Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission has handed down a report into the violent treatment of an off-duty policewoman, Yvonne Berry, who had been arrested for drunkenness by police in Ballarat.
The Ballarat case has provoked public interest both because it involves a white female police officer, and because the incident was extensively captured by CCTV cameras.
It is worth noting, as the IBAC report does, that “presence of CCTV cameras did not appear to deter some officers from questionable conduct”1.
This indicates that the police involved were not concerned about being called to account for their actions. This is how Victoria Police officers treat someone when they think no one will care, no one will report on it, and no one outside the police force will investigate.
Content Warning: Descriptions of Yvonne Berry’s treatment at the hands of police follow. Police violence, assaults, abuse.
What happened
On the fourteenth of January last year, Yvonne Berry was arrested by Ballarat police. She was drunk.
Berry should probably have been taken to a hospital, but she declined, so four police officer held her down, handcuffed her, and took her to the Ballarat Police station.
Yvonne Berry was thrown in a cell.
Police cells in Ballarat are standard concrete boxes with, “painted concrete floors and bed shaped blocks, a drinking water fountain and toilet”.2 She wasn’t given a mattress or a blanket “for safety reasons”.3
The drinking fountain was broken.
CCTV footage showed Berry waving a plastic cup at the CCTV camera and pointing at the drinking fountain. The police officer responsible for monitoring people in their cells either did not notice or did not care.
An intoxicated and doubtless parched Yvonne Berry was left with no choice but to drink from the toilet.
At 1am Berry demanded to speak to the officer-in-charge. When her cell door was opened, Berry tried to push her way out. In the scuffle, Berry grabbed an officer’s lanyard and pen.
For reasons that baffle me, the police involved decided that the recovery of a stolen pen and lanyard was the single most important mission confronting Ballarat police in January 2015.
Hyperbole perhaps, but instead of giving their drunk inmate some clean water and a blanket, the officer’s on duty barged back into the cell, wrestled with Berry, sprayed OC spray into her face on two occasions, and still managed to end up sprawling on the ground whilst Berry ran from the cell.
More police responded. They found Berry, dragged her back to the cell on her knees, held her face down and handcuffed her whilst onse officer stood on one of her legs. “A significant amount of OC foam is seen pooling on the cell floor around [Yvonne Berry’s] head”.4
The officer’s involved then proceeded to strip search Yvonne Berry, in her cell, whilst she was covered in OC foam.
As [Berry] was lying face down on her stomach with her hands cuffed behind her and she was affected by OC spray, positional asphyxia was a real risk. It is noted that police are trained that death in such a position can occur very suddenly and that an attempt should be made as quickly as possible to get the prisoner upright onto their knees or standing.5
But the cops wanted their pen back. Even IBAC notes that “the search for the missing items could have waited” and that the police should have “immediately taken [Berry] to the showers”.6
Instead, “Constable A [removed Yvonne Berry’s] underwear, with Constable McCarty hovering over her upper body area”.7
More police enter the cells, including a Senior Constable Nicole Monro:
Senior Constable Munro swiftly delivered a forceful kick with her right foot into the lower rib or stomach area of [Yvonne Berry]. Leading Senior Constable Munro was wearing her normal patrol outfit including heavy boots.8
Nicole Monro walked into a cell where a badly pepper sprayed women was being held down and strip searched, and booted her in the ribs.
Then a Constable Steven Repac came in:
Senior Constable Repac entered the cell. He turned to face the cell door away from [Yvonne Berry’s] head, placed his left foot on the lower part of the back of her right leg and then forcefully stomped on the same area of her other leg.9
Steven Repac walked into a cell were a badly pepper sprayed woman, naked from the waste down, was being held down and strip searched, and began stomping on her leg.
According to the IBAC report, Repac stomped on Yvonne Berry’s leg on multiple occasions, and kicked her again when leaving the cell.
