Stopping police brutality and the bad use of Tasers

Indigenous Social Justice Association.

                       TASER! TASER! TASER!                                 

STOPPING POLICE BRUTALITY AND THE BAD USE OF TASERS.

How do we stop the ever continuing acts of police brutality?  The shooting of the kids at Kings X?,… Adam Salter?……Mr Bugmy from Wilcannia? …..Mr Barker from Ballina ….Muslim demonstrators…..84 year old man at Bexley, NSW……and so so many others?

How do we stop the use of Tasers? How to prevent another Roberto Laudisio Curti case? He was tortured and killed by a lethal attack of Tasers, the same weapon that Premier O’Farrell has declared safe to use by ‘his’  police.

STOP POLICE BRUTALITY!  STOP THE TASERS!  STOP THE LIES!

FORUM:  FRIDAY 16 NOVEMBER 2012 AT 6.30pm at the Tom Mann Theatre, 136-140 Chalmers St. Surry Hills. (near Central Station)

Come hear the Families, the Victims, the Experts. Doors open 6pm.

The actions of the NSW police are becoming more and more brutal. There have been cases of wounded youth taken violently from a car wreck and punched and kicked when they were bleeding on the footpath. Victims are tasered many times even after being subjected to pepper spray. Several cases of police assaulting people, like Mr. Bugmy of Wilcannia and Mr. Barker of Ballina, and with the subsequent police on police investigation and cover up, blatant lies on oath in front of magistrates, only to then be proved false with witnesses or recorded material originated by the police themselves on CCTV.

The shootings resulting in the death of innocent people like Adam Salter who was fatally shot in the back by a police sergeant. The many violations of the democratic rights expressed by police intent to stop legal protests with very flimsy arguments, or direct provocation like that clearly shown against the Muslim marchers on Saturday 15 September in Sydney.

Such brutality, however, is not exclusive to only the NSW police. We have seen similar criminal behavior in the NT with the bashing death of Terrence Briscoe. The physical attacks on the construction workers in Melbourne. The over-the-top violent removal of the Aboriginal Embassies in Brisbane and Perth. And far too many other examples to put here.

We know that such brutal tactics were used in cases like young TJ Hickey, Mulrunji Doomadgee of Palm Island, and too many others. There is only one sure way to get justice and that is to create an independent investigative body that is capable of real investigation to find the truth in every case. The Ombudsman has proved to be totally ineffective in his role of oversighting police errant behavior. Similar investigations by the Police Integrity Commission and Parliamentary Committees are also similarly useless. The citizens of NSW, in fact of Australia, have no faith whatsoever in The System investigating itself. Such an independent investigative body must be capable and allowed to find the truth of the events without fear or favour and also to be particularly capable of confronting pressures from governments, police associations and a media that is totally committed to a campaign of “law and order” and calling for ever more draconian laws.  Similarly, with the use of Tasers. Stop peddling the lies about the “harmlessness” of tasers. They are a lethal weapon and police must stop using them until it is proved that they can be used in a much safer fashion, if it is possible to do so.

ENQUIRES: Ray Jackson 0450651063 Raul Bassi 0403037376 or isja01@internode.on.net