Victoria Police makes big payout in brutality case

Victoria Police have made a confidential payout of more than $500,000 to settle a case involving an ex-policewoman who was handcuffed, stripped of her underwear, stomped on and kicked by fellow officers in a police station.

The biggest disgrace is that it took so long to get to this result. Police are very protective of their own -- even when they are in the wrong

The confidential payment was made more than two years after police initially and wrongly declared that there was insufficient evidence to charge police who allegedly assaulted Yvonne Berry.

The payment is one the highest made in Victoria to settle a brutality case, lawyers said, and comes after a policeman was convicted late last year for assaulting Ms Berry.

Since the initial incorrect finding that police had no case to answer was issued in early 2016 by a senior internal affairs officer, Ms Berry's ordeal has served as a case study for those calling for reform of Victoria’s police complaint system.

The system faced fresh scrutiny last week after The Age exposed several other brutality cases, which included complaints from alleged victims about the difficulty of making a complaint—and the fear of being improperly charged-- and concern that the complaint system is biased.

Ms Berry endured these same fears even though she had spent several years working as an internal affairs officer inside the police complaints system.

In a previous interview with The Age, she described the trauma of being charged with resisting arrest after her brutality complaint was dismissed.

Her charges were quietly withdrawn and her police brutality complaint revived after the intervention of Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission in 2016.

The revelation of Ms Berry’s payout comes with growing calls from legal groups, academics and a joint parliamentary committee about the need to overhaul the police complaints system by ensuring IBAC investigates more of the serious complaints issued against police.

Currently, IBAC mostly performs an auditing function that involves reviewing the police handling of complaints. It investigates only the most serious of cases.

Legal groups said the minister responsible for IBAC, Gavin Jennings, has been receptive to calls for change and supported the work of the parliamentary committee.

The Andrews government is yet to unveil what, if any, reforms it will introduce but is facing growing community concern that the force has proven itself incapable of effective self-regulation.

Several police brutality scandals, the informer 3838 affair - set to be the subject of a royal commission- and the resignation of disgraced internal affairs chief Brett Guerin, have all raised questions about the ability of the force to investigate itself.

In addition to Ms Berry’s payout - believed to be $470,000 in personal compensation and an additional $50,000 in legal fees - policeman Steven Repac was in November found guilty by a jury of assaulting Ms Berry.

Ms Berry declined to comment on her payout, saying she was bound by a confidentiality clause. She has previously said she initially had no choice but to sue the police force after she was told no officers would be held to account for her ordeal in the Ballarat police cells.

Ms Berry, who had mental health problems due to her work as an internal affairs officer and dealing with the horrific aftermath of the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009, was arrested on January 15, 2015 after she was found drunk and incoherent by a Ballarat resident.

In the early stages of her 16 hours in police custody, the CCTV recorded her in a police cell attempting to use a broken drinking fountain before gesturing to the camera for water. She then drank from the cell's toilet.

After becoming agitated and demanding a blanket, her cell door was opened and Ms Berry pushed past, swiping an officer's lanyard. After being handcuffed, Ms Berry was then dragged on the floor to a cell. A male officer pulled down her underwear, apparently searching for the missing lanyard.

Senior Constable Repac then stood on Ms Berry's feet and ankles. Next, he stomped on her ankle and was also filmed kicking Ms Berry. When Ms Berry later told her story to The Age, she described being “stressed, demoralised, and thinking I'm in Guantanamo Bay. This isn't Ballarat ... it can't be".

https://www.smh.com.au/national/victoria/victoria-police-makes-secret-payout-in-ex-officer-brutality-case-20190127-p50tyt.html