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Chased or not, TJ had reasons to run

By Les Kennedy, Michael Pelly and Paola Totaro

February 17, 2004 - Thomas "TJ" Hickey believed the police were after him.

His mother, Gail, had told the 17-year-old that a warrant had been issued for his arrest in Walgett over a breach of an AVO matter, relating to an assault.

With that hanging over his head, she had travelled from Walgett, in the far north west of the state, to Sydney last Friday to try to help her boy in a "mediation" that she hoped would resolve matters.

His aunt, Virginia Hickey, with whom he had been staying for the past week in Douglas Street, Waterloo, after moving from another aunt's home in Glebe, made an appointment that day with a local youth guidance group for TJ that she hoped would see him accommodated in Sydney while going back to school to complete his HSC.

For TJ, which stood for Thomas Junior because an uncle and his grandfather were also called Thomas, this would be a step on the right life track.

TJ was born in the squalor of Redfern's Block, although his mother and father, Ian West, originally came from Walgett.

He had moved back to Walgett with them when he was 13 and had come to Sydney off and on, arriving on this latest trip last December for his uncle's 65th birthday but deciding to stay on.

However, within a few days of his arrival, say his mother, aunt Virginia and uncle Michael West, he was beaten up in a mistaken identity arrest by a group of police in the Block, a claim police would not comment on yesterday.

By 1am on Sunday Mrs Hickey's only son and the oldest of seven children lay dead in the Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick from horrific injuries suffered when he landed on his back on the blunt metal uprights of a walkway fence at the rear of the high-rise Turanga Housing Commission tower.

Yesterday Gail Hickey sat on a chair under a tree in the centre of the Block, crying and clutching a photo of TJ, adamant that he had crashed his red and black BMX bike while police were chasing him from Phillip Street.

But police insist that local officers were not hunting TJ on the day of his accident. Nor would they comment on any warrant for the arrest of the teenager, whose juvenile record was confined to a number of minor bag snatches.

But police did confirm that on Saturday, when TJ set out on his bike around 11am from his aunt's home on the five-minute ride to Eveleigh Street to get $20 from his mother to buy cigarettes and chips, police were searching Redfern for a bag snatcher.

The person they were after was a man in his early 20s, however, not the boyish TJ.

TJ, who was staying at his Aunt Virginia's home with his 14-year-old girlfriend, April, told them he would be 10 minutes and, as was April's habit, she timed him.

"He come down and seen me, to get some money off me," Mrs Hickey said. "He had an AVO matter in Walgett. I told him to come down and fix this conference up so he come down to fix this conference up. Then I found out that he had a warrant out for his arrest."

About 10 minutes after TJ left his mother, she got a phone call from April asking where he was. "Then about 10 minutes later my cousin Roy [Hickey] came up and asked me if TJ was on his red bike. I said, yeah. He said, 'He's had a nasty accident'."

Roy Hickey then drove Mrs Hickey to the Sydney Children's Hospital at Randwick where at 1am on Sunday doctors pronounced TJ dead.

Yesterday, Roy Hickey told lawyers from the Aboriginal Legal Service he had been driving a community health bus down Phillip Street just after 11am when TJ came flying across the road on his bike. "The next thing I saw was a police truck pull up in the park behind the fence, but I didn't see any officers get out or anyone chasing him."

Mr Hickey stopped his bus at the rear of the tower when he saw about six officers bending over a boy on the ground near the fence. "I went over and saw that it was TJ. The officers had gloves on them and they were all covered in blood but they would not let me go near him."

Another resident, Miguez Jose, said he was at the front of the Turanga block and saw police run to the rear of the building. "He was on his back on the fence. I think it [the metal upright] was in the neck or back. They lifted him off and he started screaming and kicking on the ground."

Virginia Hickey said a man living near the Turanga block had told a friend of her family that TJ flew through the air before being impaled. "[The witnesses] said I never seen no police at all. All I could see was him in the air with the bike, it was freaky like he was going a million miles an hour."

Virginia Hickey said TJ was going in the wrong direction to her home. "What was he going that way? Somebody had to be chasing him."

Mrs Hickey said she only wanted justice. "He's a happy-go-lucky boy. Loved playing football, looked after his sisters. He was a friendly boy."

But she said of police in Redfern: "They're nasty. They treat our kids like dogs. They don't have kids because they manhandle our kids, they treat them like dogs. I don't want nothing from the police.

