Within hours, his mother, Doreen, would allege her son’s arrest was the result of racism and that he had been treated brutally by detectives. Police vehemently denied the claims and an internal investigation found nothing wrong with Lovett’s arrest. Yet The Age has uncovered diary notes and statements from officers at the scene that raise serious questions about the official police version of events and Lovett’s handling by detectives. Among the files is a hand-scrawled diary note by a policeman who observed Lovett’s treatment and described the incident as “disturbing to say the least”. Lovett’s case, along with several others uncovered by a joint Age-7.30 Report investigation, is set to reignite the debate about whether Victoria Police is capable of investigating its own. Also under scrutiny is the Andrews government’s delay in introducing police oversight reforms backed by a joint parliamentary committee, the state’s police watchdog and much of Victoria’s legal sector.

Deep bruising and cuts Doreen Lovett knew something was terribly wrong when police told her that her son Tommy had been arrested but was not in a police cell. He was in hospital. Ms Lovett, a local Indigenous leader in Melbourne who works in Victoria’s criminal justice sector, raced to the Austin Hospital in Heidelberg to discover her son shaken and in pain. A doctor’s report of his injuries describes deep bruising and cuts over his body, swelling and abrasions on his forehead and prominent welts surrounding his eyes and cheeks. A gash on Lovett’s wrist had to be stitched up. Lovett told his mother he had been scooting towards his grandma’s house when a plain-clothes detective emerged from the home and barked at Lovett to stop. Lovett says the detective had a reputation among the local Indigenous community as a policeman to be avoided, so he scooted around the corner towards a police van and two uniform officers. They were searching for the 40-year-old, goatee-wearing suspect.

In a statement written after the incident, one of the policemen in the van, Constable K, describes Lovett seeking help from police. “He stopped slightly behind our vehicle and in a loud voice asked if we can take him back to his … grandma's,” K wrote. “The male that stopped appeared to be young, of Aboriginal descent and looked somewhat distressed.” Doreen Lovett says her son's ordeal has changed him forever. Credit:Luis Ascui From a distance of about 50 metres, the plain-clothes detective yelled at the uniform officers to arrest Lovett. He would later insist he believed Lovett was the wanted car thief and he had visited Lovett’s grandma’s house because it was frequented by men who fitted the suspect's description. Other police officers were not so certain. Five other officers who attended the scene later wrote that they believed Lovett was “not the offender we were looking for”. A sixth policeman, who handcuffed Lovett, later wrote that he “was not sure why I was being directed to arrest this male as he did not match the description for the offender”.

Lovett was also confused. As he was cuffed, he asked why he was being detained. He also remembers being scared, especially as the first detective raced towards him. Lovett feared a beating. Constable K wrote in his statement that Lovett was initially “not aggressive” but became “agitated due to the handcuffs”, which were cutting into his wrist. The arrival of the plain-clothes detective also prompted a reaction in Lovett. He “became very resistive once the detective came up to him and targeted his head and neck. The detective had put his right arm into the jaw/neck area of the male and virtually took over from [the second arresting officer] Senior Constable R.” Soon, two more plain-clothes detectives arrived at the scene, crowding over Lovett, who was “screaming” about being in pain. In his statement, Constable K noted the physical disparity between Lovett and the three detectives: Lovett “was a skinny handcuffed male that myself and SC R had easily controlled before”.

Lovett’s insulting of the first detective, said the constable, “caused a reaction”. “The detective decided to grab the young male by the upper part of the body and do something I’m not sure what. As a result the male’s head was pushed into the timber plank and then further down towards the ground at which stage the two other detectives decided to engage and assist the detective. I did not see how or if the young male resisted in any way and did not see it necessary in any way to use force.” K’s colleague, Constable R, said in his statement that after Lovett “called the detective an idiot … the detective … then picked [Lovett] up by his upper body and with the aid of both other detectives, threw [Lovett] into a brown wooden fence”. (A third policeman wrote an almost identical description of Lovett being thrown into a fence in his own statement.) In the first detective’s statement, he justifies Lovett’s handling after he was handcuffed because of what he claimed was the 18-year-old's “potential for violence” (Lovett had previously been charged by police for assault but has never been convicted for any crime.)

