[Morrison had been pinned down in a hallway by correctional officers. (He had become violent toward jail staff, according to a coroner’s summary of the case.) He was then taken to a prison van where he was placed facedown, his hands and feet bound with restraints and a spit hood pulled over his head. When he was removed from the van minutes later, he was blue and unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital, but never regained consciousness.]
The father of one was a fisherman,
an artist and a guitarist. In photographs, he appears jovial, smiling while
posing with his family or his latest fish catch.
On Sept. 17, 2016, he was arrested
following an incident at a home in Adelaide, South Australia, and taken to a
police station. Nine days later, after he had been moved to a jail, he was
dead.
Morrison had been pinned down in a hallway by correctional
officers. (He had become violent toward jail staff, according to a coroner’s
summary of the case.) He was then taken to a prison van where he was placed
facedown, his hands and feet bound with restraints and a spit
hood pulled over his head. When he was removed from the van minutes later, he
was blue and unresponsive. He was taken to the hospital, but never regained
consciousness.
Nearly five years after Morrison’s
death, his family is searching for justice. His sister, Latoya Aroha Rule, a
28-year-old PhD candidate and Indigenous activist, helped organize Black Lives
Matter rallies in cities across Australia last year.
[‘We
know the pain’: Australia confronts police racism toward first inhabitants]
George Floyd’s murder in May 2020
proved to be a moment of reckoning not only in the United States but across the world, as protesters took to the
streets calling for justice in his case and pointing to what they saw as
parallels in their communities.
The conviction in April of former
Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin led to fresh calls for Australian
authorities to scrutinize more than 400 Aboriginal deaths in custody since
1991. No Australian police or prison officer has been convicted, according
to legal experts.
“What happened to Wayne is
blatantly obvious. There’s been neglect, there’s been brutal force, there’s
been use of archaic restraints,” Rule said in an interview. “You would think
the officers would be compelled to say something, even if they said: ‘We’ve
done nothing.’ Silence creates suspicion and they’re not even really trying to
contest that suspicion.”
At an inquest in the Supreme Court
in Adelaide this month, the seven prison guards who traveled with Morrison in
the van refused to give evidence that could incriminate them in potential
criminal or civil court proceedings.
One by one, the officers made fuzzy
statements, the transcript shows: “I can’t recall.” “I don’t remember off the
top of my head.” “I claim privilege.”
Security footage from the van was
obscured by an officer’s head, according
to media reports.
A top lawyer acting for the
officers, Michael Abbott, declined to discuss the inquest with The Washington
Post without seeing a draft of this article. (It is The Post’s policy not to
share drafts of stories with outside sources before publication.)
“My brother is dead, officers are
staying silent on what happened in the van leading to his death, and they’re
still at work,” Rule wrote on Twitter this week.
A top-level inquiry into Aboriginal
deaths in custody in 1991 recommended some 339 changes to reduce the rate at
which Indigenous people are jailed, including decriminalizing drunkenness and
using prison as a last resort. A 2018 government study found only two-thirds
had been implemented and the rate of Indigenous incarceration had doubled.
The effort to connect Indigenous
issues to the Black Lives Matter movement has faced resistance from some Australian politicians, including the prime
minister, who have suggested activists were using the United States protests to
stoke divisions.
Rule traveled to the United States
in 2019 to meet with Patrisse Cullors, one of the three founders of the Black
Lives Matter movement, visiting the Los Angeles chapter and seeing the way they
organized their work.
[Verdict
heard around the world: Global reactions to the George Floyd case]
In 2020, Rule was named alongside
Porche Bennett-Bey, an Army veteran and mother of three from Kenosha, Wis., who
delivered her frank report on racial justice to then-presidential candidate Joe
Biden, and Assa Traoré, an activist in Paris whose brother died in police
custody in 2016, as Time magazine’s Guardians
of the year.
“The state renders us and our lives
and our voices invisible. Our deaths in custody are normalized now,” Rule said
in an April radio
interview in which they read a poem, “Freedom Walk,” inspired by a
vision they had the night Morrison’s life support was turned off.
The global movement triggered by
Floyd’s murder met some success and many disappointments.
In South Australia, an ombudsman
last year said body-worn video cameras should be mandatory for prison officers
and found the corrections department acted unreasonably in transporting Morrison in a van
soon after subduing him. At the time of the incident, the department’s head
declined to comment on the cause of the medical emergency — asphyxiation and cardiac arrest —
that led to Morrison’s death.
In June, the state parliament in
New South Wales agreed to hold an inquiry into how deaths in custody are
investigated. The probe called for changes to the justice system, including an end to the
practice of “police investigating police.”
[Australia
made a plan to protect Indigenous elders from covid-19. It worked.]
In August, authorities in Victoria
state opted against prosecuting police officers over the death of Tanya Day
— who hit her head on the concrete wall of a jail cell — despite a coroner
finding that her death was preventable. Police called an ambulance after
noticing a bruise on her head about three hours later, but it was too late, an
inquest found. She died 17 days later of bleeding in her brain.
A campaign started by Rule calling
for a ban on the use of spit hoods in Australia has garnered nearly 20,000
signatures.
On May 25, the anniversary of
Floyd’s death, Rule organized a vigil outside the Adelaide court. Supporters
dressed as prison officers donned spit hoods and stood behind police tape with
the number “479” written in black marker — the estimated number of Aboriginal
deaths in custody since the early 1990s. Precise data are difficult to
establish because government figures lag years behind deaths.
A photograph of Floyd was placed
beside one of Morrison, atop wreaths of native flowers.
“There is a war going on in
courtrooms just like the one we stand in front of today, First Nations people
are pleading to breathe,” Rule told the gathering. “Our family stands in
solidarity with Indigenous and Black communities globally.”
Since last year’s protests, a
police officer was committed to face a murder trial in the Northern Territory over the
shooting death of an Aboriginal teenager. Another policeman was
charged with murder in the shooting death of an Indigenous woman in
Western Australia. Both trials are scheduled for this year.
This month, a Sydney police
constable was
charged with assault 11 months after footage surfaced showing the
officer tripping a 16-year-old Indigenous boy and slamming him face-first into bricks while
arresting him.
The officer is due to appear in
court in June.
Read more
‘We
know the pain’: Australia confronts police racism toward first inhabitants
Australia
made a plan to protect Indigenous elders from covid-19. It worked.
Verdict
heard around the world: Global reactions to the George Floyd case
