On 5 December 2017, 55-year old Yorta Yorta woman Tanya Day was arrested for public intoxication and taken to Castlemaine police station where she was detained in a police cell. There, police failed to conduct the mandatory check-in every 30-minutes of an intoxicated individual. At 5pm that same day, according to the official inquest into her death, Day fell and hit her head on a concrete wall inside the cell. She suffered a brain hemorrhage and died from her injuries seventeen days later.
In June 2019, the Victorian Coroner made a ruling on the scope of the coronial inquest into her death to “allow witnesses to be questioned as to whether racism played a part of their decision making, including Day’s treatment, options considered, their motivations and potential unintended effects of their decision making.”
This morning, The Age has reported that no police officers will be charged over Day’s death in police custody. Crime reporter Erin Pearson received notice from Victoria Police that following a review of the case, they’d been advised by the state’s Office of Public Prosecution (OPP) not to proceed with criminal charges against the police officers involved in the matter.
Day’s family have released a statement through Justice for Tanya Day (published on the Human Rights Law Centre website):
“We are devastated and we are angry. The two police officers who failed to properly check on our mum, and instead left her to die on the floor of a police cell, have been let off. The DPP seem to have based their conclusion on a police investigation that we have said all along was flawed and lacked independence.”
“It is not good enough that such an important decision was made behind closed doors without any input from our family or the broader Aboriginal community. It is in the public interest – and the interests of Aboriginal people across Australia – that the police be held accountable for their actions”.
“In the last 30 years, hundreds of Aboriginal people like our mum have died at the hands of the police, yet no police officer has ever been held criminally responsible. We had hoped that in this global ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that there might be some care and accountability for our mum’s needless death, but instead the DPP are choosing not to prosecute this injustice. This is wrong and speaks volumes about systemic racism and police impunity in this country. Aboriginal people will keep dying in custody until the legal system changes and police are held accountable.”
In April this year, Victoria’s Deputy State Coroner found that Day’s death was preventable, and that the “totality” of evidence from the criminal investigation indicated an indictable offence may have occurred. Caitlin English later referred the case to the OPP.
In an offical statement written to The Age, Victoria Police said it “acknowledges the loss and suffering experienced by Ms Day’s family,” and “takes any death in police care or custody very seriously and will continue reviewing the coroner’s findings and recommendations.”
The Tanya Day inquest summary of findings, published in April 2020 on the Human Rights Law Centre website, stated that “no findings were made regarding whether Ms Day’s Aboriginality had influenced her treatment by paramedics”, though “Ambulance Victoria apologised to the Day family and gave evidence that the organisation is trying to improve cultural safety for Aboriginal people.”
Listen to Calla Wahlquist’s full interview with Day’s family and analysis of this case in The Guardian.
Photo Credit: Charandev Singh