The startling evidence of racism Queensland police couldn’t shrug off

Guardian Australia reporter Eden Gillespie in Brisbane. She says listening to the Queensland police watch house tapes left her ‘sick in the stomach’. Photograph: Dan Peled/The Guardian

Eden Gillespie could never have guessed that a chance meeting in a courtroom would lead to the public release of damning evidence of racism in the Queensland police force.

It was August 2022 and the Queensland state reporter for Guardian Australia was covering the commission of inquiry into Queensland police responses to domestic and family violence – the state equivalent of a royal commission.