A former WA police officer has lost an appeal against his removal from the force over the arrest of an Indigenous woman in Geraldton, which happened just months after the high-profile death of Yamatji woman JC.
A Geraldton officer was later found not guilty of JC's murder.
Daren Lee made an appeal against his removal from WA Police to the WA Industrial Relations Commission in October, but his application was formally dismissed this month.
The commission heard Mr Lee was a police officer stationed in Geraldton in November 2019, two months after JC was shot dead, when the senior constable answered an emergency call from an Indigenous woman known only as Ms G.
Ms G called the station twice saying she needed help to remove her ex-partner, who was white, from her home.
When officers attended they found her in an agitated state, standing on her front step holding a serrated kitchen knife.
The officers asked her to drop the weapon, which Ms G later told investigators had been protection against her ex-partner, and she threw it into her front garden.
Body-worn cameras recorded a conversation between the two officers and Ms G, and a transcript submitted to the commission detailed the conversation in which Ms G expressed fear of her ex-partner.
Ms G: "Your colour could have killed me before you got here."
Mr Lee: "Our colour? Right, if you're going to be racist, we're leaving. Bye."
The conversation on camera was then obscured by loud wind noise, but vision appeared to then show Mr Lee turning back to Ms G and arresting her.
Mr Lee: "You're under arrest, racially aggravated public order."
The offence, which is a United Kingdom charge, is not listed under the West Australian Criminal Code.
As noted by the commission, there was an attempt to understand what made Mr Lee react and attempt to arrest the woman, and both accounts from the officers and Ms G appeared to indicate the woman had referred to him as an "English pig".
The body-worn camera continued to capture the officers speaking with Ms G while she was in the back of the car.
Ms G: "I rang the cops for you to help me."
An officer: "Yeah, we tried to speak with you."
Ms G: "I got assaulted and I ended up here."
Ms G was taken to the Geraldton Police Station where she was charged with two counts of disorderly conduct and possessing an article with intent to cause fear.
While in custody, video footage recorded the moment a gate housekeeper asked Ms G if she had any allergies they should be aware of.
The Aboriginal Legal Service acted on Ms G's behalf in court and later lodged a complaint with the WA Police Internal Affairs Unit regarding her arrest.
Mr Lee was removed from his position on five grounds – including excessive force, unlawful arrest and giving misleading statements — by Police Commissioner, which he later appealed against on six different grounds.
Throughout his defence Mr Lee argued against his removal, saying he believed he had not used excessive force to get Ms G into the car nor had given misleading statements in an evidence brief given to the prosecution involved in Ms G's case.
In court documents, both men stated Ms G had "screamed racial abuse" at them, telling them to "f*** off back to your own country" and "accusing them of murder".
Mr Lee, however, accepted he had attempted to charge Ms G with a UK offence rather than one under WA law, but maintained her racial abuse of him and another officer was unacceptable.
"All I can say is I acted in good faith," Mr Lee later told investigators.
"So yeah, all I can say is obviously I've messed up, it was not my intention, it's not my intention to do false prosecutions or charges – I'm not like that, and UI don't want to do that.
"I was acting in best faith and I'll walk away and learn from this."
'Perfectly reasonable to call out racism'
In dismissing his appeal, the three commissioners wrote that it was clear Mr Lee had not demonstrated any real remorse around his actions.
"Given the events that preceded Ms G's reference to racist white arseholes, including her complaints that she had contacted police for assistance, and they had arrested her rather than her white ex-partner, she had perfectly reasonable cause to call out racism" the judgement read.
"Had Ms G wished to express her sentiments in a manner deemed by Western society to be polite, she might have said: 'I am an Aboriginal woman who had suffered the effects of racism and discrimination by white, colonial society and I no longer wish to be so subject.'
"She did not use polite terms, but her meaning was the same."
Mr Lee's appeal was dismissed on all six grounds.