All three detectives described Lovett in their own statements as acting violently and spitting at them near the end of his ordeal, which led to Lovett being capsicum sprayed. Lovett admits spitting, but claims he did so because his mouth was filled with blood. He also alleges further humiliation – a policeman using water from a dog bowl to wash the capsicum spray from his face. (A police spokesperson said it was not known if police “put the water into a bowl to provide this after-care”.) Next, Lovett was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting police. For months, the arrest and the charges loomed over Lovett. Doreen Lovett recalls her son withdrawing. “He stopped going out,” she says softly. “And he stopped smiling.” Lovett might have been convicted if his Aboriginal Legal Service lawyer didn’t press police to hand over the diary entries and statements from all of the police at the scene. At first, police stalled in doing so. Then, unexpectedly in early 2017 after a magistrate ordered police to produce all files about the arrest, police told Lovett his charges would be withdrawn.

The teenager, who had been arrested for someone else’s crime only to face possible jail time for allegedly assaulting police, was suddenly told he had no case to answer. ‘Disturbing to say the least’ Lovett and his mother complained about his arrest to senior police via an Indigenous police liaison group. Police files reviewed by The Age reveal a local police officer who worked with one of the detectives accused of assaulting Lovett attempted to informally mediate with the Lovett family, in apparent breach of police policy. The approach by the local officer confused Doreen Lovett, although she says he acknowledged her son’s arrest had been bungled. If that was so, it accords with a diary note made by one of the uniformed officers at the scene. “When some of the information about how the incident was handed sank in … it was disappointing and disturbing to say the least,” Constable K wrote in his diary after he had resumed searching for the actual car theft suspect (who was later charged).

But, officially at least, the police admitted no fault. After the informal approach from the local officer, Lovett declined to be interviewed by internal affairs officers. He feared he would be further targeted and no one would believe him. This week, a police spokesperson said the investigator who had reviewed Lovett’s arrest “was unable to determine if any criminal or disciplinary behaviour occurred”. “Situations like this are extremely dynamic and police are acting on real-time information. From time to time police make mistakes, which is what occurred when the 18-year-old was incorrectly arrested on April 5, 2016,” the police statement says. The police denial that anything improper occurred during Lovett’s arrest is, according to his lawyer Jeremy King, of firm Robinson Gill, typical of Victoria’s broken police complaints system. Over the past five years, King has emerged as Victoria’s leading lawyer when it comes to successfully suing police after they have been formally cleared by an internal investigation. He is acting for Lovett, who intends to sue police.

“We cannot leave it up to Victoria Police to hold officers who engage in misconduct to account for their actions. They have an inherent conflict of interest,” he says in comments backed by the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service. This view is also supported by data. A screengrab showing Tommy Lovett riding to his grandmother's house on his scooter. In 2009 Victoria Police’s internal affairs unit released a report that found the system was failing Indigenous complainants. Fewer than 1.5 per cent of brutality complaints involving an Indigenous person were substantiated. Almost a decade later, a separate inquiry by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) found 4 per cent of brutality allegations from a sample of police complaints were upheld. The state’s police complaint system faced further intense scrutiny in April 2018, when The Age revealed the mishandling or cover-up of several alleged police brutality cases (including a case involving the alleged assault and humiliation of a Preston pensioner captured on CCTV). The reporting sparked a scandal, prompting fresh calls for reform – later backed by a joint parliamentary committee – and the charging of several officers by IBAC. King says the Andrews government is now failing Victorians by stalling on reform.

“A bipartisan parliamentary committee has recommended substantial overhaul and reform of the police complaints system and the strengthening of IBAC through the creation of new police corruption and misconduct division,” he says. “The Victorian government needs to act now, to stop this happening again and again.” It’s too late for Tommy Lovett. His ordeal has forever changed him. His mother describes a young man who has disappeared into himself. She spent weeks convincing him to tell his story to help improve the police complaints system for others. She has set her sights lower in terms of what good might come from the story’s exposure for her son. “I’d like to see him smile again,” she says. Watch more on this tonight on the ABC’s 7.30 program.