Begin at Redfern Station: overpoliced, oversurveilled, over bright… Like when they demolish houses so you can see the preserved insides where people once watched tv, practised the flute, sung happy birthday, and there’s always a burnt out fireplace. That’s what Redfern Station feels like. Like nothing good could ever happen there.



They march this guy past. He’d spat on one of them, the cop says later. It is obvious he doesn’t want to go. His girlfriend is walking alongside, telling him to calm down, that he’ll only get himself into more trouble, and I wish he would. But her pleas aren’t working. I want to go home he yells, loud. I follow them. Suddenly he is on the ground in front of the ticket machine, and I think, fuck. One of them pulls out a long whip like stick from his belt and I feel sick. Three cops are on top of him, a knee squeezing down onto his head. His girlfriend tries to make them stop. They tell her to stand back, push her backwards. She resists, stands her ground, says clearly, No, you are using excessive force against an Aboriginal man. More cops flock in from across the road. Ducks skimming onto water.



This is what made me most angry. It wasn’t seeing the full effect of the overpolicing (where else in Sydney would twenty cops arrive in the same place in a couple of minutes?), and not the blatant racism of that fact. It was the young guy, perhaps coming home from work or uni, who saw this man on the ground in front of the ticket machine with three policemen sitting on him, a knee to his head as he screamed Don’t hurt me, and smiled at the security guard to say Do I have to buy a ticket? gesturing to what was going on as if it was one of those routine disturbances that sometimes cause otherwise numb and silent train passengers to share a sigh and a word or two, and she smiled back and let him through the gate. I wanted to grab him and point him at what was happening.

Is there such a thing as controlled anger? If so I don’t think I’ve ever experienced it. I would really like to know how other people deal with situations like this. How did you witness them? What do you do with your anger? I feel so out of practice. Even writing this four days after, the pathetic sincerity, trying to shorten my sentences to recount the movements of people feels grotesque, unreal, like a queasy re-enactment for the authorities, and I don’t want to be writing it, I’m shaking writing it and I feel like crying, but how else?

This goes on for about four minutes; much longer than it must have taken to handcuff him. As it is happening another guy takes out his mobile to take photos, after the guy being arrested asks him (shouting, pleading) to. A young cop comes up to him and tells him to stop because it’s illegal. That I cannot stand. Everything is surveyed, scanned, all the time in the city but supposedly we’re not allowed to make our own images. This is commonly known as a Fucking Load Of Shit. I say to him, That is not true. He turns to me quickly looking harried and starts to say something about how he would know. Police officers know what’s legal and illegal? This would be news to many people. He looks about old enough to wipe his own arse.

His girlfriend is on the ground now too and they are handcuffing her. Fucking hell, why are police so reactive? (if not provocative). I would have done the same if it was my sister, brother, a friend there on the ground, I would have ordered them off immediately, as I’m sure everyone I know would. At the very least police should not be surprised at this.

They march them both across the road to the watchtower, the police station conveniently placed to watch over the Block. Some drinkers from the RSL have come out on the balcony and are jeering at the cops. In a few minutes they have taken the friend taking photos across the road too, ‘for a chat’. I feel gutted. I know the pictures he took will probably not leave again. I’m left there alone, a few police sniffing around like stray dogs looking for something piss on.

NWA’s verdict on police all those years ago, unfortunately, still holds — The jury has found you guilty of being a redneck, whitebread, chickenshit motherfucker.