The Northern Territory. A Police State?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




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NT Police: An obsession with controlling Aboriginal people
while feigning a benign interest



NT Police Culture

Articles on Mandatory Sentencing*

Extract from PARIAH mandatory sentencing submission

"Wholesale killing as a means of pacifying hostile Aborigines, became Territory practice."  

"... frontier attitudes now guided official practice (1870's)."  

"The South Australian government had lost control of Aboriginal affairs in the Territory."  
  
Source: A Picnic With The Natives  Gordon Reid, Melbourne University Press, 1990. 

"The NT Judiciary claim, "they had no say over mandatory sentencing"   
(29 May, 1999, NT NEWS.) The NT Judiciary had plenty of say over sentencing - without government cramping their style - in the 1870's, when land theft, abduction, rape, violence and the punitive killings of Aboriginal people, by the Northern Territory Police, were out of control. 

There may have been some moral justification for mandatory sentencing then, when normal laws were inadequate to protect Aboriginal people, in a climate of conquest and "frontier attitudes". To introduce mandatory sentencing now, over a century later, when the descendants of the original "victims of crime" - the Aboriginal people - comprise 80% of the NT prison population is blatantly racist. 

A belief that the racist injustice of mandatory sentencing will somehow solve the problems caused by racist injustice cannot be argued seriously. Mandatory sentencing will only benefit a government intent on further controlling Aboriginal people. 

NT Police are empowered to threaten successively heavier mandatory sentences to people (usually Aboriginal) the NT Police believe are causing problems. Mandatory sentencing also enables trivial offenses to be used to target people who have political opinions - or who engage in political activities - that a long entrenched tradracist government is unable to counter democratically. "

Mandatory sentencing is a powerful (if undemocratic) means of control. The effective empowerment of NT Police to imprison people is a mockery of the Constitutional separation of Police and the Judiciary. 

The real crimes of discrimination and abuse of office are not subject to mandatory sentencing. PARIAH believe the percentage of Aboriginal people in the NT prison system would fall dramatically if they were."

Full Article

*Since repealed

 

"Police Playing Politics"

Interference in legal proceedings and other political persecution by the NT Police, is well documented on PARIAH's web site...

...as are the discretionary powers Police use, in a manner that makes discriminatory powers a more appropriate description.

This is a transcript of The World Today broadcast
at 12:10 AEST on local radio.

NT Police accused of mandatory sentencing bias

The World Today - Tuesday, August 22, 2000 12:32

COMPERE: Could mandatory sentencing in the Northern Territory be having unintended consequences when it comes to discretionary powers for police? A former Territory Labor politician is complaining that a break and enter at his home wasn’t investigated because he's a vocal critic of the policy of mandatory sentencing.

North Australian correspondent, John Taylor.

Full Article


 

 

Police Powers protect a traditionally racist, nationalist and militarist institution: The NT Police.

Article on the militarization of Australian Police

The role of the NT Police has been determined by the historic reality of European invasion in the 'Northern Territory'.

"The NT Country Liberal Party, the NT Police and most NT Government departments, have direct links to the Northern Territory's shameful genocidal past. The "nigger hunts" that were still occurring up until the 1940's. The genocide continues.

In the Northern Territory 53% of Aboriginal men do not live beyond the age of 50. A fast food, alcohol lifestyle as a powerless minority in their own country, encroaching upon a healthy bush tucker diet and traditional worldview.

We are still poisoning Aboriginal people and hiding (from international censure) their corpses.

As John Pilger states, "The theft and co-option of Aboriginal humanity, dignity and culture is more subtle now, but the ignorance and prejudice behind it remain granite-hard."

Calls to rob and trash the homes of mandatory sentencing opponents have been published in the "populist" NT News, by supposedly outraged "victims of crime".

This concern for Darwin's (the NT's Capital city) suburban security ignores the reality that most mandatory sentencing involves remote (Aboriginal) communities.

Strongholds where resistance to European invasion still remains. The NT Police role has more to do with facilitating unwelcome and intrusive white interests in these remote regions than "protecting and serving" Aboriginal people."

Racism and Corruption in the Northern Territory of Australia. (Micro/Macro)

By Mick Lambe, 10 March, 2001.

Australia: "...using phone intercepts at 20 times the rate of US counterparts".

S11 paranoia has seen an increase in militarism amongst Australian Police Forces.

A 'war footing' mentality was already present among 'Western' Police Forces, as evidenced by the costly and absurd "war against drugs".*

S11 is seen as justifying further repression against the civilian populations actually targeted by these CIA trained 'Terrorists'.

In Darwin, 50 extra Security Guards were employed, due to the events of S11.

A Darwin Magistrate recently compared an anti-drug war protestor to a 'terrorist'.

Racism and Nationalism

The harsh treatment of refugees fleeing the regimes of countries we are hostile to, or at war with, can only be explained by xenophobia.

