The ABC has uncovered details of a secret Victoria Police operation targeting young African-Australians in Melbourne's inner north.

Operation Molto was conducted by the Flemington Police Station in 2006.

According to the police force's operation order document, Molto was established to find criminality in young African-Australians living in or visiting the Flemington public housing estate.

"There have been a spasmodic and yet continual increase in the number of robberies and armed robberies occurring in and around the Flemington Housing Estate," the operation order says.

"The as yet unidentified suspects for these serious offences are primarily young African males.

"The increased level of visible police presence will assist in the identification and targeting of offenders."

Operation Molto may have happened in 2006, but its impact continued to reverberate for at least five years.

In its wake, Victoria Police received almost 30 formal complaints alleging police harassment, abuse, and even the dumping of young teenagers after police bashings.

The ABC understands none of the complaints was upheld after internal police investigations.

Six young men, who were teenagers at the time of the allegations and when they complained about police treatment, recently settled a Federal Court case regarding the matter.

They agreed not to go to trial providing Victoria Police agreed to widespread institutional change, including a revamped education program for officers working with ethnic groups.

The detail about Operation Molto has come to light despite recent, strong denials by Chief Commissioner Ken Lay that police have been guilty of racial profiling.

In a media conference on February 18, Mr Lay said: "I do not believe our members would identify people and harass or continually check them simply because of their ethnicity."

At the time of Operation Molto, Mr Lay was the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Flemington area.

He was also interviewed about the initiative during two reviews which were sparked by the flurry of community complaints, which continued in the years after the two reviews took place.

'It's racism'

Jeremy Rapke QC, Victoria's director of public prosecutions at the time of the secret police operation, represented the young men in the Federal Court case.

He says Operation Molto was clearly a case of police racial profiling.

"They were nominated in the operation order as being the people most likely to be involved in the crime, primarily involved in the crime, and indeed statements made by people who were involved in the operation - statements of witnesses - confirm that that was the primary focus of the operation," he said.

"In fact, the police data which was available to us in this case, which was for a four or five-year period, clearly established the existence of racial profiling as a law enforcement practice in the Flemington/North Melbourne area at the relevant time.

"It's racism, because what you are doing is you are targeting an individual based on his race rather than based upon any other legitimate policing criteria.

"What you are doing is you are making assumptions about an individual based on your assumptions about the racial group to which he belongs. Not only is that racism, but it is highly ineffective policing."

Mr Rapke also says it was ill-informed.

"We looked at the crime statistics, and [the African-Australians] were committing significantly less crime than any other ethnic group in the area," he said.

"And... an offender from any other ethnic group was eight-and-a-half times less likely to be stopped [by police] than would an offender from a non-African group."

Profiling denied

Nobody from Victoria Police was available to be interviewed on the subject, but in a statement a spokesman rejected that Operation Molto involved racial profiling.

"This operation targeted serious offences of robbery and armed robbery in a small, defined Flemington area and was predicated on credible intelligence and witness reports," the statement said.

"We do not accept that Victoria Police undertakes racial profiling.

"We have significant concern that some sections of the community do believe that Victoria Police acts in a racist manner.

"This is a perception that we are determined to reverse.

"We have been actively working with Australian-African communities to build closer relationships so there is a greater level of trust and understanding between us."