racism – the lived experience, racism has been self-evident and impacting in my life since a young child. I also see it at the highest levels, among parliamentarians, political parties, government instruments, in the treatment of the refugees and asylum seekers I have been assisting for more than 30 years. I see it in the racialised economic inequalities thumped by one Government after another into Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander remote and regional communities. I have travelled to hundreds of communities across the continent for many years. I continue to do so. I see the racism in all its forms, institutional, structural and overt. Racism has haunted me from day dot. My predominant academic work, including doctoral research has been in understanding racism and the ways forward.
The director of Indigenous Rights at Amnesty International, Tammy Solonec, got it right, “It was more than a tragedy. It involved prejudice, racism, reckless neglect and systemic failure which reflects a deeply broken system, one that must change.”
The adjournment of the coronial inquest is a blow for Ms Dhu’s family members. Ms Dhu’s uncle, Shaun Harris, said, “It is an insult, an insult to the whole family. How are we supposed to keep on coping and sustaining the momentum after all this extraordinary effort to get us this far?”
“We’ll have the police in March say they ‘don’t recall.’”
The impacts on the family are more trauma, and of a complex nature – situational trauma compounded as ongoing with multiple and composite trauma.
Let us not beat around the bush and call things for what they are. Let us be fearless in this. Ms Dhu died because of racism, classism, sexism, ageism, because of neglect, stupidity and hubris. But if you view the footage, which has not been released to the public, you’d have to argue heartlessness.
Ms Dhu’s poor father, Robert Dhu, said, “She was treated like a dog.” In fact you would not treat a dog like Ms Dhu was treated.
Ms Dhu’s mother, Della Roe, said, “I relive my daughter each day but my beautiful baby is here no longer.”
Ms Dhu’s grandmother, Carol Roe, said, “They should have helped her and not lock her up, not treat her like she did not matter.”
If the State Government had any right-minded thinking, they would have announced an end to jailing fine defaulters, alternatives to low-level offending and the immediate establishment of the Custody Notification. This would have sent the family a message of love, but nope, our Government is too stupid for this or maybe doesn’t give enough of a damn. In addition to the legacy of changes desperately needed in backwater Western Australia, the State Government, the Western Australian Police and the Hedland Health Campus should scrub up a significant compensatory package to affected family members to assist them with trauma recovery. There are no words for the loss of Ms Dhu that can relieve the deepest sorrow the family feels, the father, mother, the five siblings, grandmother, uncles and aunties. But hey those at fault, and there is fault, can at least show they give a shit and not cower behind the reductionist. It was racism and there should be changes and compensation. No-one is after blood here, not of the police or medical personnel, just the ideal that they should rise to the occasion and speak honestly and they’d do themselves a favour too.
Declaration of impartiality conflict – Gerry Georgatos, a suicide prevention researcher and prison/custodial systems reform advocate, has lobbied the Federal Government for the Custody Notification Service and alternatives to the jailing of people for fine defaulting. He has also lobbied for other recommendations and outcomes on behalf of the family of Ms Dhu. Georgatos is a prolific writer on racism and discrimination and his two Masters and PhD racism have delved deeply into identifying and understanding racism and the ways forward.
WA Police, Country Health, State Government must compensate the families of Ms Dhu – manslaughter
Gerry Georgatos – March 21st, 2016
Police officers have admitted their culpability in the tragic death of Ms Dhu. Medical staff cost Ms Dhu her life. The putrid stench of racism was everywhere in the last days of Ms Dhu. Her family have been tormented since. The anguish borne by her mother, Della, by her grandmother Carol, by her uncle, Shaun has been there day in day out for the nation to see. Their grief and suffering compounded by the abominable conduct of police and medical personnel. Their conduct reminiscent of Birmingham, Alabama some five decades old, or of Soweto, South Africa two and three decades old.
Last year, after the first day of the inquest, I wrote that Ms Dhu was dragged and carted to the pod of a police vehicle. Ms Dhu was dumped into the pod like some would say “a dead kangaroo” and shut inside, alone. No police officer demonstrated the common sense or compassion to ride with her in the back of the van where likely her last breaths were taken. There is no doubt that the police contributed to the death of Ms Dhu, be it by a combination of neglect, stupidity and racism.
