Updates and latest news

The announcement this week that some ten thousand more frontline police and protective services officers (PSOs) in Victoria will be equipped with Tasers is very concerning, according to a coalition of Victorian legal and community services groups. “Given recent examples of police misuse of weaponry, like capsicum spray, and cases of serious injury and deaths caused by Tasers, this is...

Victoria Police Engaged in Racial Profiling During the Covid-19 Pandemic   27 June 2023  MELBOURNE, VICTORIA: Inner Melbourne Community Legal (IMCL) has called on the Victorian Government to waive all COVID-19 fines after its groundbreaking study revealed that Victoria Police engaged in racial profiling when it issued infringement notices during the first year of the COVID pandemic.    The report, Policing...

Decline in trust of Victoria Police unsurprising after countless scandals Today, The Age released a report on the declining trust Victorians have on police integrity. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Human Rights Law Centre, Robinson Gill and Police Accountability Project have released a media release on the need for a Police Ombudsman. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander, legal and...

        The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS), the Police Accountability Project and other community legal centres and Aboriginal organisations have called on Premier Daniel Andrews to overhaul the state’s failed police oversight system with the introduction of a Police Ombudsman. VALS and the Police Accountability Project are part of a coalition of lawyers, non-profit organisations and...

Capsicum spray class action filed against Victoria Police A class action has been filed against the Victorian State Government regarding Victoria Police’s use of capsicum spray and excessive force against protesters at the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Melbourne in October 2019. The case, which was filed this afternoon at the Supreme Court of Victoria by class...

PAP has recently released two important reports around policing in the past months. PAP is proud to release these two very important reports. The first is on Predictive Policing and the tools Victoria Police use to assess risk on young people. The other is on COVID-19 Policing which was undertaken by a coalition of organisations in 2020. Predictive Policing...

Government review Two recent inquiries have recommended changes to Victoria’s police complaints system. The Department of Justice is now responding with a review that should see new processes introduced by the end of this year. There is a strong likelihood that the current system will finally change. But the Government needs to hear from enough affected people, because the...

IBAC has recently handed down its report into racist, sexist and homophobic comments by the former head of Victoria Police’s ethics department, Assistant Commissioner Brett Guerin.https://www.ibac.vic.gov.au/publications-and-resources/article/operation-turon-special-report-october-2021 Called Operation Turon, IBAC’s investigation found damning evidence of online misconduct by Mr Guerin. But once again, this has been lost opportunity to identify and tackle systemic racism within Victoria police.   The...

As human rights-based organisations, we are calling out the COVID “anti-lock down movement” for its dangerous co-opting of human rights frameworks and language.    The “anti-lockdown movement” uses words like freedom, democracy and human right, which serve to hide harmful, conspiratorial and far-right ideologies within the movement. Many of these ideologies are in opposition to human rights.   The COVID public health measures have undeniably human rights impacts. But the misuse of human rights language by anti-lockdown activists confuses, hampers and undermines genuine human...

The Police Accountability Project (PAP) condemns the use of new weaponry and the rising militarisation of Victoria Police. We express concern about the oppressive policing of demonstrations generally.  On Saturday 21st of AugustAnti-lockdown protesters clash with police in Melbourne, smaller demonstrations in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth – ABC News we saw Victoria Police use new weapons on protestors for the first time since their purchase in 2018https://melbactivistlegal.org.au/2021/08/22/statement-of-concern-police-use-of-projectile-weapons/. While PAP does not support the “anti-lock down protests”, we do...

Leanne Weber  Risk factors, risk assessment and risk-based predictions dominate public discussion these days across a range of policy areas from the economy to climate and public health. But what are the pitfalls when risk-thinking dominates our dealings with young people in conflict with the law? I address this question by identifying practical and conceptual limitations of risk as a statistical construct, and highlighting concerns about how risk calculations...

We finally have a formal government response to the joint parliamentary IBAC Committee’s Inquiry into the external oversight of police corruption and misconduct in Victoria which was released in 2018 that we have been waiting for.  Two years late but at last we have one.

The commitments contained in this Implementation Plan are positive.

There is commitment for legislation – for…

Victoria Police are planning to bring back some sort of ‘Police in Schools’ program.  We don’t know the details as yet but it will be announced later this year, but the ABC has reported that it will not be as comprehensive as the police in schools program that was abandoned 30 years ago in 2005. 

