Sky News reported that the “The Australian Financial Review’s Aaron Patrick says the number of occasions where ‘young black Australians are killed by police officers is mercifully small’ amid race tensions building across the globe”.
As Amy McQuire wrote in her forensic examination of Aboriginal deaths in custody, “There cannot be more than 400 black deaths and no justice. There cannot be 432 victims and no perpetrators.”
Alison Whittaker’s research showed: “In my 2018 pilot study on a sample of 134 Indigenous deaths in custody since the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, I found coroners considered referring just 11 deaths to prosecutors and only ended up referring five. Of those, only two made it to court and both resulted in quashed indictments or acquittals.”
Celeste Liddle wrote that “Australia mainly turns a blind eye to the problem, or bends over backwards to justify the fact that Aboriginal people are the most incarcerated race of people on the planet.”
There can be no “mercifully small” number of Aboriginal people killed by police. There is no mercy in Aboriginal people being killed by anyone, let alone people from the organisation that supposedly exists to protect people. The media has a great deal to answer for in the perpetuation of racism in Australia, as this headline shows.
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