She added: "I hope it does make a better Redfern. They've got to stop chasing our kids, and hurting our kids."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Back on Eveleigh Street it's still us versus them

February 17, 2004 - Police claim to be experienced in the area, but locals say they acted like stormtroopers, writes Connie Levett.

TJ Hickey's mother and extended family were sitting under the big tree at the top of Eveleigh Street on Sunday morning, quietly grieving. Nearby was a group of teenagers, many of whom had known Thomas.

How that scene descended into the fiery violence of Sunday evening remains in dispute. In Eveleigh Street, locals say about midday, patrolling police officers taunted the teens, calling them c---s, sparking a heated verbal exchange across the street between the two groups.

By about 1pm, Redfern railway station's Lawson Street access was closed. The community saw this as "immediately antagonistic", according to Victoria Dunbar, who has lived in the community for nine years and runs an alternative education program for young Aborigines not in school.

Later in the afternoon, between about 4pm and 5pm, police sealed off Lawson Street to cars and started to gather in large numbers at both ends of the street, she said.

The inner metropolitan area commander, Assistant Commissioner Bob Waites, said the closure was a response to a build-up of people in the area. He said that for many months police had been on the beat there, constantly in the precinct. "They took the decision that crowding was too much and it needed to be closed for a period," he said.

Ms Dunbar was in Eveleigh Street throughout Sunday and into the night. Her times were estimates, she said, because she does not wear a watch. In response to government claims that the youths were fuelled by alcohol, she said she did not see any of the crowd drinking.

Though nothing else happened throughout the afternoon, Ms Dunbar said the police presence kept building. "We kept going up [to look] and there were hundreds of them, arms locked, visors down. I've never seen so many police. Finally the kids started yelling, 'C'mon, bring it on'."

Police said the trouble started about 7.30pm when patrols on Lawson Street were attacked by a group throwing bricks at them from Eveleigh Street. They called for specialised support from the Operational Support Group. They say that back-up arrived about 9pm as the crowd began to throw bricks and bottles and attempted to set fire to and damage Redfern railway station. They were forced to retreat to Lawson and Gibbons streets.

The Hickey family sought peace further down Eveleigh Street. Thomas's great aunt Phyllis said "we tried to keep some of the boys out of the streets".

Ms Dunbar said Redfern station became the target of youths' attacks because "it was the only thing they could take their anger out on".

"The kids were angry, they know their mate was killed, they feared it could be me next," she said. She refused to discuss the teens' weapons, thought to include bottles, stones, firecrackers and petrol bombs, saying there was plenty of television footage of the conflict, and she wasn't going to add to it.

Lyall Munro, a community spokesman, said: "I saw some firecrackers. We didn't see any petrol bombs." A 13-year-old girl who said she took part in the riot said it was mainly young people involved, most of whom had known Thomas.

The children, some of primary school age, according to community members, with T-shirts obscuring their faces, ran at the line of police and the police kept trying to push them back. The wave and counter wave of attack and retreat took place in Lawson Street over several hours from 10pm.

At the height of the violence, no more than 80 to 100 protesters were involved, according to Ms Dunbar. Police put the number at up to 150 people.

At 1am, there were about 250 police assembled in riot gear. Soon after, they advanced, dispersing the crowd using shields and a fire hose. Police said the riot was contained about 4.20am.

The final police surge, Ms Dunbar said, came between 1am and 2am. When police moved into the top of Eveleigh Street about 2.30am, the youths had largely dispersed. Ms Dunbar said police found an empty street with a few curious residents, including herself, watching from a lane.

"The police came down in two flanks, arms locked, about 20 in each line and stood like stormtroops down each side of the street. They stood there until 7am."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Despair the reality for a race lost in the alien space of Redfern

By Ray Minniecon

February 17 2004 - Sydney's hard urban face has made the city seem like enemy territory for Aborigines.

Redfern is a good community. It is a good place to live. I am Aboriginal and I choose to live in Redfern. What happened on Sunday night is not to be confused with the type of place that Redfern is and the positive future it has to offer all who choose to live here.

Redfern is also the mirror of Aboriginal Australia. By the end of this week we will be headline news across the world.

Living in Redfern gives one an intriguing perspective of Aboriginal survival, struggle and existence. History and identity, social and political developments, cultural restoration and maintenance, all play a part in the rebuilding of Aboriginal identity, integrity and community from the ashes of our burnt-out histories in this place we call Redfern.

