No Justice, No Peace!

which my colleague Amy Maguire spoke about. So this week we're going to speak about all three and particularly the issues around police shootings and some of what happens in terms of the reporting and how people come to know and I say this in inverted commas the facts, because these facts tend to paint a narrative all too often that blames the person that's dead, the blackfellow, instead of

ever blaming or questioning the actions of police. And this is why five hundred deaths in custody can occur and there's never a conviction. So to begin with, we're going to talk about what happened in the trial of a police officer who was charged with the murder of JC in Western Australia. And Amy, I just wondered about when you heard the verdict, what were your initial thoughts.

following it. But when you have a situation where there's an Aboriginal woman being shot by a cop and that there's this really historic thing that's occurred where the police officer involved is actually charged with their murder, you would expect much more attention being paid, particularly, you know, less a year or two after Black Lives Matter protests in twenty twenty, I should say a year after. So it was really disheartening for me to see that there was

that lack of focus on the trial. And I think that has to do as well with the silencing the family that comes with court cases and the justice system

and their proceedures and protocols. But I remember I was speaking to people who had been at the trial pretty much every day on the day of the verdict, and it seemed, you know, that the decision could go ive a way, and so to hear that the man had walked free on charges of murder, the police officer who shot and killed Aboriginal women JC and Geraldton was just really heartbreaking because we've seen it so many times before, and I think the lack of focus and the lack

of attention from the media has really played a part in that. And I should note that I did an article on my independent media site, Presence on so Stack a few days after that verdict, and I was actually meaning to write another piece or publish another piece in that very same day, and it was on another police shooting of an Aboriginal man in Colorado, Brie in New South Wales in twenty ten, Mark Mason Senior. And to this day there has never even been, you know, charges laid.

The coronial inquest was largely just a matter of police protocol and was set about legitimating police use of force. And so we had these two cases, you know, a decade apart or nearly a decade apart, and yet in

both cases, despite their differences, there was no justice. And I think that says so much about what's currently happening in this country, but particularly where you have such an obvious case of police brutality, police violence, the way Aboriginal people are shot in public space, you know, in these communities, the fact that there isn't this outrage directed towards it.

It's just very telling of the way a Showia still viewed black lives, but particularly black lives that are seen as criminals through the justice system.

and even Sky News talks about these cases. And yet the murder of the twenty nine year old Umatchi woman from Western Australia JC, I mean, it really got no coverage from the beginning, and there seems is real unwillingness from the Australian media to have any accountability in the terms of analyzing what's going on or even just giving some basic humanity to the indiview joined to their families.

I mean, you see, George Floyd's family has been all over the international media, and Aboriginal victims just never get that. And I mean, you're a journalist, why do you think that continues to happen in Australian newsrooms.

you know what I mean. So I think it comes down to the way journalism is actually practice and how often it works against Aboriginal people. So they're really privileging the accounts of the criminal justice system of JC, even before she died, or even before she was in the sights of the justice system, even before she was killed

on that street in Geraldton. And I think it was a point that was really pertinently made by Professor Meghan Davis on Twitter on the same day that the vertical was handed down, and she basically said, you know, this is what occurred in Jac's case. They forensically raped over her criminal record. It was long, and despite her mental health, the defense lawyer painted her as more of a lethal threat than the constable who took her life. The system

isn't some abstract thing. And I think that said it so much in a nutshell that you know, despite all the violence that have been perpetrated against her and that she was struggling with, she was seen as violent, and she was seen as the threat. And I think the other thing is, you know, you mentioned George Floyd, and I know we've talked about it before. You know, we saw the video footage straight away, and that's what led to waves of international outrage, you know, seeing George Floyd

being murdered on camera. Now with jay Z's case, after the verdict was handed down, the CCTV footage of Jac's death that day was released to the public, and we see a complete disparity in that footage and the way she is described and the way the police are described. So what I saw in that footage when I watched it was she's walking along the street. You know, police officers pull up, pull up behind her. She's you can tell she's for me. She's not a threat at all.

You know, she's obviously very mentally young well, and she needs support. The first police officer who was going to was unarmed, and he actually knew her, he'd helped her ten days before, and he had he said that he did not think she was a threat. That's why he didn't have his weapon. Within I think a very short period of time, less than twenty seconds, another police that has come over with her gun and has shot her,

and she's slumped down. And what you know, you hear in the media or in the court was actually lunged or she wasn't walking, She hadn't stopped walking, she hadn't stopped moving her feet. You see the video footage actually contradicting that very same account, and yet it wasn't believed.

