By Ray Jackson
it is once again time for an isja catch-up of matters that are causing our association much concern. more and more we are finding ourselves in a place of frustration at the inordinate and uncompromising power of those groups who abuse their self-given powers to usurp not only what is right but also what is justice. our frustration is not one of loss or defeat but a frustration that assures that our resistance to such human rights abuses grows ever more stronger. we are in a state of frustration at the government crimes that allow these physical incursions into our human rights to happen day-by-day, week-by-week, and so on. we, of course, shall never accept their arguments that we must remain silent and servile to their rules. never! ever!
this post is about a power that is misspent and abused on a daily basis, not only here but around the world.
the abuse of power that is brought to our attention here is the legal machinations occurring around the trial of the six police officers who assaulted corey barker in a most brutal and thuggish fashion in ballina nsw in 2011. they then had the prejudicial arrogance to falsely charge cory with assaulting a police officer. absolutely wrong and criminal in its intent! further charges were also laid to allow for the hoped-for gaoling of an innocent man. an extreme of power out of control. but added to this appalling situation is the sad fact that when the matter came before magistrate helpern in ballina and he, during the judicial process, rightly found that the whole police case was nothing but a farrago of deciet and outright lies, the six police continued to claim, falsely, that they were innocent. as they always do.
magistrate helpern most correctly sent the matter to the police integrity commission for their investigation and adjudication. they found that the six police involved did indeed have a legal case to answer and they sent it on, along with their recommendations, for the matter to go to court to the nsw director of public prosecutions for his judgement as to whether the matter had the legal probability of a case being found against the police in a court of law, sans jury or otherwise.
for power, mr. babb of the dpp reigns pretty much supreme in the legal field with the singular exception of the attorney-general in government from time to time. he has an immense power to publically and legally subvert justice by his findings that police charges, mainly, never seem to have a snowballs chance in hell of making a conviction possible in a court of law. this is of course morally absurd and the office of the dpp is more and more becoming the graveyard of charges being laid against errant police officers. i would seriously consider and urge for some budding researcher/academic out there to investigate how many police cases have come to the attention of mr. babb, along with his predessors, and how many of those cases have been buried to allow those police involved in those illegal acts to not appear in court for their criminal acts. over, say, a ten year period. best of luck with even beginning the process and with being able to report on it. it most certainly would make for some interesting (mis)-justice statistics.
mr. babb sat on corey's case for some time, as he has on several others involving police, before finally allowing these six police to face the charges that should apply to all citizens of this country. unconvincingly however, most police cases get buried such as the shooting of 2 aboriginal teenagers in a stolen car by kings cross police a couple of years ago when the police, with no interest as to the outcome of firing six shots into the car holding six young people, were not thought worthy of facing court for the dangerous use of firearms. mr babb seems to believe that whilst non-police citizens can be summarily charged to face court police are somehow exempt from this practice of justice.
to add insult to injury, the decisions of mr. babb and his office are non-appealable. as the family of elijah holcombe are now tragically finding out. power indeed! the only redress is to the governments that have the unwritten pact (and fact) to protect their police from civil harm. no matter the truth and justice of the event.
returning to the legal situation of corey. the power the police and their unions control extends, we believe, even into the normal running of the court sitting days. the six police, namely sgt robert mccubben, senior constables david hill and mark woolven and constables ryan eckersley, lee walmsley and luke mewing all pleaded not guilty to various charges. hill, eckersley, walmsley and and mewing have been charged with assault, fabricating evidence, making false statements and perjury. mccubben and woolven have been charged with perverting the course of justice and fabricating evidence. (whatever did mr. babb have to think about?). two, mccubben and mewing have, reportedly, resigned already, perhaps to save their pensions. they are all pleading not guilty. as is their right, of course.
isja made known that on thursday, 17 july, 2014 we would rally outside the downing centre court complex to not only support corey against the criminality of the six police as named but also to register our disgust at the perversions of justice that have become a common practice for far too long. on arrival we found that the case had been moved and further questioning found that the matter had been moved to the john maddison centre to allow a conference to take place between the legal teams only. we arrived there to find that the conference was over but the next court date was to be on september 17.
imagine our consternation then when we read in the press that both legal teams had appeared in a downing centre court on the friday, the 18th of july, 2014. none of the police involved appeared in the court on that day as the charges that were served on them were through court attendance notices thereby negating their appearance in person in court. despite the demand of the stated notice. i do not know enough about these court attendance notices to be able to explain the oxymoronic procedures of such notices and their intended result in this example concerning police, or as to whether this is a universal right of the general public to be able to not appear as demanded.
the six police, past and presently serving, have not entered pleas thereby leaving their guilt or innocence to remain a matter of personal and public speculation. the registrar at the john maddison centre informed me that the next conference will be held on 17 september, 2014, and such conferences are open to the public, whilst a press report states that the case will next be heard on 4 september, 2014 at the downing centre.
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all this mad confusion of dates, in my opinion, stems from the fact that the police legals have been instructed to minimise the amount of publicity and protests that are attempting to raise our collective and legitimate concerns against the criminal actions of the police as a whole. this is just a follow on of the police unions and their legal teams attempting to keep their members out of the public eye.
we shall, despite the police tactics, put our best efforts into following corey's case against the six charged along with the continuation of the case through the nsw court system.
the next post will be putting the isja view of the total abuse of power by governments, here and in isreal, against others as they enforce their human rights abuses against asylum seekers and palestinians. we weep with what is being done, allegedly in our name.
fkj
ray jackson
president
indigenous social justice association
prix des droits de l'homme de la republique fraincaise 2013
(french human rights medal 2013)
isja01@internode.on.net
61 2 9318 0947
0450 651 063
we live and work on the stolen lands of the gadigal people