For me as an Aboriginal person Redfern is a place where one can interact with a powerful collective will to struggle against imperial forces that continue to interfere with - and endeavour to reinterpret our history - our identity, and our future prospects from a very different colonial perspective.

We are one of the oldest cultures on Earth, yet in the heart of the city we are still so very young and tender in our attempts to adjust, manage and control our affairs within the fast-moving pace of city life.

Consider the following. For 50,000 years we have never had any desire or reason to build cities, let alone live in them. For 50,000 years we have never had any desire or reason to develop a market economy based on a complex centralised value system we call money. For 50,000 years we had no need for complex organisational structures.

For almost 200 years we were locked away from the new Australia that was built on our lands without our input by these systems. And it has only been in the past 40 years (remember 1967) that we have been rightly given the opportunity to discover what the new builders have done with our country and our people.

We are not happy with many of the results of that nation-building process. We are not happy that we were not included in the process. We are certainly not happy with what happened with our forebears.

We are not happy at our forced exclusion in the building process. We are still not happy with the leaders of the new nation-builders and their decision-making process when it comes to our affairs. Yet, we are the chief cornerstones that the builders of the new nation rejected.

And we are still picking through the rubble of that terrible history, not made with our own hands, to rediscover ourselves, our identity and our place in the new nation. We have a long journey ahead of us. Redfern is all of these things and more to me.

For Aboriginal people, the most important value that we possess is relationships. We live to relate to each other in the right way. We yearn to relate to our land in the right way. And we desire to relate to the spirit world in the right way.

Once you start to dismantle these relationships, which we take great pains to develop, you destroy us.

So the question I ask myself in Redfern is, how does my Aboriginal culture survive and grow in the alien space and pace of city life? Is Redfern the end result of all our endeavours? No! It is the new beginning for me and my people. We have adjusted to the new nation-builders.

We are learning to adjust to the new economic systems, learning to adjust to alien administrative structures and systems. All at blinding speed. And at a huge cost.

So, what did I see on Sunday in Redfern? I saw an Aboriginal mother grieving with her family and friends over the sad and tragic loss of her son. I saw an insensitive system attack that mother in a very insensitive and inappropriate way and at the most inappropriate time in her life.

I saw a community grieving over another senseless loss of one of our young men. I saw our people struggling, continuing to adjust to the new nation. I did not see the new nation-builders offer this mother comfort or compassion in the darkest hour of her need.

I live with this hope that my Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people will find our place and our space in the most alien and inhospitable place of all to Aboriginal culture and people ... the city of Sydney.

Ray Minniecon is the director of Crossroads Aboriginal Ministries, Redfern.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Violence blamed on 'softly-softly' approach

By Paola Totaro, Les Kennedy and Connie Levett

February 18, 2004 - A police officer had his own pistol held against his stomach when he and a colleague were surrounded and overpowered by youths in Redfern, State Parliament was told yesterday.

The claim came amid debate over policing in the inner-city suburb in the wake of Sunday's violent nine-hour confrontation between 200 police and 100 youths who rioted over the death of Aboriginal teenager Thomas "TJ" Hickey, the 17-year-old who was impaled on a fence while riding his BMX bike.

According to a police database entry, the two officers involved in the gun confrontation had radioed for help three times but each time their distress call was misheard or equipment failed.

The NSW Opposition Leader, John Brogden, said the incident showed that "government policies and a softly-softly approach enforced on police are as much to blame as the complex problems in Redfern" and that Sunday's riot "was not simply the result of the tragic death of a young Aborigine".

Outside Parliament, he said leaked police documents showed that in the incident on Thursday, one of the youths removed a Glock pistol from an officer's holster and pointed it at the policeman's stomach.

"Thank God the officer was able to retrieve his weapon before he was shot. Two police were very nearly killed and there hasn't been a word said about it by the Carr Government," Mr Brogden said.

Late yesterday, the Police Minister, John Watkins, confirmed the two police officer were attempting to make an arrest for a breach-of-bail offence when they were attacked by up to 15 youths. He said there was a struggle for a gun and a radio call for help was initially not understood.

However, he insisted that at no time was an officer disarmed: "The firearm was the subject of a struggle between the officer and the offender. At no time did the officer lose custody of his weapon. The weapon was out of its holster for some seconds then immediately replaced after the incident," he said.