You know, they you know, Aboriginal women are not believed even when it's on it's court on camera, and so I think that raises a whole host of issues about the way also Aboriginal women as victims, particularly when police are perpetrators, are seen by non Indigenous juries. What did you have to say about that mat and when you saw the video footage after it was released, knowing that there were these other accounts of the last moments of Jc's life.

into custody without injury. And we've seen it time and time again, whether it be raids on bikes and shootouts and all other types of people. And yet JC had done nothing wrong, is walking down the street and she's shot, and she's painted as violent and a threat. So to me, it just never computes that someone who has massacred dozens of people can be taken safely into custody, but these same police somehow crap themselves and have to shoot when

it's an Aboriginal woman. And I guess this is a good way of introducing something that we've spoken about a lot before, which is, to me, the criminalization of the public displays of symptoms of mental illness. And the way I would explain it is that if someone had an epileptic fit in front of the police and they shot them. We would be outraged. If someone had a heart attack as a result of coronary heart disease and the police

shot them. We'd be outraged. If someone was suffering leukemia and displayed a symptom of that, perhaps a bloody nose,

we would be outraged. And yet all JC did was display publicly symptoms of her mental illness, in any other illness, why is that still okay to be deemed as a threat displaying a symptom of your illness something that was very well known, as you said, to police, so much so that another police officer, a more senior police officer who was there on the scene, knew that and was trying to calm the situation and said on the stand himself that he didn't feel that Joyce was a threat,

and he was the one standing closest to her. And yet the officer who pulled the trigger arrived on the scene and within sixteen seconds JC was dead as a result of his actions. Now, I just don't know how someone can a police officer, can do that and not be punished. I mean, I honestly believe that had that same action been committed same violence been committed against Martin Bryant. That cop would be in deep trouble if they just turned up and pulled the trigger, shooting past their own

colleagues at someone. And that was when you have someone who had murdered dozens of people, was armed with an assault rifle and was shooting at police, none of which JC had done. She'd done nothing wrong but walk down

the street and display a symptom of her illness. And we're often called hysterical and angry and all these things when we raised this issue, Well, what else should you be if you can receive a death sentence for being an Aboriginal woman who displays a symptom of their illness, And this is something we have to come to terms

with as a country. Or there is really no point mentioning how many black deaths in custody there have been for the broad media to mention that or anyone else, because if you can do that, if you can kill JC in the manner in which the police did, then number is just going to continue to climb and there's no way around that. So I think there was also again this lack of any real responsibility taken by the

media any humanity, any decency, any morality. I mean, forget calling themselves the fourth estate, when rather than explore these issues of the way we criminalize those who are mentally unwell, they instead focused on things like a criminal history, which I should say are largely inadmissible in a court of law, and yet were introduced by the media and taint the jury pull en mass as they do with any time an Aboriginal person is killed by police, as we saw

in Sydney with the murder of an Aboriginal man, the first thing the police mentioned is the criminal record. Well, in court, unless it's relevant, it can't be raised. And yet juries are reading article after article, watching program after program for months before they ever find out they've been called up for jury duty, and they've heard all of this prejudice nonsense, and you know it's no wonder, and it's just you watch the CCTV and you see that

people claimed that JC lunged at police. She didn't know such thing. I mean for a witness to be able to go on the stand and say that when it's obvious to everyone, when even the most senior officer on the scene, who knew JC the best, who was the one standing in front of her said she did no such thing. That witnesses are allowed to just blatantly lie.

And you know, again, it really troubles me that Australia as a country, and media as a whole in Australia can feel a great deal of sympathy watching what happened to George Floyd and feel troubled enough and guilty enough to want to write about it and talk about it and do all those things, and yet feel nothing for an Aboriginal woman who had the same thing done to her in the country in which they live, on her land. And to me, it's just there's this sick lack of

humanity that continues to live inside most Australians. And it's easy to point the finger at the justice system, but the justice system is run by people, whether they're the judges, the prosecutors, or the jury. And this again was an all white jury, and these are all things we're going to have to seriously grapple with.

