Doomadgee case shows CMC has lost its way
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties has called upon the Parliamentary Committee supervising the CMC to summons CMC head Robert Needham to a public hearing.
QCCL Vice President Terry O’Gorman said today a public hearing was needed to explain why the CMC has taken four years to complete its investigation of the Queensland police handling of the aftermath of the death of Mulrunji Doomadgee.
Yesterday’s announcement by the CMC that the public release of findings into the issue “were not imminent” was nothing short of extraordinary, Mr O’Gorman said.*
“The delay shows that the CMC has lost its way. After almost two decades of being the oversight body over the Queensland Police Service (QPS), the CMC has become ineffective in ensuring that complaints against the QPS are dealt with promptly, vigorously and with credibility”, Mr O’Gorman said.
Mr O’Gorman said that the QPS reacted swiftly to the burning down of the Palm Island Police Station immediately after the death of Mr Doomadgee by conducting early morning paramilitary raids which itself brought forward a number of complaints against police, few if any of which were upheld.
“Those responsible for the burning down of the Police Station immediately after Mr Doomadgee’s death were swiftly arrested, brought before the Courts and are now serving jail sentences.”
“Yet the actions of police sent primarily from Townsville to investigate MrvDoomadgee’s death still remain under investigation”, Mr O’Gorman said.
Mr O’Gorman said that while the CMC still appeared to perform credibly in dealing with QPS corruption, its track record in dealing with other complaints against police was poor.
“Most criminal defence lawyers now take the view that it is a waste of time making complaints against individual police officers, especially since the investigation of such complaints were handed back to the QPS in the mid 90s. The CMC role since then has only involved random spot monitoring of how such complaints are investigated by QPS”, Mr O’Gorman said.
Mr O’Gorman said that 20 years since the Fitzgerald Royal Commission heralded the fundamental shake-up of the system of dealing with complaints against the QPS, the Palm Island/Doomadgee police complaints saga showed a major overhaul of dealing with complaints against police is once again needed.
* See The Australian 07/06/09 page 4 by Tony Koch and Michael McKenna
17 June 2009
Queensland Council for Civil Liberties