Mr Watkins said the arrest was completed. Redfern police had advised there were no known radio black spots in the Block but radios would be tested and tapes of radio traffic reviewed.

Meanwhile, the dead youth's grieving mother, Gail Hickey, has engaged a firm of lawyers to represent her and her family at any future coroner's inquiry into the death of her son.

His body is expected to be released from the Glebe morgue tomorrow and will be taken to Walgett in the state's north-west for his funeral next week.

David Webb, 32, a cousin of Thomas Hickey, said he had sent his children away from Sydney because he was afraid of what might happen with the police in coming days.

"It's gonna get hectic in the next few days. Everyone is taking their kids out," Mr Webb said. "The TRG [tactical response group] will kick in doors, I don't want my kids around it."

Long-time Block resident Jenny Munro said there was "a natural exodus to Walgett" as Hickey relatives returned home but she was not aware of others leaving.

Mr Webb said his two children, 11 and 8, were not involved on Sunday night. They usually attended a Catholic school in Hurstville but he had sent them to his home community in Ballina..

A six-detective investigation team comprising officers from the Leichhardt command is examining closed circuit television security footage from the Redfern area to see if there is any basis to claims police were chasing Thomas Hickey on Saturday.

Security footage is also being used by police to identify those who rioted on Sunday night.

Police said the investigators had also seized police audio tapes and log records of radio calls made in Redfern on Saturday by local police.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Rage, boredom and peer pressure fuel Redfern's youthful violence

By Debra Jopson and Juan-Carlo Tomas

February 18, 2004 - "I knocked a copper out with a brick," a 13-year-old schoolboy boasted yesterday at the top of the Block as he recounted his role in the Redfern station riot on Sunday night.

They launched the bricks with their hands, declared his 12-year-old friend. Participating in the melee with bottles flying and the railway station burning had made him "happy".

Why? "Smashing coppers up. They killed a little kid."

Both boys, who live in Redfern and attend Alexandria Community Public School, knew Thomas "TJ" Hickey. Despite police denials there was a chase, they blame police for Hickey's death after he came off his bicycle and was impaled on a fence.

Did the boys throw bricks to get back at the police? "Yes," said the 12-year-old. "We kept getting reloads of bottles and bricks and we were charging . . ."

Senior Constable Michael McGowan, who was knocked unconscious during the riot, said yesterday he had been very fearful as he faced the mob.

"It reminded me of an English soccer riot. When we were standing at the top of Eveleigh Street I could actually see people bending over and picking up the paving stones and throwing them directly at us," the officer said.

The 13-year-old who might have been his assailant said the youngsters had not been drinking alcohol - memories fuelled their anger. "Even if we walk in the streets, they chase us for nothing," he said.

"Because we are black," said his 12-year-old friend.

"They pick on black kids. I don't see white kids being bashed," said Caroline Bates, 19.

Superintendent Dennis Smith, area commander of Redfern Police, denied police harassed youths because they were Aboriginal. He and another officer were described as "dogs" as they patrolled the Block yesterday.

"If young people of any age offend against the law they have to be spoken to. Sometimes young Aboriginal people in Redfern do things that are wrong, break the law and we have to speak with them. But most of our relationships are generally positive," he said.

Jason Munro, youth drug and alcohol worker with the Redfern Aboriginal Medical Service, disagreed. The 29-year-old father of four said he still experienced the unwarranted police attention he grew up with in Waterloo.

"The main problem with the kids has been a lack of communication with the police. They've been intimidated by the police."

Because of its "handy" location and identity, Redfern had become a magnet for drug pushers, said Shane Phillips, a community member who has long worked with youths there.

He said the police knew who the dealers were but did not tackle the "root cause" of trouble. "Our people don't want it. We want the police to put them out because we don't want our kids to suffer. They may as well do it properly and knock them [the pushers] over every week."

Peer pressure, boredom and "falling into the wrong crowd" led youngsters to experiment with the marijuana, heroin and cocaine available in Redfern, Mr Munro said.

"A lot of kids down there are good kids," he said.

Mr Phillips said many residents worried about their children being harmed had worked hard to improve Redfern without public acknowledgement.

"How to get the media interested in what you're doing - have a riot," he said.

Not again, said the two brick-throwing boys.

"We've stopped doing it now," said the 12-year-old. His friend agreed: "We've done our bit."

