Queensland’s human rights commissioner, Scott McDougall, says “clear” and “pervasive” cultural problems are plaguing the state’s police force after leaked audio revealed violent and racist conversations by Queensland police staff.
Police service officers at the Brisbane city police watch house can be heard using racist slurs and offensive language while working in the holding cells, referring to Nigerians as “jigaboos”, and raising fears that Australia “will be fucking taken over” in a series of leaked tapes published by the Guardian Australia on Sunday.
A spokesperson for the police minister, Mark Ryan, responded to the story by saying racist and violent language was “totally deplorable and unacceptable”.
“Any such behaviour is rightfully condemned both by the government and by the Queensland Police Service,” the spokesperson said. “The minister has previously said that such behaviour is totally inconsistent with the values of the QPS.”
Human rights commissioner Scott McDougall, said it was “clear that there is a pervasive cultural problem within the Queensland police service”.
McDougall called on the government to prioritise independent scrutiny of the police including a “thorough examination of recruitment, training, supervision and disciplinary procedures, and ongoing evaluation of the practices and organisational culture of the service.”
“Watch houses are high-risk environments requiring a level of professionalism from QPS officers to ensure the safety of both those detained and their fellow workers,” he said.
The leaked recordings come after horrendous stories about the alleged treatment of women within the police force and the racist attitudes of officers that emerged in recent weeks during an inquiry into Queensland police responses to domestic violence.
First Nations writer and academic Chelsea Watego said the leaked recordings “shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody”.
“This is not bad apples and lone wolves – this is systemic,” she said. “Clearly, there’s a culture here that has been fostered for some time that has enabled people to express so freely such overt, racist views.”
Watego said the kind of attitudes expressed in the leaked recordings “informed the actions” of police staff, sometimes with violent and deadly consequences. The Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman recently brought a racial discrimination case against the state of Queensland after she was arrested outside a nightclub in 2018 and taken to the city watch house. Her case ultimately proved unsuccessful.
“I guess if it doesn’t happen to you, you can be indifferent to it, but too many blackfullas have stories about this and the tragic end to all of this is the increasing rates of black deaths in custody,” she said.
“Our people are dying in these places.”
Brisbane city councillor Jonathan Sriranganathan was held in the same Brisbane city police watch house in 2020 after being arrested while protesting for refugee rights. He was denigrated by the staff in the leaked tapes, in which a police officer describes him as “a piece of crap and a halfwit”.
“Roma Street watch house is a rats’ nest of racist bigotry and systematised abuse,” Sriranganathan said. “It turns decent people who start working there into power-tripping thugs. It’s a really dark place.”
The Greens councillor said watch-house staff had treated him “like I was scum to them” despite the fact he was yet to face trial and charges were later dropped. He said more systemic reform was needed to “get to the heart of the problem”.
“Some of the commentary in the recordings, such as the implication that a watch house officer might have been pressuring an Aboriginal woman for a blowjob, are so shocking, disgusting and outrageous that we really should be seeing a widespread inquiry into abuse and exploitation of people held at any of the watch houses across Queensland,” he said.
“The very way watch houses operate needs to be completely restructured.”
