Police brutality claimed in Australia

Inquest into 2015 death brings issue back to the forefront.

David Dungay’s last day started like many others. The prison inmate, who suffered from diabetes, had his blood sugar tested by a nurse. It was low but had spiked in the early afternoon. Dungay went out in the yard to exercise, witnesses said. On the way back to his cell, he bought a packet of rice crackers from the commissary.

There is disagreement about what happened next: A nurse, or possibly a prison guard, worried that the crackers might lead to a jump in Dungay’s already high blood sugar, so the worker asked him to stop eating.

Officers say Dungay refused. He grew angry, they said, shouting that the crackers were his to do with as he pleased. He began stuffing them into his mouth.

So a group of five officers swarmed Dungay in his cell. They pushed the 25-year-old onto his bed and held him down. Eventually, they yanked him into a second cell. The incident was c aught on film. Throughout , Dungay appears distressed, yelling, “I can’t breathe” at least 12 times. “Stop resisting,” one officer responds. “If you’re talking, you can breathe,” another tells him.

Eventually, Dun gay was injected with a sedative. He died a short time later, on Dec. 29, 2015.

Dungay ’s c ase, back in the news because of an inquest into his death, is not an isolated incident. Since 1993, at least 340 Aboriginal people have died in custody. In 2014, an Aboriginal woman died of sepsis in an Australian prison cell. She repeatedly begged police for help, but the officers assumed that she was faking the pain and addicted to drugs.

In May, an Aboriginal teenager was run over by a police vehicle outside Perth. (The officer later resigned.)

“Aboriginal people in Australia have a long history of being defenseless in the face of (police power ),” Carol Inn es, chairwoman of Reconciliation WA, a group that works on Aboriginal issues in Western Australia, told the Guardian.

In Australia, Aboriginal men and women are 13 times more likely to be imprisoned than non-indigenous Australians, and Aboriginal children and teenagers are 24 times more likely to wind up in jail, according to the Guardian. Put another way: Aboriginal people make up 3 percent of Australia’s population but 28 percent of its prison population. In one Australian province, every child in detention is Aboriginal.

“Our courts are full of Aboriginal people pulled up on little things ... because police are pressuring our young people, and creating false claims,” indigenous leader Des Jones told Vice. “Who would trust a police officer who’s done terrible things in your community? You’ve broken a link there. These officers have broken a link with their communities.”

It’s part of a broader pattern of disrespect. Two-thirds of Aboriginal Australians say they’ve been called names or “treated with a lack of trust and respect.”

More than half say they’ ve experienced racism at work or school. Sixty percent have been discriminated against on public transportation.

“It’s hard to think of just one time to talk about because it becomes so normal that it happens on a regular basis,” one man told an Australian media outlet.

Dungay’s case, back in the news because of an inquest into his death, is not an isolated incident. Since 1993, at least 340 Aboriginal people have died in custody.