A cynical means of maintaining and expanding militarist/economic interests, that have suffered cutbacks, since the end of the "cold war".

The ASIO Act and a Police mindset that equates civil disobedience with 'terrorism,' is the legacy of America's S11 paranoia.

Essentially, European colonialism (and its continued disregard for the rights of indigenous people and refugees) is a common denominator, in the pushing of this militarist worldview.

* As the current NSW Police Royal Commission has demonstrated, police officers have been accepting bribes from drug dealers, and probably have been doing so for a long time. There will always be pressure on young police to accept bribes so long as black market conditions exist.



"The NT Police role has more to do with facilitating unwelcome and intrusive white interests in these remote regions than "protecting and serving" Aboriginal people."

Background Image: Thanks to Latuff.

Northern Territory Police persecuting NAP and PARIAH members

Extract

"...NAP members were protesting the ongoing Police harassment of drug users, young people, Aboriginal people and political activists. Practices endemic to the NT, a state built on violence, land theft and Police militarism.

The Labor Party have proven to be as corrupt and hypocritical as the unlamented Country Liberal Party. The same government apparatus remains, as do the same complaint mechanisms.

State investigating the State

The NT Ombudsman's exoneration of Police brutality at Raintree Park (while expected) was made more insulting than usual, by it's release, prior to the Court cases arising from that incident.

Anyone who has been unfortunate enough to have dealings with these contemptible State lackeys, knows that their perennial excuse for doing nothing...

... is pending Court cases.

This unprecedented speed in legally disadvantaging victims of NT Police brutality, is swinish behaviour in the extreme.

In fact NT Ombudsman Peter Boyce is so protective of State employees, he has warned complainants* that allegations of government corruption will be reported to the "authorities".

Peter Boyce - - "Please do not continue to make such comments in your correspondence to me again, or I will refer them to the authorities."

This was Boyce's defense of serial parasite Tom Stodulka, who 'worked' for the NT Ombudsman's Dept. and the Attorney General's Dept. (under Denis Burke) prior to being appointed ADC Commissioner.

Tom is infamous for abetting the exemption of NT Police from the ADC Act.

This corrupt (and incestuous) government culture has no democratic checks and balances...

*Boyce has still to explain why an ADC complaint laid by PARIAH in 1999 has yet to be acted upon.

 

Police State

...The Northern Territory is over-policed, even by the standards of an over-policed Australia...

http://www.aic.gov.au/policing/stats/pol99.html

... meaning NT Police are well able to mount campaigns to suppress political dissent and to continue the traditional NT Police function of harassing and imprisoning Aboriginal people.

"Aboriginal people have lived in the Territory for at least 40,000 years."

"As late as 1933 police still faced a hostile native population."

From: NT Police History site (sans genocide)

by Mick Lambe


Has the NT become a Police State?

by Gary Meyerhoff

 

NAP, the Network Against Prohibition was formed in March 2002 as a result of community concern around the nature of policing in the NT. NAP is particularly concerned with the state of new drug laws, zero tolerance policing which is rampant in the NT and the level of control in governance of the NT by the police service.

Some examples that suggest that the NT is now a Police State?

* NT Police have been involved in drafting legislation to be passed by the NT Legislative Assembly.

The CLP's Public Order and Anti-Social Conduct Act (2001), since repealed by the ALP was virtually written by the NT Police with the assistance of the NT Department of Justice. Labor's "drug house" legislation and asset confiscation legislation were also drafted and altered by the NT Police Service.

Both pieces of legislation massively increased the powers of the NT Police.

http://napnt.tripod.com/pages/Articles_13.htm

* Diversion initiatives - NT police now control the youth and alcohol and other drug sectors

The juvenile and illicit drug diversion initiatives, funded by the Federal Government to the tune of $5,000.000, have massively increased the powers of NT Police Officers.

Drug users and young people lose their right to silence and the police officers decide on the penalty faced by the person. People must confess to participate in the program. Even after you confess, the police may choose to send you to court rather than participate in an "approved" program.

Many youth agencies and alcohol and drug agencies are now dependent on this program for funding, placing them under the auspices of the NT Police Service.

What else is going wrong?

* Police just received $900,000 for a new phone tapping system and $2,500,000 for 10 new drug squad officers.

* Per capita, the NT has more Police than any other State or Territory of Australia.

* NT Police are the highest paid in the country and they also receive subsidised rental accommodation from the NT Government.

* NT Police control the Government's Summary Prosecutions branch. This situation is unique to the NT.

* NT Police are exempt from the NT Anti-discrimination Act. 

(Even before this ADC-uncontested decision)

* The Ombudsman has exonerated NT police for their brutal attack on peaceful protesters at the 1st Community Smoke-in in Raintree Park.

http://napnt.tripod.com/pages/Articles_1.htm#art1

 

 

 

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