Police Violence and the Retro Three

Tamar Hopkins, Meghan Fitzgerald& Sam King @ Underground Talk

6:30pmWednesday August 18th
New International Bookshop, Trades Hall, Corner ofVicoria Street and Lygon Streets Carlton.

More than 20 complaints of racist violence byVictorian police involving young Africans were made to the Office of PoliceIntegrity between 2006 and 2009. Only one has been investigated by the OPI, andit is still unresolved.
 
Police violence not only targets migrants andAboriginals, but is used on protests, pickets, youths, the poor, andincreasingly, anyone questioning police authority. With wealth inequality andpoverty increasing in Australiapolice violence and state repression will become a more and more pressingissue.

The Retro Three were bashed by police one afterthe other in front of 25 witnesses outside the Retro Café on Brunswick StreetFitzroy in 2009. All three were falsely charged with assaulting police. One of the Retro Three, an 18 year old woman, was hospitalised with facialinjuries after police assaulted her. Police provoked the incident when theybegan striking Sam King across the head with his own bicycle helmet andrepeatedly striking him in the face with a closed fist. King's crime? Refusingto lie face down on the bitumen to be handcuffed having questioned why policerequired his name.  The case is currently being pushed through the OPI andethical Standards Division.

Tamar Hopkins is theprincipal solicitor at the Flemington and Kensington Community Legal Centre andauthor of An Effective System for Investigating Complaints Against Police, the2009 report for the Victoria Law Foundation.

Meghan Fitzgerald is asolicitor specialising in cases of police violence. She who works at theFitzroy Community Legal Service.

Activist Sam King is one of the Retro Three.

Entry: $5/ $2 concession.
More info: (ph) 9662 3744, (email) nibs@nibs.org.au

Please promote thisevent to your email contacts and via our facebook event @

http://www.facebook.com/#!/event.php?eid=116549465064243

For more information on my case see my blog@ http://policebashsamking.blogspot.com/