Enough is Enough: End Police Brutality, Now!

To The Hon. Troy Wayne GRANT, MP, 

The police in Australia have recently demonstrated a serious problem with using excessive force. Excessive force by the police is a crime which is left unenforced and needs to be treated the same as if any other person had committed assault and battery.

This is critical for the integrity of human rights to be upheld in Australia which is a signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/australia-and-universal-declaration-human-rights).

Australia has even committed to "continue to take effective legal measures to prohibit the use of excessive force by police.", according to recommendation 86.88 in January 2011 of Australia's review by the UN Human Rights Council during the Universal Periodic Review, a process where the human rights performance of all UN member states is reviewed by other states. (http://www.humanrightsactionplan.org.au/nhrap/focus-area/police)

According to Sydney Criminal Lawyers, "police forces in Australia pay millions of dollars in compensation to people who have been mistreated by police officers. In these situations, it is really the taxpayer who foots the bill, not guilty officers." (http://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/police-officers-must-personally-pay-for-bashing-and-humiliating-man/)

This is absoutely not what we want our tax dollars to be paying for. 

As a member of the Australian community, I am concerned about the apparent inability of police to consistently conduct arrests with the use of reasonable force. Accordingly, I make the following recommendations as solutions for rectifying this: 

1) increased deterrence for police to use more than reasonable force in the form of harsher penalties for police who use excessive force. 

2) increased accountability through an independent body assigned to investigate police misconduct so that police are not still left to "police themselves" - experience has shown that police are reluctant to discipline other members of the police beyond merely suspension from duty if even that. (http://www.sydneycriminallawyers.com.au/blog/cctv-is-watching-police-assault-man-then-delete-phone-footage/) 

3) a thorough review of training for police in how suspects are handled with an emphasis on de-escalation techniques and on harm prevention for the person being detained. 

The legislation surrounding police powers and people's rights needs to change to hold police accountable for their actions when using excessive force which harms individuals and damages the community. 

Yours faithfully,