If You're Black in Australia, You Have Reason to Fear the Police

While there have been many, many high profile (and not so high-profile) cases of police brutality in the US, an Australian agency released a 35-page report that exposes how African youths have been racially profiled, taunted and beaten by police.

SBS reports:

Victoria Police officers are accused of labelling young African men "monkey" and "black c***", taking photographs of them gathered on the streets for intelligence purposes and, in one case, taking off their uniforms to bash black men in a public park. Police routinely target young Africans by repeatedly arresting and questioning them about crimes, the report by a legal service says, and demand youths give their names and addresses to officers several times each day. When young Africans complain, front-line officers increase random searches and questioning, the report says. "It's horrible, humiliating," says Aran Brown, an 18-year-old African refugee who says he has experienced discrimination in Melbourne. Police have randomly pulled him off the street and questioned him about break-ins and drug activity, he says, so he now runs away when he sees an officer. The last time he ran, a police officer followed him. "He started chasing me and when he caught up to me he said: `Wogs are faster than niggers'," the teenager told AAP near his home in a high-rise housing commission flat in Flemington on Monday. "If a cop can say that to me, who can I complain to? What do you do when it's the police who are harassing you?"

To illustrate how difficult it is for this this community in that country, the report cited a 2009 incident in which police asked a group of young Africans to leave a public space, but when they refused the officers left only to return a short time later (out of uniforms) to beat up the kids.




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