Region 5 Crime Prevention Officer Eddy MacDonald with Mathew and Tieni from the Backyard Rugby Program, one of the many programs aimed to strengthen relations between police and multicultural youth. 36045
By Lia Bichel
DANDENONG police inspector Charlie Allen has slammed claims police are unfairly targeting African youth in the City of Greater Dandenong.
Insp Allen said Greater Dandenong police treated all residents equally, regardless of race.
“African young people are not over-represented as offenders in Dandenong,” he said.
“If they need to be investigated they will be investigated, as we would anyone else.”
His comments come after the release of a damning report titled ‘Interventions into Policing of Radicalized Communities in Melbourne.’
The report, funded by the Legal Services Board in 2008 and managed by three community legal centres, examined African young people’s experiences of policing practices across the City of Greater Dandenong, Flemington and Braybrook.
The report stated African young people across the three study areas were over-policed.
“This over-policing involves extra-legal police violence, which is not being acknowledged or addressed by the existing oversight bodies,” the report states.
“The policing of African young people clearly has racial dimension to it.”
The report said some police officers used phrases such as “donkey” and “black —-“ when speaking to African youth.
But Insp Allen told the Star he has never received a complaint about police being racist, and if he did, it would be dealt with appropriately.
“If that language is being used, it’s a cause for concern. But I can assure you I have never received a complaint (about racism),” he said.
“If a complaint is made it would be investigated. But it’s a long bow to suggest that it’s indicative of a cultural bias. This data flies in the face of other reports.”
Insp Allen said Greater Dandenong police went to great lengths to strengthen relations between police and the multicultural community.
He said there were three full-time multicultural liaison officers in the Greater Dandenong force, police officers had travelled to Sudan in an attempt to increase confidence in Sudanese communities and there was an extensive list of programs dedicated to people of different cultural backgrounds within the region.
The list includes the Assertive Outreach Program where Sudanese men work with police to engage with young people in the community, a local level agreement with Sudanese Community of Australian Association (SCAA), Kar Kulture where police work with African young people to rebuild cars and provide drivers education, and Sports Inclusion Programs which provide people from different cultures an opportunity to become active.
The report states these programs can be “ultimately damaging for young people,” and “police can use these relationships for intelligence gathering, which can lead to criminal proceedings,”, a claim Insp Allen strongly denied.
“To say that police engage in relationships for information gathering is ludicrous and irresponsible.”
