‘NT cops aren’t racist’ says watchdog – as it sits on the evidence

Certificates from the 2007 NT Police TRG awards, which ICAC NT commissioner deemed to be “racist” but declined to recommend as worthy of further investigation. Picture: Supplied

The Northern Territory anti-corruption commissioner raised plenty of eyebrows when he asked the Territory’s cops to help him investigate them over accusations of racism.

Now we know why Michael Riches was happy to have the police entrenched in his “investigation” – it was a dud from the start.

It wasn’t just the lack of resources pleaded at the time by the cash-strapped ICAC (Independent Commissioner Against Corruption) NT.

Riches had already told the police commissioner he didn’t see any “utility” in pursuing the actual racist cops. Responsibility, he reckoned, should “more properly rest with the force as a public body”.

What’s more, any police who came forward with evidence of actual racism would never be identified, even to the police force or the Director of Public Prosecutions – meaning no prosecution could ever take place.

Let’s not blame Patricia Kelly SC, the former South Australian judge brought in to clean up the mess after Riches went on indefinite leave following allegations of “inappropriate behaviour” towards female staff, still pocketing a salary of almost $500,000 a year.

Kelly was left with Riches’ “assurances” and inevitably found there was “no admissible evidence” against five cops who had celebrated a ‘Coon of the Year Award’.

There’s plenty of evidence, of course. ICAC is sitting on a pile of it. But it’s been rendered inadmissable by the watchpoodle’s own actions.

One claim by Kelly, however, needs to be challenged.

“Although the investigation to this point has uncovered some evidence of historical racism within the police force, despite a very thorough investigation, there has not been any evidence of any further racist conduct or material produced after 2015,” Kelly concludes.

That will be news to the force’s own Aboriginal police who have lodged a case of racial vilification and unequal pay against the Northern Territory government in a landmark legal challenge, alleging a racist police culture in which Indigenous cops are demeaned as “lazy and useless”.

As The Australian revealed in September, Aboriginal Community Police Officers have revealed shocking conduct, including police secretly urinating in an Aboriginal man’s wine cask; challenging elderly, intoxicated Aboriginal men to fight; displaying a picture of a monkey during a police interview with an Aboriginal person; and charging Indigenous people with offences they did not commit.

Much of this occurred since 2015, including the practice long-denied by the NT Police Force of “cleaning up the streets” – removing homeless Indigenous people from public areas in Darwin and Alice Springs – when political leaders such as Anthony Albanese visit the cities.

Levitt Robinson Solicitors senior partner Stewart Levitt, representing the police in the case, says if the matter is not successfully conciliated in the Australian Human Rights Commission, his firm will take the case to the Federal Court.

Ms Kelly argued in her report that among the factors which “militate against the continuation of this investigation” was commissioner Michael Murphy’s Garma Festival apology for “past harms and injustices, caused by members of the NT police”.

The Indigenous police who’ve taken action against the government say that apology was offensive, because it implied that they had been complicit in the racist system.

If Indigenous cops don’t accept the furphy that the racism they see every day is “historical”, then neither should we.