Violent & deadly arrests by Queensland police

On 14 April 2023, Queensland Police Commissioner, Katrina Carroll, claimed : “While it has been available to officers for a long time in Queensland, the options for officers to apply force in challenging and life-threatening situations have increased and broadened since its introduction over 30 years ago.”

At an International Women’s Day rally and march on 10 March 1979, 44 years ago, Senior Constable John Watt arrested a woman using the chokehold. Women were demanding democratic rights and and control over their own bodies. Her friends, looking on aghast, tried to stop Watt from choking the woman being arrested.

I was the victim of a choke-hold arrest by Queensland police on 30th October 1978 in an anti-uranium rally. Forty-five (45) years later the Queensland police commissioner belatedly has declared this type of arrest is not on. Senior Constable Alan Cameron Todd produced a warrant for my arrest in the middle of a democratic rights rally in Brisbane King George Square. The warrant claimed that I had to produce $50 or police would arrest me in the middle of a demonstration of over 3,000 people. A man behind me produced the $50 to pay the fine that arose from a previous demonstration where a police officer claimed that I disobeyed a lawful direction. The warrant was produced by the clerk of the court and acting-magistrate William Joseph Mackay who was seeking revenge because I challenged his authority by demanding he pay the fine when he convicted me of ‘disobey direction‘. I was not a victim in this encounter, I was part of a movement opposing uranium mining and export defying the ban on street marches imposed by the Bjelke-Petersen government.

Michael Egan and Alan Cameron Todd threw me into the back of a paddy wagon already full with street marchers. Maria, one of the women arrested, called out for me to climb to the back of the paddy wagon. I was senseless and couldn’t move. People were shouting “Queensland, Police State!” from inside the paddy wagon and “The People United will never be defeated!” from outside. Just when it looked like the paddy wagon was going to be driven off. Michael, Todd, Blackie and another began unlocking the paddy wagon door, what was really a makeshift Ford panel van. Todd was armed with steel handcuffs. They grabbed me, semi-conscious, from the back of the van and wrestled me to the ground with Todd placing a handcuff tight on my left wrist. He then rotated the cuff swiftly around my wrist. This action must have compressed or severed a nerve because I lost all feeling in the back of my left hand for three months. They threw me into the back seat of the police car that Michael Egan had driven from Makerston Street. I was stretched out with hands behind my back across the axle hump in the back seat. Blackie pinned me down while Todd and Michael Egan sat in the front.

My arrest was documented and reported by Denis Reinhart and the report appeared on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald on the following day. Reinhart’s report read “Curr, who had been arrested several times since the anti-street march law was introduced in September last year struggled violently before he was overcome by seven policemen. A police spokesman said Curr was wanted on a warrant for another offence.” So Reinhart, the former station co-ordinator at Community Radio 4ZZZ, had gone along with the police version of events, that I was violent. This was finally rejected by the magistrate when he acquitted me of resist arrest.

Special Branch officer Barry Krosch was in attendance. It took three days for me to recover from the headache produced by the choke-hold.

In those days police were not generally armed, they sometimes carried a short baton in their pants and less often plainclothes police carried a concealed pistol. Nowadays they are all armed.

Only a couple of weeks ago police shot dead an aboriginal man in Mareeba whom they said was threatening to self-harm and had someone with him who was not able to leave. Professor Gracelyn Smallwood resigned from advising police after they shot dead Aubrey Donahue in his home. When The Guardian asked for her comment about the announcement by the police commissioner that the chokehold is to be banned, Professor Smallwood said that she had “previously called for a ban on the use of the LVNR, following reports another Aboriginal man, Steven Nixon-McKellar, died after police used a chokehold on him when he resisted arrest in Toowoomba in October of last year.”

All I can say is it is very hard not to resist when you are being choked to death by a police officer.

I think the Queensland government should withdraw glock pistols and automatic weapons from use by police. They cannot be trusted with lethal weapons. Police are a danger to society if their only solution is to kill someone suffering from trauma or mental illness.

Ian Curr
14 April 2023