1 of my most engaged tweets of 2021!
Scott Morrison comments re George Floyd’s murder
“As upsetting & terrible is the murder that took place & its shocking. I just think how wonderful a country is Aust”
A sample of some of Austs George Floyd moments.Warning: its horrific. 1/16
Ms Dhu died in custody of septicemia & pneumonia for $2k in unpaid fines. A victim of DV. Taken to hospital 2xs but sepsis not detected & sent back to custody. Inquest found she was subjected to “inhumane” treatment by police incl being called a “fucking junkie”. No charges. 2/16
Mr Ward, respected elder, blew over the limit. Transported 4hrs without air conditioning. Was literally cooked alive. No charges laid.
If you left your dog in a car & it was cooked alive, you would be criminally charged. The AG decided no 'reasonable prospect of conviction'.3/16
JFW lost consciousness after being held on his stomach during a citizens arrest by a retired police officer & died. No charges.
Ms Mandijarra lay dead on the floor of a police watch house cell for up to 4 hours before it was noticed she was dead. No charges. 4/16
LV went into respiratory failure while being held down, handcuffed, injected with sedative. No charges.
VW, locked up for shoplifting, denied bail.Found dead 3 days later in lockup. She was heard crying for help before being found dead.Her cries ignored. No charges
5/16
Ms Day arrested for being drunk in public,not being a public nuisance,or aggressive, just being intoxicated in public. She died in custody when police failed to conduct mandated checks& didn’t see her sustain the head injury that caused her death captured on CCTV. No charges 6/16
On the same day Ms Day was arrested the SAME police took a heavily intoxicated non-Aboriginal woman safely home.

Black women are TEN times more likely to be LOCKED UP for public drunkenness than white women 7/16
David Dungay; guards rushed his cell to stop him from eating biscuits, he was dragged into another cell, held face down & injected with a sedative. Before he died he said TWELVE times that he “could not breathe”. All captured on camera. No charges laid.
8/16
& let’s not forget John Pat a 16 yr old boy beaten to death by police in front of witnesses. His autopsy revealed a fractured skull, brain haemorrhage & swelling, bruising & tearing of the brain. Pat sustained massive blows to the head. All Officers were acquitted. 9/16
Cam Doomadgee died in a police cell after being locked up for singing too loudly. He died from massive internal injuries incl broken ribs, ruptured spleen; his liver cleaved in two.
The pathologist compared his injuries to a plane crash victim.10/16
Police were not only acquitted but were compensated.
QLD Police marched in protest at charges being laid in the lead up to the trial of fellow officers. 11/16
Just some of the horrific cases of black deaths in custody in Aust. 50% had not been convicted but were detained in custody by police; 40% asked for medical help & didn’t receive it. 12/16
Australia is the worlds highest incarcerator of black ppl. Black Australians are locked up at 2.3 times the rate of black Americans. Adults are incarcerated at 19 times the rate & for kids its 24 times the rate of white ppl.
13/16
Theres been a 25% increase in the last yr of judges not giving bail to black ppl.
For kids, it’s much worse. 87% are in custody on remand & we have no national data on WHY kids are in prison! 14/16
We remain in denial of over policing, racial profiling & the racial empathy gap that feeds the black deaths in custody. This means “blackness” continues to be viewed as explanatory of crime by default & programs therefore fail to address causal factors of incarceration
15/16
Its why we need to keep saying loudly #BlackLivesMatter & why I am also a strong advocate of #RaiseTheAge

My Opinion Piece provides a roadmap of what needs to be done

indigenousx.com.au/we-must-raise-… 16/16

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with Dr Tracy Westerman AM

Dr Tracy Westerman AM Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TracyWesterman

