Backlash Against QLD Police Grows As Video Of Officer Pushing Aboriginal Woman’s Throat Goes Viral

Content note: this article contains footage some readers may find distressing.

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On Sunday, NITV video journalist Danny Teece-Johnson posted a video to his Facebook page showing an altercation between several Queensland police officers and an Aboriginal woman inside her home. It’s since been watched almost 650,000 times, made national and international headlines, caught the attention of Amnesty International and triggered responses from both Queensland Police and the Queensland Police Union.

In the video, which was filmed on a mobile phone, an officer can be seen repeatedly pushing the woman in the chest and neck and telling her to “move back” and “sit down” as she tries to reach her 16-year-old son, who is being held against a wall by another officer. The officer’s final push is enough to knock the woman to the ground. Her son can be heard yelling throughout.

Once the boy is in handcuffs and is being taken out of the room by police, the family attempt to follow them, only to be intercepted by another officer who yells, “Sit down and shut up, now!” He repeats himself: “Sit down and shut up. Sit and down do what you’re told,” before turning to his colleague: “You got cuffs, mate? Arrest her.”

“I seen ’em grab my son and he was screaming — I could see he was in pain the way they grabbed his arms – and I just automatically reacted as a mother would,” the woman told NITV News. “I just couldn’t believe that [the officer] was basically hitting me when they are against domestic violence.”

The boy’s 17-year-old sister, who filmed the incident, told Daily Mail Australia she had been dragged out to the street by officers, leaving scrapes on her legs, and that her two-year-old son was left alone in the house while members of the family were forcibly taken outside.

In a statement, police media said officers had responded to complaints of a domestic disturbance in the northern Brisbane suburb of Zillmere and entered the house after hearing a woman scream. “It is alleged that whilst investigating the matter, police were both obstructed and assaulted by persons in the house, resulting in four persons being detained,” a police spokesperson told media.

According to Teece-Johnson, though, the allegations of a domestic violence incident necessitating the entry of police into the house are untrue. “The Police went to the house on a anonymous call from the public saying there was a domestic violence dispute. This turned out to be totally false and they we’re [sic] just having a sing & a dance like most Australians do on a Saturday night,” Johnson says the mother told him in his Facebook post. 

Yesterday Queensland Police announced they were launching an internal investigation into the incident “as a matter of course,” although they have not yet received an official complaint from the family. Queensland Police Union chief Ian Leavers defended the officer depicted in the video, telling ABC Radio it appeared the officers “showed a lot of restraint” and that he “would have arrested her well before they did”. Leavers made headlines in September after defending the right of officers to respond with force, admitting that he had “hit back” on a few occasions after being provoked.

Amnesty International have begun an online campaign to bring the matter to the attention of Queensland Police Minister Bill Bryne, saying that “it is shocking to see this kind of police behaviour, especially given Queensland’s recent strong stand on violence against women with a new domestic violence bill”. More than 3,000 people have signed a petition calling on Bryne to launch a public investigation.

The controversy comes three days after another Queensland police officer was charged with common assault and deprivation of liberty, after an eight-month internal investigation into allegations the senior constable had used excessive force during a traffic stop resulted in his suspension from the Service.

Meanwhile, a new state government plan will require police officers on the Gold Coast to wear body-mounted cameras, after numerous allegations of police brutality surfaced in the course of two weeks last last year.

In his Facebook post, Teece-Johnson said: “This is how#deathsincustody start. We need to have a national discussion on how police engage with our mob.” Johnson was referring to Aboriginal deaths in custody, of which there have been a shocking number in recent weeks. On December 29, a 26-year-old Dunghutti man died in custody at Sydney’s Long Bay jail. While the NSW Department of Corrective Services have stated they are “not treating [the man’s] death as suspicious,” the ABC reported at the time that he was being restrained by several guards at the time of his death.

13 days earlier, another Aboriginal man — this time in Broome — was found dead in his cell just four hours after a court appearance. According to the man’s father, police called him with the news that “your son is dead,” but did not reveal which of the man’s sons had died until another phone call half an hour later. He did not know his son was in custody.

Teece-Johnson himself made the news in November after another Facebook post, in which he claimed police stopped and frisked him for drugs at Sydney’s Redfern train station based on his appearance, went viral.