Tasers are the latest focal point for the doings of WA coppers. Once again we hear of their exploits with aboriginal people. And once again the WA aboriginal community, including Denis Eggington of the WA Aboriginal Legal Service, raise their hands, palms out, and remind us this is simply a common part of their lives.
The story shouldn't be about the weapon. Nor should it be about whether tasers are better than guns; they probably are, given that they kill fewer people. No, this story should be focused on attitude; specifcally the attitude of WA police officers towards aboriginal people.
It's hard to live in this community as a white person without feeling complicit in a shocking, on-going programme of racial oppression.
However, instead of filling your head (and mine) with facts that obviously aren't enough to motivate change, here's a true story that just might do that.
About ten years ago a couple called Ushi and Kylie were on a Perth train heading towards the Showground station. They were about to meet their children who had been at the Royal Show, one of those yearly WA events that most parents hate, therefore many children don't go unless they have either a responsible older relative or, like Ushi and Kylie's kids, parents who trust them to act sensibly.
The train was about half full, mainly with people heading towards the show. In Ushi and Kyly's train were two aboriginal people, both women, one a teenager, the other slightly older. As the train pulled away from a station - and two police guards entered the train - the two aboriginal women noticed that someone had just alighted from the train and left their wallet on a seat. Ushi and Kylie also noticed this.
As the aboriginal women were sitting nearest the wallet, they picked it up first and began searching through it in an attempt to see who it belonged to. Ushi specifically remembers them saying, "Have a look at the cards and see who it belongs to" or words to that effect.
As luck would have it, just as the women were looking through the wallet, the guards walked towards that end of the carriage and noticed what the women were doing. Instead of simply enquiring what had happened, the two guards immediately went into accusation mode. They grabbed the wallet off the women, accused them of theft, and made them sit down. The women became angry and started to tell the police their side of the story, albeit in a heated manner, and no doubt with language containing swear words.
At this point Ushi decided to assist the police by telling them what he'd seen. Normally, one would expect this intevention to be helpful; Ushi and Kylie were witnesses, as were a few others on the train. The police didn't see it that way. Instead they yelled at Ushi to "keep out of this, it's got nothing to do with you", before wrestling the two aboriginal women towards the exit.
At the next station they made the train stop and dragged the women outside and proceeded to knee them in the back as they struggled to put cuffs on them.
All this time, the public (other than Ushi) simply looked on passively.
Ushi became incensed. He'd spent a lot of his life travelling around the world, being originally from Switzerland, and he'd seen things - in countries like Turkey and West Africa - that he found shocking to his personal sense of justice. And here it was happening in his home town.
So he followed the guards out to the platform and began to plead with them. They responded by threatening him with arrest for hindering the police. Ushi then turned to members of the public who had gathered at the station, and began to tell them what had happened. When the guards saw this they threatened him again, but Ushi persisted. Finally, with the aboriginal women all trussed up, one of the guards went towards Ushi.
This is where Ushi made his first serious mistake. He ran. But being much older, and having suffered a few soccer injuries over the years, he'd forgotten that he was no longer that fast. So the guards arrested Ushi for hindering a public officer in his duty.
Eventually, after many court appearances, Ushi and the two women were found not guilty. But Ushi, normally a very polite and quiet man, says to this day that when he heard that neither of the guards were sacked, charged or castigated for their actions, he very nearly packed up and left Australia.
Fortunately the railway police didn't carry tasers.
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