28 Dec 21
We are the only culture in Australia that requires we ‘prove’ our identity.
We are also the only culture in in which Govt policy required us to prove we had severed ties with our family, kin in order to have basic human rights that were promised but never came. 1/4
As an Aboriginal person this practice so offends me. It makes it ok for ppl to Qu identity & creates a damaging narrative we are all frauds claiming some sort of ‘benefit’ to being Aboriginal. I am lucky. I know who I am. I’ve never had to “prove” my Aboriginality. 2/4
The great irony is those pushing for a so-called “test” of Aboriginality are hurting the ppl they claim they are trying to protect. It magnifies trauma for the significantly greater number of Aboriginal ppl who have felt the full force of assimilation policy. 3/4
Read 4 tweets
3 Sep 21
*Trigger warning on abuse
The long term & entrenched impacts of psychological & emotional domestic violence & abuse & its devastating impacts on victims is so badly understood. In many of the worst abusive rships, physical violence is minor or barely present 1/15
In Australia 1 woman a week is killed by an intimate partner. These statistics worryingly tell us it’s not the predator lurking down back alleys women should fear, but the men they fall in love with. The criminalisation of coercive control is such a critical step 2/15
As the family of Hannah Clarke said after she was burnt alive by her ex husband along with her three beautiful children; “Hannah never thought it was abuse because he never hit her”. However, the family had long seen many red flags 3/15
Read 15 tweets
28 Aug 21
Scott Morrison’s comments regarding the George Floyd murder
“As upsetting & terrible is the murder that took place & it is shocking. I just think to myself how wonderful a country is Australia”
A thread of just some of Australia’s George Floyd moments.Warning: its horrific 1/10
Ms Dhu died in custody of septicemia & pneumonia for $2k in unpaid fines. A victim of DV. Taken to hospital 2xs but sepsis not detected & sent back to custody. Inquest found she was subjected to “inhumane” treatment by police incl being called a “fucking junkie”. No charges. 2/10
Mr Ward, respected elder, blew over the limit. Put in a police van & transported 4hrs without A/C. Was literally cooked alive,no charges. If you left your dog in a car & it was cooked alive, you would be charged. The AG decided there was no 'reasonable prospect of conviction'3/10
Read 10 tweets
22 Jul 21
#RaiseTheAge Why does incarceration increase rather than decrease the odds of future criminality? Well, it’s predominantly about the stage of development.
First kids this age don’t fully understand consequences of behaviours in the same way as adults 1/14
They’re rigid in their understanding of right & wrong & driven by an external fear of punishment. Criminalise kids at that stage of development & you risk their moral reasoning ability stagnating at that level. What this means is they learn how to avoid punishment 2/14
(e.g., by becoming better at evading law enforcement; or telling better lies) rather than developing a greater sense of moral reasoning based on an internal working model of right & wrong. Second; attachment matters.
3/14
Read 14 tweets
16 Jul 21
2yrs ago, I wrote this Opinion Piece. Indigenous suicides are escalating; all of the funding is quarantined by a handful of 'experts' who have failed to advance the science of suicide prevention in a way that is objective or measurable 1/14
indigenousx.com.au/aboriginal-sui…
We have enormous amounts of funding injected into this area; yet our Indigenous youth are dying by suicide at EIGHT times the rate of non-Indigenous children and it is only right that we ask why this level of funding has had little to no impact. 2/14
As a country facing this growing tragedy, we still have no nationally accepted evidence-based programs across the spectrum of early intervention and prevention activities. This needs to be our first priority. 3/14
Read 14 tweets
10 Jul 21
I wrote this for the Australian in reaction to the Fed Govts claims they put $134M into 'Indigenous suicide prevention'. This crudely translates to $250K per death by suicide of an Indigenous person; throw state & other funding in, you are close to $1M per suicide death 1/22
Yet as a country facing this growing tragedy of Indigenous child suicides, we have NO nationally accepted evidence based programs across the spectrum of early int'vn & prevention. Staggeringly, funded programs are NOT required to show they are reducing MH or suicide risk 2/22
Given this: can Govt claim they are funding suicide PREVENTION? If you are not measuring risk, you can't claim prevention. Its that simple
More importantly we are failing to gather ANY evidence of what is working to reduce suicides to inform future program & treatment focus3/22
Read 22 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(