But any police in school…

The first research paper using data from the national COVIDPolicing.org.au monitoring project has now published.

The authors, Louise Boon-Kuo , Alec Brodie , Jennifer Keene-McCann , Vicki Sentas & Leanne Weber seek to identify the potential impacts of COVID policing in relation to everyday street policing in NSW, the policing of public protests in NSW and Victoria and the…

There have been a series of reviews and inquiries into Victoria Police over the past two decades. They have pointed to deficiencies in its management of informants, along with broader issues related to culture and leadership. Despite this, the royal commission findings reflect many of the same issues.

If things are to substantially change, however, reforms need to extend beyond…

Phi Finney McDonald and Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre’s Police Accountability Project are investigating a potential class action against the Victorian State Government for Victoria Police’s use of pepper spray against protesters at the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Melbourne between 29 and 31 October 2019.

Read more here.

Human rights and legal organisations have condemned a police operation targeting Djab Wurrung protestors who are protecting sacred Djab Wurrung trees in Victoria and are calling for urgent scrutiny of police powers and access for legal observers to monitor police actions during the protest.

IBAC Commissioner, The Honourable Robert Redlich AM, QC, has made the strongest calls yet for adequate government resourcing of Victoria’s Independent Broad Based Commission against Corruption (IBAC).

In his message released this morning,(15/10/2020) Redlich says “It is deeply concerning that IBAC’s budget has remained largely static since we were founded. This means that today IBAC cannot investigate a significant number…

So, where is the push to get independent investigations in Victoria up to at the moment?

For the past two years the Andrews government has been sitting on an important report that recommends a system that could independently investigate serious police corruption and misconduct.

The government was supposed to respond to this report within six months. So why such…

Victoria requires a fully independent system to investigate serious incidents of alleged police misconduct, human rights abuses and complaints.

We urge the Victorian Parliament to, taking into consideration our concerns outlined above, swiftly legislate to implement all 69 of the recommendations contained in the ‘Inquiry into the external oversight of police corruption and misconduct in Victoria’ Report.

These new Stage 4 restrictions in Victoria are important to slow the spread of COVID 19 and we recommend people follow the CHO directions. Yes, you should wear a mask, stay home and abide by thee new public health restrictions.

How these restrictions are policed however, is a huge area of concern and warrants scrutiny and debate.

Here are…

Legal and human rights groups condemn the heavy-handed, policing response to a public health emergency, rather than the much-needed support communities need to prevent COVID-19 transmission. We stand in solidarity with the 3000 people in hard lockdown.
The deployment of hundreds of police and the coercive measures across public housing estates in North Melbourne and Flemington is a discriminatory response…

The Police Accountability Project is calling for the immediate withdrawal of police from the public housing estates experiencing the hard COVID lockdown in Flemington and North Melbourne.

We call on government, DHHS and all agencies to abide by the principle of ‘Do No Harm’ in that all health responses to this pandemic should not cause additional harms.

Risk-based tactics like pre-emptive breaking up of groups, close monitoring of known offenders, and unjustified police stops all translated into perceptions of unfair targeting by young people interviewed from these communities.

The Police Accountability Project, run by the Flemington Kensington Community Legal Centre is united in its support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and people across the world fighting to dismantle a justice system which is inherently racist and discriminatory.

The stories coming through the covidpolicing website only give us snapshots of what is going on, but these sometimes disturbing accounts and the questions they raise have given urgency to the call for a comprehensive police-stop data monitoring scheme. When many thousands of COVID-19 stops are being made by police every day, it is only the police’s own…

New technologies such as facial recognition, video surveillance systems, body worn cameras, automatic number plate recognition and social media monitoring are used to collect data which is then used to create and analyse trends in crime. These trends become the foundation for policing practices that aim to predict and prevent people who are likely to commit crime and…

The IBAC have released a summary of findings into its inquiry about serious injuries caused by police in a bungled arrest of an innocent man. This followed a raid by the police Critical Incident Response Team (CIRT) on the Hares and Hyenas bookshop on 19 May 2019. The findings are not legally binding and do not provide a…

As Victoria escalates its crisis response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Victoria Police must ensure its police responses are aligned to the current circumstances and do not infringe upon the health, human rights and dignity of Victorian residents and visitors.

There is urgent need to reduce the number of people coming into contact with the criminal legal system during this unprecedented…