Tasers: Shocking findings on police accountability

If any use of the Taser, apart from the puncturing of the cork, has been judged unwise, it is a fact that seems to be carefully concealed by whiteout in documents made available to me.

The curious thing about this is that almost all of these incidents should have caused a video camera on the Taser machine to begin whirring but, if the response to a Freedom of Information request on the AFP is any guide, there may be as few as 11 videos in existence. One wonders why, when the AFP has 475 Tasers equipped with cameras and 194 without them, purchased (at a time when they were an optional extra) at a time when it had not occurred to AFP management that a record might be useful, if unpopular.

Some of the 144 incidents may have involved only the drawing of Tasers with threats that it would be deployed, with the threat being carried out. But the information supplied to me on the subject by the AFP is so scanty and full of blocked out sections that it is impossible for me to guess to guess with any great certainty. I have some reason to think that the lack of informativeness is deliberate, but there is little point in troubling the office of the Australian Information Commission about it, since the office has become even more moribund than it was from Day 2 of opening its operations. It will close soon, without anyone much noticing.

I do, however, know something about the accidental discharge of the Taser by an AFP officer because, in that spirit of accountability for which the AFP, under old and new management is famous, I have been supplied with scores of pages about it, albeit with a great volume of deletions to project the names of the guilty and the innocent (all at Woden Valley police station). Suffice it to say that it appears that someone who should have known better seems to have thought he was testing for the existence of a full battery, or something, but pressed the wrong button. No one was injured, but a few darts lodged in the cork board. After interminable deliberation, and endless recounting of the facts, the independent investigator, whoever it was, decided to take no action against the cop in question, whoever he was. Thank heavens for that. The volume of paperwork would suggest that this process probably took 15 hours of executive police time, but then again, that might otherwise have been doing more damage to AFP effectiveness.

I suspect, though I am not sure that the AFP has supplied me with a videotape of this dastardly incident – all five seconds or so of the period between checking the weapon and the darts hitting the board. The latest model Taser has a video camera which records sight and sound of everything that happens from the time a Taser is deployed, and, after initially not being inclined to get this little extra, the AFP was shamed into it by suggestions that the choice of a device without a video showed a guilty intent.

But it is a little hard to work out whether any of the video given is in fact a record of the assault on the cork board, since the incident, if this is the one of which I have a video, seems to be about two seconds long, and resembles rather the images one sees when a commercial television cameraman is having his camera twisted out of his hand prior to his being smashed in the face. A sea of confetti, a brief flurry of blurry colours going around in a circle then a complete stop.

A small number of other videos (which, I expect, will not show the application of force) are also going to be supplied, but were posted as, apparently, being too big for email on Thursday. I expect they will arrive some time next week. Helpfulness and timeliness is not part of the AFP FOI package.

But former manager of AFP Government Relations, Peter Whowell is far from convinced anyway that it would be in the public interest for me to see much more of the way AFP officers use force against people in the community, a good proportion of whom are, by the AFP's own telling, seriously mentally disturbed at the time.

Mr Whowell, a $200,000-a-year plus SES officer, has recently been made "ManagerCounter-Terrorism engagement and operations support", focused on, according to AFP media, which he once supervised, "supporting the operations of the AFP's counter-terrorism portfolio, in particular the AFP's contribution to the whole-of-government response to Foreign Fighters". Perhaps this means that he is in charge of managing plastic swords seized in dawn raids. I wouldn't be deploying him for any public relations or consultation programs, least of all with armed terrorists.

According to Mr Whowell , the greater part of all records about any police reviews of the wisdom of applying shocking force to citizens, or (in the case of refugees) non-citizens, are internal working documents, disclosure of which would, in the words of the FOI Act, disclose deliberative matter "in the nature of, or relating to opinion, advice or recommendation obtained, prepared or recorded, or consultation or deliberation that has taken place for the purposes of the deliberative processes" involving AFP operations.

He acknowledges that there is a public interest in people being able to scrutinise the operations of police, but thinks this is overwhelmed by the need of the AFP to maintain the confidentiality of investigations into the wisdom of the use of force, and the way it gathers information for its investigation.

He thinks, moreover, that under a policy of releasing such videos, those being investigated maynot co-operate or maytake counter measures of a sort that could prejudice future investigations into police misconduct or corruption.

One shouldn't have thought this a big problem, given that the videos would speak for themselves, as they have, ever so eloquently if unhelpfully to police public relations, at inquests into deaths caused by police misuse of Tasers. Far from worrying about prejudice to transparency and accountability, one maythink that a process of openness may make police hesitate to use a Taser unless there is a genuine threat to personal or public safety.

Finally, Mr Whowell decided that videos of the 144 incidents should not be released because it would be an unreasonable breach of privacy. The concern was presumably for the victims, rather than the perpetrators of the use of force. Apparently disclosure could "impede the flow of information to police, [how?], discourage public co-operation with AFP professional standards investigations" and upset the need for the agency to maintain the confidentiality of its investigations.

The AFP has a large and expensive pseudo-television studio, built at fabulous expense on the whim of a previous information manager, who thought he could bypass pesky journalists and speak directly to the public and this facility is often used, when police actually want the public help , to pixilate security camera images of robbers and other miscreants.

I had, from the start said "I have no objection to the blurring of faces, and am available for consultation about the form such access might take". In discussions during the interminable delays, rubber-stamped of course by the OIAC, in responding to the request, I was told that some work was being done on pixilation, but Mr Whowell, in his decision, did not advert to this, presumably because it might undermine his argument.

After all, how dare members of the public want to see uncontrovertible evidence of the way that AFP officers behave in real situations? How dare anyone express any doubts about the judgment either of police officers or their professional standards people? How dare anyone wonder whether the police, and the civilians such as Mr Whowell, to whom we are now proposing to vest with even more unaccountable powers will exercise them wisely or well? How dare one remark that it is little wonder that police are so gunshy about meeting their obligations under the FOI law when every Australian police incident that has come under public review, (in spite of the inbuilt delays, obstructionism and sanitising zeal of the AFP Freedom From Information unit) has tended to show unnecessary force and abuse of power.

Heaven knows that it is tedious enough to have to write repeatedly about the want of professionalism and accountability of AFP management. But until there is an Independent Commission Against Corruption set up at both ACT and Federal levels, it seems to be getting more and more necessary.

The system is crook, standards are low, managers don't seem much to care, and senior management is inbred and complacent. In any event some of senior officers themselves set low standards that are far more eloquent as example to junior officers than the platitudes they so frequently utter. Police miscreants are laughing about how easily they can get away with blue murder. Only in the ACT – the greatest city in the world – would one have a government, an Attorney-General and justice system so constitutionally timid about the poor service the people of the ACT are getting.