And you're totally right about the criminalization of those symptoms of mental illness or symptoms of trauma, because as you spoke, I also thought of another case in Western Australia around Baby Charlie. And for our listeners who may not know, Baby Charlie was a young not even one yet, little baby boy. Original baby boy and his mother had been the victim of an assault by her partner. At the time when the police turned up, she was actually displaying

trauma symptoms. She'd just been assaulted by that partner. Instead of helping her and keeping baby Charlie safe, the police arrested the mother and baby Charlie ended up with that man who ultimately, and this is a really tragic case, ultimately killed him in a really horrendous way. And at that time, the mother and the grandfather we're trying to

get help. We're trying to get help. The grandfather was going to police station and was being accused of being a drunken Aboriginal man, you know, which is another way that this racial violence, you know, operates, and that ultimately ended in the loss of baby Charlie. And there's been no justice over this case and no police accountability of

this case. But if the police had understood and not criminalized the mother for displaying those symptoms of trauma, you know, the symptoms that she was displaying, then Baby Charlie would

likely very well be still alive, you know. And I think that's that's the really tragic thing, is that people don't ask the right questions, and when it's been confirmed in court, you know, this man is seen to be innocent, this cop who killed jac even though he definitely killed her, and we have the footage to show that, we have the fact that jac is no longer here to show that,

you know. I just feel like the right questions and the logics are just not put up, and they're seen as culpable for their own deaths, and sadly, in baby Charlie's case, were culpable for the deaths of their children. And I just think that's so outrageous. So it's not even just you know, JC walking along the street as a black woman. She was seen as inherently threatening, but she was seen as inherently threatening by displaying the symptoms

that should have afforded her help. Not should have led to her death, Not should have led to wider police surveillance, wider police brutality. It should never have happened. And then that violence has been recompounded in the justice system and in the court trials where the families were effectively silenced. And when you know, it's supposed to be a two side situation, but really it's weighted in favor of the police officer, you know what I mean.

These are all cases in Western Australia, and just recently we have seen the West Australian police treated as heroes because they afforded the help to little Cleo and found her and got her home to her family, which is what they are supposed to do, so they're clearly capable of it. And yet when they murder an Aboriginal woman, as you know, I just run through these cases that have happened in Western Australia in the same period of time, they're not even punished for it. You know, it's no

different that someone who is vulnerable requiring help. Little Cleo she got it and thanked God that she did. But why can't JC get it? Why can't miss Win have got it? Why couldn't missed you have got it? Why couldn't Baby Charlie's mum have got it? You know, and these endless cases we could go on with, you know, staying in Western Australia, we previously spoke on this podcast about a mother who rang the police on behalf of

her daughter who was experiencing domestic violence. And this mother who rang for help for her daughter was also a grandma. And when the police arrived, they didn't do anything about the man committing domestic violence. They took the grandmother away

because she had unpaid fines relating to her dog. And that tells you all you need to know about the Western Australian Police Department that they are more concerned about fines relating to a dog than they are Aboriginal women because they are clearly capable of rendering help when it's required. We've just seen it with little clear they found there. She's home, thank God, and yet an Aboriginal woman can't

even walk the street. And I think one of my takeaways from not just Jc's case, but listening to Amy speak on this podcast for the last five years, is imagine being an Aboriginal woman in this country, especially if you are dealing with trauma and grief, and you should happen to display a public symptom of that this country just said once again cops can shoot you for it and there's no punishment, and you wonder why that grief

and trauma continues. I mean, it's hard to know where to go other than I think to heed the calls of what many abolitionists say. But I think what was also telling about that week was also was the daim He had written this piece about Mark Mason Sr. Who had also been murdered by the police, a Gomroy man. So Amy, I'm wondering if you can tell us more about Mark Mason Senior and his family's fight for the truth.

had four children. And basically what had happened was in twenty ten in Colorinda by the police had chased him into a small house in Colorindo Brier and five police officers had cornered him in that house and one of them they tased him, they capsicum sprayed him, and then they shot him, not once but twice. And their claim was that they were under threat because he was holding a tire on him and he was someone who was

in his forties. He didn't drink, he didn't smoke, he didn't have any sort of there was no reason for this intense police surveillance on him. And also he was in ill health. So when it happened, the family had to wait three years for a coronial inquest that ultimately cleared the police and said that their use of force was legitimate. But they didn't question raised the valid questions that the family had. You know, why was Mark Mason killed? Why was he such a threat? Why was he shot twice?

