WA Coroner Says Officers Not At Fault In Tragic Drowning Of Indigenous Teens During Police Chase
He said the teens made a "dangerous" decision to try swim away from officers during a 2018 pursuit.
A Western Australian coroner has absolved the police of responsibility for the deaths of two Indigenous boys who drowned in a river during a chase three years ago, instead calling the teens’ actions “dangerous and very risky”.
In September 2018, a 16-year-old and 17-year-old drowned in Perth’s Swan River in an attempt to flee police. Two officers had pursued them on foot after hearing reports of a group of four boys jumping fences into people’s backyards and an alleged burglary, before three of the teens attempted to swim 100 metres in poor water conditions to get to the other side.
A coronial inquest in March this year heard that the younger boy had previous head injuries which made swimming hard for him. “Most Aboriginal kids, especially teenage boys, are scared of police,” his mother told NITV at the time.
“He was scared of baths and yet he jumped into the river,” she said. “I don’t think [my son] would have even had time to think about that actually, the fear that the police put in our kids is not good and it shouldn’t be that way.”
The boy who survived the swim and watched his two friends drown told the inquest he didn’t believe it was an option to stop and talk to the officers, according to WA Today.
Police made the “dangerous decision” to continue chasing them down, they were just kids. #auspol
— DebLRae (@owrlfs) November 17, 2021
In the final report handed down on Wednesday, Coroner Urquhart determined the two officers had acted appropriately throughout the events. “Given the weather conditions and the width of the river, this was a dangerous and very risky undertaking to attempt,” he said, acknowledging that the teens wouldn’t have been aware of the water conditions before they got in the river.
Urquhart made direct recommendations to the WA Force, including strengthening relationships between Indigenous communities and police through cultural awareness training, familiarisation of patrol areas and residents, as well as partnering probationary constables such as the two on duty that day with more tenured officers.