A 14-year-old girl has been “traumatised” according to her family, after an altercation with Queensland Police in Charters Towers yesterday, where the teenage girl appears bloodied and bruised.
The video has been posted to Facebook, and shows the young girl crying out for help with a bloodied lip. The officer then appears to hit the girls female family member in the face, several times.
NITV News contacted the family who explained, the events prior to the video recording seemed to be trouble free for this family.
An Indigenous girl has a bloody lip during an altercation with Queensland Police, 8th August 2019. Source: Facebook
The young girl who is seen in the video had been walking home from the shops with her sister and cousin around 2.30pm yesterday, when they were stopped by police, for what the family claim, was a random name check.
“One of the girls called us up to say the police had pulled them over and that they were being arrested or detained, and that they were to give their names," the girl's aunt told NITV News.
"We told them; well don’t say anything and we’re coming now."
Upon arrival at the scene, the aunt said one of the girls started walking towards her, but one of the officers "chased" after her and kicked her ankle causing her to trip over.
The family alleged the police officers assaulted the young girl, before they started filming.
"Her sister followed him and he grabbed [the girl] by the hair and ankle tapped her and she went flipping,” the girl's aunt said.
“She did about three flips on the footpath in the dust and then he picked her up and he booted her in the mouth. Her mouth was busted," the aunt said.
The girl‘s aunt told NITV News that she spoke to the police officer, saying he should not be handling the girls that way because they were minors, before telling the girls to get into the car.
Around this time, another family member started filming the incident.
While recording the woman asked why the girls were under arrest. The officer can be heard in the video replying they "contravened the requirement" of not giving the details of their names and addresses when they were asked.
Source: Facebook
The police officer says in the video "all they did was ask the girls names and they didn't want to give their names,”.
When the woman filming asks the officer, what had the girls had done wrong, the officer can be heard saying "they were threatening people".
The officer goes on to say "we received a call in relation to a group of girls walking past a group of houses in the other streets, yelling out threats saying they were gonna kill someone,” he said.
"Because we're investigating those offences, we have required their names and addresses, which we have the power to do."
"They contravened that order," he said.
NITV News spoke to the mother of the 14-year-old girl who said her daughter did not say anything of the sort.
“My daughter is only 14. She’s not known to the police, and I just don’t understand. In the video they say that she had been yelling obscenities and yelling threats up the street and when I spoke to my daughter she said that it wasn’t even anything of the sort, I don’t even know where that came from.”
In the video, you can see and hear the family attempting to release the young girl from the officer’s grip as she cries for help.
“He had both hands around her arms and she’s only a tiny little girl and she was screaming in pain and singing out for myself and her big sister, my other niece. She was screaming in pain,” she said.
In the video, it appears the girl's arm is held by the police. Source: Facebook
“We were screaming let her go, let her go. We wanted him to let her go and he wouldn’t listen and every time she tried to move he twisted her arm more."
"Her arm, you could see it just going blue from him twisting it and his grip on her," she said.
The family says the officer eventually let go of the girl, after a group of people walked down the street and demanded her release.
“There was another officer there and he saw all these other Murri’s coming down the street and said let her go, let her go, so they let her go in the end,” she said.
Following the incident, the family immediately took the girl to the hospital where she was checked over and sent home with a warning to monitor her for concussion.
After yesterday, the family state the girl now "has pain from her left shoulder down across her back because of what the officer did to her."
NITV sought a response from the Queensland Police Service, and they responded late today that 'the full circumstances surrounding the incident will be reviewed by Ethical Standards Command. The actions of both the police and those involved were recorded on police body worn video.'