Eventually, Yvonne Berry was dragged to the showers. Handcuffed. She was dragged along the floor, “including over the raised metal ridge which is likely to have caused unnecessary further discomfort”.10
In the showers Berry was left unattended for twenty minutes, despite the fact she was “was handcuffed, suffering from OC spray and probably still affected by alcohol”.11
The heat was turned up, “which is contrary to police training as warmth exacerbates the painful burning sensation caused by OC spray”.12
Berry, still in her shirt and underwear, was then “wrapped in a towel” and taken to Ballarat Hospital. “A brief medical observation was conducted while she remained in the vehicle”.
She was then returned to the cells, and “left there with her wet upper clothing still on and her underpants. CCTV footage shows person A attempting to sleep on the cell floor in that condition”.13
Why did this happen?
IBAC has recommended assault charges be laid against two police officers for their role in the beating and torture of Yvonne Berry.
However, the IBAC report is at pains to excuse all but the most grievous actions by the police involved.
Dragging Berry across the ground was apparently “reasonable” despite the “discomfort involved”.
The copious use of pepper spray, sprayed so thick that it formed a visible pool on the ground when Berry was held down, is excused away by an IBAC commissioner who clearly has no appreciation for the horrendous pain and injury this chemical weapon causes.
The decision of the police involved to start a brawl over a pen and lanyard (rather than simply collect them when Berry sobered up) is not even questioned by IBAC’s investigation. The use of hot water on OC burns to torture Berry is dismissed as mere oversight.
IBAC has recommended common assault charges for the kickings, the bruising and the stomping. Common assault, not assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The IBAC report is weak, Victoria Police are worse. Earlier this year “Victoria Police internal investigators [found] no evidence of criminal conduct” and the two police officers involved “had their suspensions lifted”.14
Now that the IBAC report has been released, the Police Minister, and the acting police commissioner, have been at pains to defend the “integrity” of the police at Ballarat, and have publicly rejected claims that violence by the police might be in any way systemic.
The Police Association’s response to the IBAC investigation was to fund multiple court challenges to either prevent police from having to testify, prevent their identities from being revealed, or prevent the hearings from being conducted publicly.
In January last year police beat and tortured Yvonne Berry. They did it despite the presence of CCTV. They did it knowing that any internal police investigation would clear them. They did it knowing the Police Association would have their back. They did it knowing the public, media and politicians routinely excuse violence by the police against vulnerable people. Had Yvonne Berry not later been revealed to be a serving police officer, I doubt this issue would have provoked an IBAC investigation and possible charges.
Police abused Yvonne Berry because they have the power, they have the badge, they have the guns, they have the public support, and they have the confidence that impunity provides.
All of the officers involved in the mistreatment of Yvonne Berry remain serving members of Victoria Police. Be careful.
Further Reading
The Flemington-Kensington Community Legal Centre maintains an ongoing Police Accountability Project. As they pointed out yesterday:
IBAC’s special report into Operation Ross, released on 10 Novermber, misses a vital opportunity to look beyond Ballarat to the Victorian police complaints system itself.
…
Existing police complaints mechanisms in Victoria have consistently failed to maintain accountability, uphold human rights, or change police behaviour, and public faith in complaints processes is understandably low.Victoria urgently needs to move to a system of independent police complaints investigation.
I would go even further, and suggest that Victoria Police need to be disarmed as a matter of urgency, and subjected to significant community (rather than political) oversight, direction and accountability.
- IBAC, 2016, Operation Ross Special Report, p. 8.
- IBAC, p. 13.
- IBAC, p. 13.
- IBAC, p. 15.
- IBAC, p. 15.
- IBAC, p. 15.
- IBAC, p. 15.
- IBAC, p. 16.
- IBAC, p. 16.
- IBAC, p. 19.
- IBAC, p. 19.
- IBAC, p. 19.
- IBAC, p. 19
- The Age, IBAC probe continues into Ballarat officers despite Victoria Police finding
Excellent summation Kieran. I don’t know what it is with VicPol? It seems that the law doesn’t apply to those supposedly upholding the law.
I don’t think there is anything strange about it at all. This is the product of having a police force.
The people who implement the state’s monopoly on violence become violent people.
IBAC recommended two officers be charged and their be some tweaking around the edges with police processes. Weak as piss.
In the long run, if we want to restrain police violence we have to restrain the police.