The WA Police and Country Health, the State Government, must now own up and do the right thing by the family. There should be ex-gratia offers of compensation, in the millions to the families – to Della, whose remaining children are all younger than Ms Dhu; these children have been wounded by the WA Police, by Country Health, by the State Government. They should not be sacrificed like so many marginalised Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children. To help Ms Dhu’s siblings along, to give them every shot at a good life, to keep them solid, they must be supported and every opportunity guided their way. They must not be left to grow up angry. Carol and Shaun should be compensated so they can care for extended families, the trauma is pernicious. Trauma rarely remains situational. There must be healing otherwise the trauma becomes multiple, composite, complex, aggressive. Shaun Harris has spent the last 20 months relentlessly campaigning right across the nation for justice – and he has achieved this on the smell of an oily rag. He is one of the most proud and honourable people I have met.
The State Government should coordinate a significant compensation payment to the families and without delay.
The police and medical personnel have effectively admitted to the racism that washed through their veins. Racism impaired their judgement. The disgraceful low level care dished out by medical personnel was matched by the abominable racist conduct by police officers. Nurses and doctors failed to do the baseline stuff, failed to take temperature, failed to check the respiratory rate, failed to do blood pressure and heart rate. It stinks.
The police can argue that they took Ms Dhu twice to Hedland Health Campus before returning her to the hospital more than likely dead. They should have called for paramedics or an ambulance every single time she complained of being unwell. Who were they to second guess? Who were they to let racism and classism get in the way? Who were they to presume she was faking? They should have organised for a nurse or doctor to attend to Ms Dhu in her cell. But they did not. Instead they accused Ms Dhu of ‘faking’. Ms Dhu died fighting for life, begging for life, crying out, screaming help. She died knowing everyone around her was calling her a liar – she died betrayed by everyone in her sight in those last days.
Those last days were tortuous and only death her rest.
On the first day of the inquest last year, I was shocked by the CCTV footage. I was stunned by the footage which showed how police officers ‘responded’ to Ms Dhu in the cell – during the last hour of her life. Ms Dhu was motionless. Did they check for a pulse? No. Did they check if she was breathing? No. One officer lifted Ms Dhu’s arm and let it go – it dropped. What do you think they did next?
They stepped outside for several minutes to yarn about what to do next?
What would you have done? You would have checked for a pulse, for breathing, for any vital signs of life. We are educated to understand that where someone appears to be without vital signs of life that we do not waste a second. Even someone without First Aid training, without cardiopulmonary resuscitation training can save someone’s life. Police are highly trained in how to respond to someone in physical distress, in how to apply CPR.
When they returned to the cell, they dragged Ms Dhu by the arms along the cell floor and into the corridor and then picked her up by the arms and legs and carted her to the pod of a police vehicle. But their training should have required them to keep Ms Dhu stable, comforted and where no breathing or pulse is detected then to apply CPR. An officer should have put in an urgent call for an ambulance while they received further advice from medical personnel by phone. None of this occurred. Duty of care, whatever, for me it’s about dignity, human worth, compassion, common decency, right-mindedness but all of this was tossed to the wind.
It was manslaughter, maybe not in any legal definition, but for me it was manslaughter – with racism playing out its ugliest.
The resumption of the inquest only a week ago has heard police officers admit their racism, their culpability. One police officer told Ms Dhu that she was “a fucking junkie” who was “acting”. A police officer said that she believed Ms Dhu was “faking” right up to the last moments of her life.
A police officer said of Ms Dhu’s physical pain, “You are full of shit.”
When one police officer said to another police officer that Ms Dhu is flat on her back and complaining that her legs are numb, the officer responded, “This is bullshit, she has been twice (to hospital). She is faking it.”
A police officer grabbed Ms Dhu’s left wrist. Ms Dhu fell back and hit her head on the concrete cell floor.
Another police officer entered the cell. The officer who yanked Ms Dhu said, “I’ve just dropped her, she’s hit her head.” The police officer did not check the back of Ms Dhu’s head.
One of the police officers who accused Ms Dhu of ‘faking’ has since quit the police.
The State Government should roll-out the Custody Notification Service in Western Australia along the lines of the Service in NSW and the ACT, where since its implementation in 1998 it has led to zero deaths in police watch houses. The State Government must expedite compensation to the families. Country Health and the WA Police should own up with significant compensation and a suite of strengthened protocols that will reduce the impacts of racism.
In my view there are no justifications where Coroner Ros Fogliani can turn to and fail to return the severest of findings against the medical personnel and the police who together combined to cost the life of Ms Dhu. There were medical personnel and police officers whose conduct was abominable and inexcusable and why they have not been stood down should be incomprehensible, but hey this is Western Australia. The diabolical hand of racism was everywhere and yes, in the very least, for me, it was manslaughter. No ifs or buts. The medical personnel and police officers should have owned up to their racism, to their prejudices, to their madness, apologised unreservedly and begin the journey to their own healing with redemption.
Country Health, WA Police, and the Attorney-General should hurry up with compensation to the families – and just do the right thing.