Blak deaths in custody: Ms Dhu’s Pilbara death ‘confirmed racism is killing people’

Della Roe still grieves for the daughter taken from her almost seven years ago. Sitting at her mother’s house in Geraldton she holds a sign that reads “Justice for Ms Dhu”. Alongside her, offering a reassuring hand on Della’s shoulder, is a little girl named after the aunty she will never meet. The raw emotion is palpable. Ms Roe weeps so loudly at times it is hard to make out what she is saying. WATCH OUR ORIGINAL FIVE PART SERIES BLAK DEATHS IN CUSTODY: “Our lives have been torn apart ... we’re still sitting on the edge waiting for justice, people are still dying in those jails,” Ms Roe says through tears. On August 2, 2014, police responded to a report that Ms Dhu’s partner had violated an apprehended violence order at a home in South Hedland. While there the officers arrested Dion Ruffin and also Ms Dhu, as there was a warrant out due to her unpaid fines. On August 4, police took Ms Dhu — who had been complaining of pain since soon after her arrest — to Hedland Health Campus in South Hedland for the third time. They told hospital staff the 22-year-old was “faking it” and some medical staff agreed. Ms Dhu was wheeled in by one of the officers after she lost feeling in her legs. During the inquest into Ms Dhu’s death, Caroline Jones — the triage nurse who assessed Ms Dhu — said the young woman had no pulse, her body appeared cold, her skin was dusky and her lips had a tinge of blue. Staff spent 53 minutes trying to revive her but their attempts failed. She was pronounced dead at 1.39pm. Ms Dhu died of pneumonia and septicaemia from a broken rib, which Ruffin admitted to causing. The inquest heard that an hour and 40 minutes before she died, one of the police officers involved told another detainee in the charge room: “You take drugs? ‘Cause I’ll show you something, that’s what happens when you take drugs. You end up like this woman in here.” State Coroner Rosalinda Fogliani found police had subjected Ms Dhu to “unprofessional and inhumane” treatment. She said it was “well below the standards that should ordinarily be expected”. FAILED BY SO MANY SYSTEMS The story of Ms Dhu shows the inadequacies of so many systems in WA — from racism in hospitals to lack of care from police officers to legislative reforms. Hannah McGlade, executive officer for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, said racism played a huge role in Ms Dhu’s death. “It confirmed to myself and to all Aboriginal people that racism is well and truly alive in this country, and when we talk about it, we’re told to be quiet, we’re told we’re trouble,” Ms McGlade said. “Yet, we know that it’s actually killing people as it did kill Ms Dhu. She should have received proper medical treatment.” Ms Dhu’s grandmother Carol Roe, who has been the family spokesperson since her death, told The West Australian her granddaughter was no thug. “She was not a criminal. If she went out and shot someone, yeah you can call her a criminal, (but) my granddaughter paid the biggest price,” she said. Attorney-General John Quigley said Ms Dhu’s death “was a tragedy of the highest order”. “Ms Dhu was a victim of domestic violence and the way the laws were operated didn’t give her a chance,” Mr Quigley said. CATALYST FOR CHANGE Until last year, Western Australians who had failed to pay off their fines would be sentenced to imprisonment to pay them off in a practice known as “cutting fines”. Mr Quigley said the old laws were a “dumb business model”. “We’re recovering $2000, and it was costing the community $3000 or $4000 to enforce it,” he said. “Once the fine had become overdue and been registered at the fines registry ... the person could be arrested on the default warrant ... People used to ring this office but there was little we could do to intervene to help them.” The Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which released its final report in 1991, the year Ms Dhu was born, had recommended WA’s fine default laws be changed to make imprisonment a last resort. Former commissioner Pat Dodson said this was an important recommendation. “People were being arrested at funerals because they had fines outstanding ... It was clearly a cause for the over-representation of Aboriginal people in custody,” he said. The changes to WA’s laws were not made until after Ms Dhu died. Everyone — including Mr Quigley — believes Ms Dhu would have been alive if these laws had been changed before she died. “It can’t bring my granddaughter back, it can never bring my granddaughter back ... all that (stuff) they promise us blackfullas, it will never bring that daughter back,” her grandmother Carol said. CHANGES INTRODUCED Last June, two days after Perth’s second Black Lives Matter rally, State Parliament finally passed the fine default reforms package. Imprisonment is still an option but is now an absolute last resort, with fine defaulters issued development orders instead of being thrown behind bars. “We were a backward State in this area,” Mr Quigley said. “It’s sad that it took us so long to get to that position (but) you’ve got to have a will ... and you’ve got to have a determination to reform.” He acknowledged Ms Dhu in both the introduction and passing of the Bill. “I think she’d be given every chance to be alive, she wouldn’t have ended up in jail,” Mr Quigley told The West Australian. Along with the changes to the fine default laws, the State Government introduced the Custody Notification Service, a 24/7 hotline that police call when they detain or arrest an Indigenous Australian. It is operated by the Aboriginal Legal Service of WA and has been called a “life-saving service”. It was another recommendation from the royal commission implemented far too late for Ms Dhu.