Why was he capsicum sprayed? Why was he tasered? They wanted the right to question every every version of the police events. But from the very first moment that Mark was killed, they were totally they were sort of gaslighted to you know. The police were holding community meetings in Morgut, where Mark Mason was from, and they didn't want the children to turn up because they they were scared that

the children would stage a riot. On the day of Mark Mason's funeral, I was actually in Mortgat that day and I attended the funeral. The streets were filled with right squad police cars because they anticipated that there would be a rite in what a and there was no

such thing. I took to Mark Mason, seeing his son who's named after him, Mark Mason, he said, we just wanted to bury our father, you know, say, at the very beginning, their pursuit of justice was hindered by these really horrific views of their community and their right to protest. So they felt that they couldn't protest. They felt that they had to speak in a form of silence and let the system sort of play its course. But that was because of the way they had been viewed as

an Aboriginal family and grief. It comes back to, as he was saying before, the way we criminalize, you know, very humane responses to things, very human responses to things. You know what I mean, The way the justice system views Aboriginal people is inherently violet, just for expressing grief,

just for expressing more, just by protesting. And so on November eleventh, and the eleventh anniversary of Mark mason sing is death, his children, led by his children and the community, they protested outside the gates of New South Wales Parliament House. And they just want they want an independent investigation, They want the right to ask the questions. And you know, people might say it's been eleven years, but it hasn't

been eleven years for them, you know. There was also footage of Mark Mason's death taken from the end of the daser which some of the family have seen and some can't see. Because it's so traumatic. But I was talking to the daughter and she couldn't ever watch the footage, but she could hear it at the coronal inquest and she still hears those cries, her dad's screaming. It sticks

with her every single day. You know, there's no time to stop mourning or to stop grieving in the face of such an enduring injustice and at the moment, as we've seen with Jac's case, which is such an obvious case of police brutality, you know, the court systems aren't set up to provide justice for Aboriginal people, and so now I'm looking at ways, you know, I think they need the right to have their claims heard, but I'm also looking at other ways that we can form our

own articulations of justice because we can't find it in this system. It's just not set up to deliver justice. It's set up to protect those who are powerful and are enacting forms of violence against us, and that's what the police have been doing for two centuries. But it's just very tragic to think we have the case over it on the other side of the country ten years previous, and you know, there was no charges la, there wasn't

even a proper coronial inquest into it. And then on the other side of the country, just this year, we have an acquittal of an obvious case of brutality against an Aboriginal woman and you know, in the end, the results end up the same, regardless of the protest, regardless of whatever strategy is run. So it says to me there's no one right strategy to fight. It's justice can be found in the fight, I think, And I think

that's what Mark Mason's kids are doing right now. They're finding some form of justice in expressing their live for their father, but fundamentally finding the truth of what had happened to him, so they can say, no, Mark Mason, our father wasn't a threat, he wasn't violent, he wasn't responsible for his own death. These are the people who are responsible and this is what has been denied to us.

at the hands of police. And as you say rightly that people will say, oh, well, why eleven years later, Well, when your family members are being routinely killed by police, I mean, wouldn't you want answers? And I think some things that I don't know if you know, Amy, or if it's possible to know. But other than the police version of events, do we have any independent evidence that Mark Mason Sr. Was even wielding a tire? Right?

You know, a man has been killed by a police officer, there needs to be an independent investigation, and the police were out there absolving themselves saying that no, the police use of force was legitimate, and that hindered any form of independent investigation, and that's what needs to happen. There needs to be independent investigations of every death in custody, and you talk also about the intergenerational nature of a

lot of these cases. We think of Annie Tenure Day, whose uncle Harrison Day died and police custody, but also the most recent death by police shooting in Sydney, Stanley Russell. His brother had died in custody as well, and his parents had been mourning his brother for so long and never achieved justice for his brother, eiver Ted and Helen Russell.

And so it's just it's not even you know, white people can't understand that this is actually a real fear for black fellows, you know, death in the justice system, because it has happened so many times and everyone has had relatives or themselves being in contact with police where where there's been allegations of brutality. You know, every black family in this country knows this to be true, and

yet they're not believed. And we're not seeing White Australia afford us the same dignity as other cases when it happens that the perpetrator is a cop. And I think the other thing interesting about this Mardin is you know, we had this thing and we talked about it a lot about how a lot of these cases we you know, there's all of these deaths and there's no perpetrators, and a lot of the time there's so many perpetrators, and that's the problem. It's the system that's made this environment,

you know, for this to happen. But in these cases there are clear perpetrators. These are police officers with badgers and with names and with numbers, you know, like Chris Hurley was at four six sixty sixty four was his police but he was there. He bashed Molargy to death and was let go. These are cases where there are clear perpetrators and yet they're still you know that the

cop in Jc's case, his identity was suppressed. So you have this issue where Jac's criminal history is raged through and she's put on trial and the man who killed her and shot her has his identity suppressed. He's afforded

an anymenity and anonymenity. Sorry I can never say that word, but you know, these are cases with police shootings where there are clear alleged perpetrator and yet they're still not looking at it as such, and yet Aboriginal victims Mark Mason sein is perpetrator JC is seen as a perpetrator.

