The mother of David Dungay, an Aboriginal man who died after being held face down by five Sydney prison guards, said it was a “slap in the face” that the public prosecutor would not investigate whether criminal offences might have been committed by the officers involved.
Lorena Allam reports for The Guardian.
“No one showed my son any compassion,” Leetona Dungay told a New South Wales upper house inquiry into the state’s high Aboriginal incarceration rates.
Earlier, the parliamentary inquiry heard that homelessness and domestic violence were behind the growing number of Aboriginal women entering NSW prisons, leading to the breakup of families and children being taken into out of home care.
Representatives of women’s legal services said one in three women in NSW jails was Aboriginal, many of them mothers.
The Redfern Legal Centre lawyer Samantha Lee said it was common for Aboriginal women who call the police to report domestic violence to end up in custody themselves.
“They have rung police because of a DV dispute, they have called triple zero, police have come to their place, and the woman is obviously afraid,” Lee said.
“The police then go to speak to the husband and they form the view that they are going to take the husband’s story and put that ahead of the woman’s story, and what they do is end up arresting the person who has called triple zero and place them into custody.
“One of the problems is [police] are quick to judge and usually they are very quick to judge First Nations people and women.”
Read the full article here. (27 October 2020)
