Police Accountability: A Victorian Community Law Centre Project

Friday 15 August 2014 @ 10.59 a.m. | Crime | Judiciary, Legal Profession & Procedure | Legal Research

Recently we posted that the Federal Government was revising drafting of service agreements which the Federal Government uses to provide funding to Community Legal Centres (CLCs) around Australia. By doing this it was seeking to limit the public funding such organisation can put toward law reform work and advocacy (see Community Legal Centres: Budget and Other Attacks). An article in last weeks Age newspaper serves as a good example of the valuable contribution reform and changes to the community CLC's can make when allowed their reform and advocacy roles.

The article reports on the participation in the Police Accountability Project (the PAP) by a group of Victorian based legal professionals. The project is being run by they Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre (the FKCLC) and is said to be showing:

". . . how strategic litigation together with public interest advocacy and law reform work can improve the lives of local communities."

Establishment of the Project

FKCLC’s establishment of the PAP in 2007 is reported to have been in response to local community concerns about "discriminatory policing practices" and in particular "racial profiling". FKCLC has campaigned for reform of those police practices, following on reports of incidents between Victorian police and African and Afghani Australians living in Flemington and the surrounding suburbs of Melbourne. In this respect, FKCLC reached an important agreement with the Victoria Police in the Federal Court of Australia case of Haile-Michael v Konstantinidis[2012] FCA 108 (14 February 2012) where FKCLC acted for six young African-Australian men who claimed they were being questioned by police on the basis of their race and not for reasons of legitimate policing.

The case was settled and the Victoria Police agreed to publicly review their cultural training and field contact practices and, as the article reports, FKCLC went on to develop the PAP as public interest initiative which has an educational web portal an is now seen as "the first resource in Victoria that deals with police accountability law".

A key player in the PAP is Ms Amy Frew, a Melbourne Law School Graduate who started as an intern with the FKCLC in 2012 as part of the Melbourne Law School’s Career Development Services program, and has continued her interest in developing the PAP’s legal and educational resources and the FKCLC's campaign for police reform. The Age article quotes Ms Frew as saying:

“It is important to drive reform in this area by raising the community’s awareness of their legal rights. Public interest initiatives such as the PAP lead to policy change that benefits the community. The outcome from the settlement of the Haile-Michael case is the launch by Victoria Police of a three-year action plan on discriminatory policing practices,  .  .  .”

Current Status

It is reported that a web portal has been developed which draws on FKCLC’s existing website materials while introducing new materials to create what is described as a "one-stop shop" resource for matters on police accountability law. Matters covered on the web portal include:

  • questions and answers on police powers and a person’s legal rights and responsibilities,
  • recent cases and news, and
  • a guide to making a complaint about police misconduct for members of the community and their lawyers.

Ms Frew is quoted as saying of the web portal:

“Those who believe they have been unfairly treated by the police are usually the more vulnerable members of our community, who do not have the knowledge and support to make a complaint, . . .”

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