You know, we see the difference in the way Aboriginal victims are seen as perpetrators when they're their deaths are at the hands of the justice system, but most particularly by police and by prison guards as well.

detain them, question them, search their house, all of which they did to Mark Mason Senior, and yet they've never presented any evidence as to war he needed to be on that list. And in New South Wales's Aboriginal people make up about three percent of the population and yet are fifty four percent of that list. Now to me, this is really no different. And I know historians and the media in Australia like to talk about the colonial

days as if that was the eighteen hundreds. But how is this any different to issuing a hunting certificate because we do know that Mark Mason Senior knew the police were after him for no good reason. They'd been issued this green light, this STMP to follow him and basically do whatever they wanted, harass him endlessly. And you know, whether he had a tire iron or not. I think if he did, he was more than justified in defending himself because he had been labeled a target for no reason.

I mean, you shouldn't be for any reason. As we've spoken about with Mark and Bright, how did they manage to take him away peacefully? And yet with Mark Mason Sr.

It's the pepper spray, it's the taser. They're pulling the guns out, and again it go I think it goes to the trauma of the families too, that you can be the subject to these orders where the police can sit outside your house day after day, where they can raid your house day after day, where they can intimidate you, prevent you from really living any sort of decent life without living in fear. Then they kill you and nothing happens.

And you know, as Amy said, these are perpetrators with names, badge numbers, faces, all of which get hidden and protected. Why can't that be exposed? Why can't we see that if we can see all this evidence in inverted commas about the victim, if Mark Mason Sr. Had done something wrong, put him in a courtroom and put him on trial. If JC had done something wrong, which she hadn't, and

there wasn't even a suggestion that she had. But even let's pretend there was, put her on trial when I shouldn't say when I was going to say, when did the police get the license to be judged dury and executioner? Well, I guess the truth is they got it in seventeen seventy and it's never been taken away. And you can't say that it has because five hundred deaths since the Royal Commission and not one of them have been held accountable.

And that's where we stand. And so I think the onus is on people to listen to what the families have to say and heed their call. Mark Mason's seeing his family is calling for justice and for this to be reviewed and looked at again, and it has to be. And I think if there's any members of the media with any position of influence they need to do their job.

I'm so sick of the hand ringing that goes on about the United States and other countries and the way they treat their minorities, while those same journalists turn a blind eye to murder on the streets of the country in which they live. And until that changes, we probably will never know the truth of any of these matters, and it will continue to happen. And then you can't ask why because we've just told.

that you may not be doing the right job. You may be doing the job that you were taught in journalism school, that you were taught in extreme newsrooms. But if it doesn't benefit blackfellows, if it doesn't aid the pursuit of justice, if it doesn't advocate for mob it's really meaningless. And so I just wanted to end on Ida B. Wells, who wrote this back in the nineteenth century.

To read the white papers, the Afro American is a savage that is getting away from the restraint of the inherent fear of the white man which controlled his passions, and from whom white women and children now flee from a wild beast. This impression has gained ground from the white papers and has blasted race reputation in many quarters.

But she directly criticized the Black papers who had not troubled itself to counteract this opinion, and said, the clearing of this odium attached to the race name is not only the duty of one section, but belongs to all, and the National Press Association should no longer sit idly waiting for the garbled accounts of the Associated Press, which in turn gives the world gives it to the world.

So that was a clear calling out from Ida B. Wells of what she was seeing at the time where the Black papers, particularly but journalists, were not calling out the obvious violence that they were perpetrating, which was leading to legitimizing this form of violence in the form of lynching and so I think that's a lesson for all of us. You know, we don't have the time or the luxury to be objective. If black fellows are saying no, we need you to stand up and advocate, you know now,

then we have to do it. Because this is part of the reason why these cases, we're not getting justice for these cases, is that because we're not resisting, you know, the way black fellows are being viewed, the way they're being seen as worthy unworthy, the way they're being seen as threats. The situation isn't up to us to be good journalists in the white sense. We have to be good journalists to our communities in the black sense. And I think that's the most important thing we can do.