NT riot police allegedly ‘pointed assault rifles’ at Aboriginal children

HEAVILY armed riot police laid ‘siege’ to a Darwin Aboriginal community, rounding up children and families and pointing assault rifles at them, residents suing the Territory Government allege

Kulaluk Community leader Helen Secretary is one of 38 residents suing the NT Government following a police operation at the Aboriginal community last year. Picture: Glenn Campbell

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HEAVILY armed riot police laid “siege” to a Darwin Aboriginal community, rounding up children and families and pointing assault rifles at them, residents suing the Territory Government allege.

Supreme Court documents reveal the court action relates to an incident in October last year when tactical police — “masked and wearing camouflage, in armoured vehicles and armed with assault rifles” — responded to a report of a person in Kulaluk Community threatening people with a gun.

The court heard lead plaintiff, Kulaluk chairwoman Helen Secretary, whose husband was the subject of the report, told police there was no gun but they responded anyway.

“Police used loud hailers to round up residents, including children and they also conducted searches of a number of houses,” the documents read.

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Ms Secretary’s husband was arrested but later released without charge when no firearm was found.

A now struck-out statement of claim described the police operation as “a wholesale police training exercise with unwitting human targets living in an indigenous community”, alleging “assault, false imprisonment, unlawful arrest and unlawful entry”.

Ms Secretary had argued in an affidavit that police “should have accepted her assurance that there was no one carrying a firearm in the community as she was the community leader”.

But in a judgment delivered late last week, Associate Justice Vince Lupino rejected that assertion, saying the report “justified the response”.

“Moreover, as the person suspected of having the firearm was the first plaintiff’s partner, the police had legitimate reason to doubt (her) veracity and not accept her assurances,” he said.

In a judgment heavily critical of the residents’ statement of claim, Justice Lupino ruled many of the submissions were vague, unclear or otherwise inappropriate and should be struck out.

The word “embarrassing” — legalese meaning the pleading is so unclear as to be unfair to the respondent — appears in the ruling a total of 17 times.

As a result, Justice Lupino refused the residents’ proposed amendments to their statement of claim but allowed them another chance to “further attempt to properly plead a case”.

“Many parts of the proposed pleading are liable to be struck out and it also contains many embarrassing and otherwise unnecessary pleadings,” he said.

“The plaintiffs are necessarily at risk of dismissal of the proceedings if a proper pleading demonstrating a proper and arguable case is not filed and served.”

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But Justice Lupino ruled there was a “a prima facie case of entitlement to punitive damages” based on evidence supporting a finding that “police indiscriminately pointed their weapons at community members”.

“Although I acknowledge that this is based only on one side of the story and the assault may be justified thereby negating any liability for damages, on the evidence there is no justification for the indiscriminate pointing of weapons at persons,” he said.

The residents claimed “police only acted in the way they did because Kulaluk Community was an Aboriginal community” but Justice Lupino rejected any suggestion of “any racial motivation or discrimination on the part of the police”.

The residents will now have until October 4 to file another amended statement of claim.