No action after report finds police stripped and assaulted woman in custody

The endemic racism of the Western Australia police has again been exposed in a sickening report by the WA Corruption and Crime Commission. The report reveals details of the violence inflicted on an Aboriginal woman at an East Perth watch-house in 2013.

Joanne Martin was forcibly strip searched, assaulted, paraded naked through the watch-house reception area in handcuffs and leg restraints, then left naked for 20 minutes in a cell with police watching her through CCTV.

The report rejects police assertions that Martin had refused to cooperate, instead finding that there was “nothing to indicate” she was a threat to herself or anyone else.

“Notwithstanding those things, soon after her arrival Ms Martin found herself naked, lying face down on a floor, with a number of Watch House officers seeking to forcibly restrain her, one applying hammer blows with a fist to the shoulder blade area, a second also striking her, and another using such force to try and remove a ring that it caused a serious fracture of a finger”, the report states.

The report also concludes that the police had no legal entitlement to subject Martin to a strip search, that use of force to remove her clothing was unlawful, that the use of “hammer blows” was unlawful, that excessive force was used to remove her ring and that she was paraded naked through the watch-house because of the officers’ “desire to mete out a punishment” to her.

While making adverse findings against a number of individual police, the CCC determined Martin’s treatment was the result of “institutionalised failure by WA Police”. It referred to “the failure of [police] chains of command to ensure that the law, various regulations, policies and procedures are correctly applied, and its officers and their supervisors are accordingly held to account”.

In response to the findings, WA police commissioner Karl O’Callaghan has said that no action is planned against any of the officers involved. He told the ABC, “Given that we’ve moved on two-and-a-half years, there is no action planned against them at this stage”. Despite the CCC making no findings about the role the East Perth watch-house itself played in Martin’s assault, O’Callaghan also pointed out that police had since relocated to a new building in Northbridge.

WA premier Colin Barnett, who earlier this year announced the closure of 150 remote Aboriginal communities, has made no comment about the findings against police, saying only that he is “not happy” with the report. Barnett’s police minister, Liza Harvey, who also holds the portfolio for “women’s interests”, proposes no action against police and says that she is satisfied with the police commissioner’s undertaking that he “will work through that process”.

While the sound of politicians trying to establish their credentials as opponents of violence against women remains at a clamour, one woman’s story of a brutal assault at the hands of a police gang barely causes a ripple.