Footage of Ms Dhu being dropped by a police officer and later carried out of her cell will not be released despite her family’s wishes, because it could “retraumatise” them at a later date, the West Australian coroner has ruled.

Speaking on the final day of the inquest into the death in custody of the 22-year-old Yamatji woman in Perth on Thursday, state coroner Ros Fogliani said that despite a submission from lawyers for Dhu’s family that they did not oppose the release of footage and did not view it as disrespectful to her memory, she had ruled against it because “once the images are released and provided to the media I cannot control their future dissemination”.

“It may take family members by surprise and it may shock them in the years to come,” Fogliani said, adding the images could be distressing or considered disrespectful by the broader Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander community.

“All of the images of here is when she is fragile, vulnerable and when her health is in a state of decline,” she said.

“Her suffering was extreme and it was a great tragedy. Whilst I realise the legitimate interests of the media outlets in reporting … on this case the media requests are denied.”

Fogliani said she did not consider concerns about the “embarrassment or exposure” of police officers in making her decision.

Dhu’s uncle Shaun Harris, who has acted as a spokesman for the family since her death on 4 August 2014, said the refusal to release the footage relied on a “seriously unjustified excuse”.

“They are afraid that the entire world will see racist Australia for what it truly is,” he said.

Dhu was arrested in Port Hedland, 1,650km north of Perth, on 2 August 2014, over $3,622 in unpaid court fines. She was taken from the lockup at South Hedland police station to Hedland health campus twice, and twice returned with a signed form declaring she was fit to be held in custody.

On the morning of 4 August Dhu complained she could not feel her legs and lost the ability to walk and, apparently, to sit up unaided. She collapsed into cardiac arrest on arrival at the hospital about 12.40pm and was declared dead just over an hour later, from what a post mortem revealed as a severe infection to a broken rib that had turned septic.

Footage of Dhu from both the police station and the hospital has been repeatedly played in the inquest. The most confronting images showed Dhu being dropped from a sitting position, apparently by accident, by Senior Constable Shelly Burgess, who had yanked her arm trying to get her to sit up less than two hours before she died. Footage from half an hour later showed Burgess helping Constable Chris Matier carry Dhu by her hands and feet from the cell to the back of a police van, which they then used to take her to hospital.

On Thursday, assistant commissioner Duane Bell, who is in charge of judicial services for WA Police, said the department did not condone the decision to carry Dhu or to convey anyone who couldn’t walk in anything but an ambulance.

“If a person is non-ambulant, you call an ambulance,” Bell said.

Bell said police were in the process of buying a wheelchair for use in each lockup but had decided against providing stretchers to discourage police from attempting to carry people themselves.

Bell was the 18th police officer to give evidence in the past nine days and the last of 38 witnesses to speak at the inquest.

He said WA police released new lockup procedures three weeks after Dhu’s death (based on a review that had already been completed) and had since changed the way it recorded medical information about detainees in police cells. The new procedures included requiring more information about the health status of detainees on arrival at the cells, detailed information including a diagnosis and treatment plan from any hospital visits, having nurse on call for police to consult, and keeping a medical summary that pulled any relevant entries from the computerised custody records system into a printable health running sheet.

Bell said police had also updated and renamed the hospital treatment form to encourage officers to get more information from the hospital about the diagnosis and health needs of a detainee, and to attempt to disabuse police of the notion that a signed form meant a detainee was “fit and healthy”.

But he said some hospitals had refused to use the form or provide detailed information, citing privacy concerns.

“We don’t feel we can fulfil our duty of care without the information from the health professionals,” Bell said.

In Dhu’s case, the hospital provided no formal diagnosis and very little information to police. But the inquest has also heard that successive police failed to record all observations they made about Dhu’s health and, even if they had recorded it, often failed to pass it on.

That was a problem not with the police manual but with implementation, Bell said.

All written submissions for the inquest are due by 17 June.