"I want to provide the feedback that the language, tone, and imagery of the second presentation this morning was very racist," it read.The internal email from Victoria's justice department was about a recent presentation by police, which had been pitched as a "really impactful" look at the youth gang landscape in Victoria. In the aftermath, attendees complained they should have been warned beforehand they would see "someone get stabbed to death".
The day before the presentation, an email went out warning that Victoria Police had advised there would be "graphic footage that some attendees may find confronting" and that people might want to "excuse themselves" if they found it distressing.One staff member said to put it "bluntly", police "should have said 'we are about to show you someone get stabbed to death'.
It is unclear how many of the attendees complained based on the consolidated feedback provided in the emails, but the secretary of the department described it as "significant staff concerns". One attendee recalled a slide in the second presentation that featured pictures of two young men of African background handcuffed on the ground.
Police said, "with hindsight" it accepted that "reading out social media posts from gang members containing certain words may have been offensive to a number of individuals and this was not our intent.
Another person's notes of the session disagreed, they said the presenter acknowledged white gang members, but said "memberships of non-Caucasians is over represented". Victoria's Crime Statistics Agency data shows the number of offenders under 24 who were born in Sudan and South Sudan has fallen in the past few years, from 508 in 2020/21 to 258 in 2022/23.
They emailed staff who had attended, "to acknowledge and apologise for the distress, anger, and disappointment that the presentation has caused" and tell them the material "did not reflect values".Two days after the presentation, justice department secretary Kate Houghton and then-acting police chief commissioner Neil Paterson had "a few conversations".
"He apologised on behalf of the VicPol and asked me to convey his apologies to the team," the group member wrote in an email, adding Mr Paterson "said it was inappropriate to give such a graphic presentation" particularly "to those who might know some of those young ".
Victoria Police Racism Youth Crime African Australians South Sudanese Youth Gangs Vicpol
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