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The NSW Police have today defended the actions of one of their own officers, who decided to assault a teenager on Monday because he was having a bad day.
The video, which went viral social media in the backdrop of the US protests against police brutality, shows three police officers speaking to a group of Indigenous teenagers in Surry Hills.
In it, a 16-year-old Koori boy, who cannot be identified under NSW law, can be heard giving a bit of lip – before he was met with an overzealous beat down from one of the officers on the scene.
Given the current civil unrest taking place in America, the Surry Hills arrest is being perceived as the NSW cops baiting the Indigenous community – who have been particularly vocal over the last week about our country’s own alarming statistics of police brutality and black deaths in custody.
A spokesperson for the NSW Police crisis management team says it is completely legal for police officers to assault minors like this, and said he’s lucky he didn’t get strip searched while they were at it – because that’s another thing their officers are known for.
“We defend our officer and his decision to bash that kid” they said.
“We understand how it looks, but it is completely legal – in fact it’s kind of what we teach them”
“We also understand that if this officer didn’t have a badge and was wearing a chesty MOSSIMO t-shirt, his actions would also be considered excessive enough to have an entire nightlife economy shut down on the grounds of out-of-control violence, forcing partygoers to spend close to a decade in the Star Casino while the NSW Government gives residential developers an open licence to gentrify the nightclub precincts”
“But this wasn’t an alcohol-related assault, and the kid getting bashed isn’t a private school boy”
“I mean, come on. Surely you all know by now that there are certain rules for cops and certain rules for you peasants” read the statement.
Unsurprisingly, this statement failed to quell animosity from growing across the country, as the riots in America force Australians to confront a historically racist culture engrained into our own law enforcement institutions.
However, the NSW Police Region Commander, Mick Willing, appealed for the public to settle down and let their internal investigation run its course, because as we know, these types of in-house inquiries are usually quite accurate in their definition police misconduct.
