Civil liberties campaigner Terry O’Gorman says it is a “farce and an absurdity” that tactical police who shot Aboriginal man Aubrey Donahue were not wearing body cameras, and has called for immediate changes to Queensland police policy.
In a statement, O’Gorman, who is the vice president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, also called for enforceable consequences for police union officials making presumptive comments in the aftermath of police-involved incidents.
The union president, Ian Leavers, last week defended the officers involved, including making claims about Donahue’s criminal history.
The shooting at Mareeba last month sparked angry Black Lives Matters protests in the community, amid contested claims about whether Donahue was armed, or constituted a threat to a woman, at the time he was killed.
That anger intensified after police confirmed the tactical officers who shot Donahue were not wearing body cameras at the time.
Police last week said the cameras made available to all frontline officers were not suitable for use by special emergency response team (Sert). Police subsequently told Brisbane Times that trials last year of improved technology for Sert officers were successful, though a full rollout of the cameras had not been completed.
The Courier-Mail reported Donahue’s family has been shown footage from body cameras worn by other officers during a four-hour standoff prior to the shooting.
O’Gorman said questions about the nature of the incident could easily have been answered had all police been wearing the cameras, and questioned the police position the technology had been deemed unsuitable for tactical police, given SAS soldiers engaged in combat are required to use body-worn camera technology.
“It is a farce and an absurdity that Australian SAS officers were required to wear bodycams in Afghanistan when involved in long drawn out firefights with the Taliban but Queensland police Sert officers are not required to wear them when attending a drawn out domestic siege in north Queensland,” O’Gorman said.
“To deprive the public and the coroner of the best possible evidence, namely the audio and video of Sert body-worn cameras, is unbelievable.
“Queenslanders should not have to wait for 12 months or two years for the coroner to make such a recommendation when the inquest into the death of Aubrey Donahue is eventually conducted.”
O’Gorman also criticised Leavers for making public comments about the circumstances following police-involved shootings – pointing to the 2013 inquest into the shooting of Jason Protheroe, which said public comments and actions from both the QPS and Leavers about how the incident unfolded amounted to “criminalisation of the deceased”.
“And yet here is Mr Leavers using the same tactic again in respect of the Mareeba police shooting,” O’Gorman said.
“It is time for the coroner’s finding in the 2013 inquest to be given more teeth with enforceable consequences against Mr Leavers and other police union officials, namely that [they] should not make presumptive comments about aspects of the incidents before the facts are established when it is obvious an investigation is under way.”
Comment has been sought from Leavers and the police union. Leavers told Brisbane Times comments he had made in both matters were intended to clarify what he described as falsehoods in the media that “no other organisation had corrected”.