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

School system has let down many boys like TJ

February 18, 2004 - John Brogden's response to the weekend's tragedy in Redfern is beneath contempt. We can only hope that the Premier's response of calling for three inquiries into the incident is not also a cynical attempt to cover up the tragedy by bulldozing a mountain of paperwork over it.

Any inquiry into the short life and sudden death of TJ Hickey must begin by investigating the woefully inadequate attempts of the state education system to prepare this young man for adult life. Each year hundreds of young people are being turned out of rural schools in towns like Walgett without being able to read or write and with no prospects of ever being gainfully employed.

These are young people without hope or expectation and when they drift to places such as Redfern it is not surprising that they do not have the skills to cope. Nor is it surprising that they might flee in fear when confronted by the police. Ruthlessly consigned to the scrap heap of society they have, rightly or wrongly, learnt to fear the police whom they have come to regard as the upholders of an unjust and uncaring society.

Dr Paddy Cavanagh, Katoomba, February 17.

A group of alcohol-fuelled Aboriginal people riot in Redfern: John Brogden wants to bulldoze the Block and it is referred to as a race riot. A group of alcohol-fuelled, rich, spoilt, white kids riot in Bondi: no calls from Mr Brogden to bulldoze anything, and it certainly is not called a race riot nor a class riot nor a cushy-ride-through-life riot.

Mike Harris, Stanmore, February 17.

John Brogden's solution to the complex problems in Redfern is to roll up with the bulldozers and flatten the lot. I am sure that has earned him a few brownie points with the morning shock jocks. But really, John, why stop there? One or two Exocets would really energise the khaki vote.

John Vigours, Neutral Bay, February 17.

Thank you for publishing Ray Minniecon's article ("Despair the reality for a race lost in the alien space of Redfern", Herald, February 17). I have felt sick listening to news and views of politicians and radio announcers about the Redfern riot. This article said everything that needs to be said to compensate for the narrow and patronising views being thrown around about the Aboriginal community in Redfern. We need to be understanding and supportive to people who are hurting.

Abby Chambers, Five Dock, February 17.

Ray Minniecon, what I saw is different from you. While you were blind to the rampage that existed, seeing only a grieving mother, I saw a group of individuals looking for a scapegoat for what happened to the unfortunate teenager killed in what has been described by eye-witnesses as an accident.

You can't possibly condone the events of Sunday evening. I saw a group of men and women violently assaulted by rioters and both private and public property destroyed.

Don't you ever get sick of making excuses for the actions of some in your community? I know some people outside your community are heartily sick of listening to those excuses and don't condone the activities of Sunday evening.

David Clarke, Watson (ACT), February 17.

Why do we as a society always find a montage of excuses to justify, and somehow reduce the culpability for criminal behaviour? I'm saturated to exhaustion with the use of emotive psycho-babble in attempts to absolve the criminal behaviour of Aborigines at Redfern on the weekend.

Anachronistic terms such as dispossession, alienation, cultural-undernourishment, drug-dependency, hopelessness, self-determination belong to a 1960s civil rights march, not Australia in the third millennium. Violence is violence whether it is in Iraq, Israel or Redfern. Society has to deal with it with a strong response. We do not need snivelling excuses which endeavour to paint the criminal perpetrators as morally courageous freedom fighters.

Bob Barnes, Wedderburn, February 17.

Thank you, Mr Elia (Letters, February 17), for the most articulate account of racial profiling I have read for some time. The tragic events of this week are a chilling reminder that all is not well in the way we live as a community. And it is important that we look beyond the police for solutions. Attitudes in that public institution mirror those in every other, and in many homes.

While Aboriginal Australians suffer more than any other group, many "black", "brown" or "yellow" skinned Australians will tell you stories which belie our official policies of non-discrimination - the time they inquired about the problems their children were having at school, when they tried to intervene on behalf of their elderly parent in hospital, when they spoke with an accent in a job interview. It's time we paused for a minute's silence, and then started to listen.

Soraya Kassim, Kogarah, February 17.

Those Redfern rioters should be shipped back to where they came from. Oops . . . I forgot.

Simon Squires, Crows Nest, February 17.

What's all this nonsense about demolishing the Block? With the state of the Sydney property market, wouldn't it make sense to have Gav and Waz work their renovation magic?

Kevin Rigby, Newtown, February 17.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald

Further information:

• Redfern Riots clippings and background

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