Police in Western Australia have been accused of “serious misconduct” over their treatment of a woman who was held in custody for more than five hours without medical treatment after her hip was dislocated during her arrest on New Year’s Day in 2017.
Video of her time in custody shows a female police auxiliary officer telling the woman to “tone the whole act down” and asking “is your daughter embarrassed of you?”
In a damning review tabled in the Western Australian parliament on Thursday, the Corruption and Crime Commission said police failed to follow their own procedures and seek medical treatment for the woman, and that “together, the failure of duty amounts to serious misconduct in the form of reviewable police action”.
The report said the inadequate response was “extraordinary” because it came just 14 days after the release of a coronial report on the death in custody of Aboriginal woman Ms Dhu, where police treatment of detainees in lock-ups was heavily criticised.
The woman, identified in the report only as Ms Duncan, was injured in police custody, denied medical attention despite shouting that her hip had been injured, dragged backwards up the police station steps, and denied drinks of water.
She was in custody for five and a half hours before the shift changed and the incoming custody officers gave her water and called an ambulance.
She had not been bailed because she could not stand to have her fingerprints taken.
The CCC said there were “so many failures by many officers” and that “collectively, the actions on the night justify an opinion that the treatment of Ms Duncan was oppressive, unjust and contrary to law”.
Duncan was in a car driven by her daughter about 2am on 1 January 2017 when police conducted a random breath test then asked her daughter to go to the police station for further testing.
She requested that police breath test her so she could drive the car home, but police refused and a “physical interaction” allegedly followed, during which her hip was dislocated.
Police alleged that Duncan hit the police officer on the head during her arrest but those charges were dismissed by a magistrate eight months later.
She was taken in the back of the police van to Fremantle station, where she was dragged up the steps to the holding area. She can be heard on CCTV screaming in pain and saying: “I’m not faking, I’m not faking. Please take the cuffs off me, I’m not faking.”
At one point a police officer says “you have got to be joking” when Duncan is unable to stand up. Later, another officer jokes upon hearing her moan in pain, “is she having an orgasm?”
The police auxiliary officer, identified only by a surname in the CCC report, can be heard telling Duncan: “You need to tone your story back a little bit because that’s really what’s giving you away … just a future tip.”
Later she says: “If you weren’t carrying on like a child you would actually be bailed out the door ... Is your daughter embarrassed of you? ... Because I’d be embarrassed of you, too.”
The report said Duncan’s “frequent complaints of pain were met with scorn”.
In response to the report, the West Australian Police Union president, Harry Arnott, criticised the “wholesale and relatively indiscriminate targeting and charging” of police with disciplinary offences.
“Such an approach might be convenient to the WA Police Force because it allows them to represent to the world that it has addressed the issue, but it completely overlooks the systemic failures that greatly contributed to this incident,” Arnott said.
The failures he mentioned were the fit-out of the station and the use of the holding area as a lock-up, when it is not equipped as such.
The union has reported the station to Worksafe. Disciplinary proceedings are ongoing.
