Veronica Gorrie had spent a lifetime fearing the police. Her grandmother Linda had been taken from her family as an eight-year-old in 1941, along with her three siblings Teresa, Myra and Ronnie. They were reunited 30 years later but it was too late for Teresa – she died two years after being taken into state care.
Gorrie's father John was trained by Linda to hide in bushes whenever welfare came around. A fair-skinned baby, he too was taken from the 16-year-old at birth. Linda eventually married and secured him back but the four-year-old toddler had already lost his precious early years in an orphanage.
It was this legacy of fear Gorrie was determined to change.
A Gunai/Kurnai woman, she was a rare addition to the Queensland police force, one of a handful of graduates of a year-long Indigenous training program. Describing the 2001 induction ceremony as one of the 'best days' of her life, Gorrie entered with high hopes to create a sense of safety for Indigenous communities, and for her three children.
“I wanted to break that cycle of fear. I didn’t want my children to experience the same fear and being terrified of police,” she said. Her children spent time at the police academy, swimming on site as she was training.
Her book Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience, is divided in two. ‘Blue’ is scathing indictment of her 10 years in the force; ‘Black’ details the harrowing legacy of intergenerational trauma as a domestic and sexual violence survivor. It was a dual reality that took its toll on Gorrie’s nervous system. She developed PTSD and was medically discharged on November 3, 2011. A day later she began writing her book.
“Writing it was very difficult. I walked away. I cried a lot,” Gorrie tells SBS Voices.
Source: Supplied
In the force, Gorrie writes racial profiling and slurs were rife. Sudanese were called ‘skinnies’; Samoans and Tongans were called ‘Pac Islanders’, and Indigenous people were called ‘abo’ or ‘atsi’. Pacific Islanders were described as violent and unlicensed drivers; Sudanese as thieves; Vietnamese as drug dealers.
Speaking of her children, Gorrie says, “I wanted them to not fear police. After being in there for a short time, I realised these fears not only I had as a child, but my father's and grandparents' and other generation's before that, this fear and distrust was well and truly justified.”
In her acknowledgements she thanks her child, writer Nayuka Gorrie, for giving her the strength to speak out. (The 49-year-old is tickled to be appearing alongside Nayuka at the Sydney Writers' Festival: "For a long time I have been 'Nayuka’s mother'. As of (publishing), Nayuka is now my child. I’ve been waiting for this day!" she laughs.)
During foot chases involving black people, Gorrie says police would call out, ‘Stop running, ya little black c***!’ “Black this and black that…Police not only brutalise people with excessive force, but they are racist, too. If they weren’t racist prior to joining the force, in my experience, it seemed that they quickly became so,” she writes.
During Queensland's , sparked by a death in custody, she describes how colleagues would drop racial remarks and wore wristbands in support of charged officer Chris Hurley. Gorrie responded by draping her desk in the Aboriginal flag. Once, when a Tongan policewoman colleague of hers excitedly spoke about what she might call her new baby, the duty sergeant called out ‘Defendant!’, and the room erupted in laughter.
In the era of Black Lives Matter, as policing and deaths in custody in Australia come under the microscope, Gorrie’s voice adds to the chorus interrogating the value of adding diversity to white and male-dominated institutions without wholescale systemic reform: “In my opinion, police were set up for white people and it is for white people, so they can have their police. I had intentions of looking after my people and trying to make my community where I was policing not fear police, but until police change their attitudes to Aboriginal people...that’s a really impossible task.
Ronnie Gorrie in uniform. Source: Supplied
“That’s a huge point of discussion for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, for people of colour and all minorities - just to walk into white spaces, they are not safe spaces for us... being ostracised because you are a black woman is so hard, and to speak up and speak out about it (and) to put people in their place and call them out every time they are being racist - it’s so difficult.”
It exacerbated the gruelling day-to-day stresses of police life. Gorrie was called out to murders, suicides, drug overdoses, the metal wrecks of stolen cars smashed by teens killed in high-speed rides. She was once attacked by an arrestee who ripped out clumps of her hair. Seeing no community-based rehab programs for Indigenous drug users, she would drive to homes when off-duty and offer transport to the detox hospital.
Daily domestic violence call outs were the norm; but treated dismissively. Police would run illegal checks on personal associates, an activity she admits engaging in once, and reported herself in for. Once, an officer who was keen on her, dropped by in an unmarked police car and secretly watched her and her children swimming in their complex.
“I find police lack empathy and compassion towards the aggrieved (domestic abuse survivors)…police need to be more compassionate and take that job serious. There’s been times they haven’t and there’s been a tragic result as a result of it.”
Gorrie’s dysphoria was compounded by a fraught relationship with her absent white mother who called her a ‘black b**ch’ and asked her why she identified as black when she had white blood. Her parents split when she was a child. It was her beloved father John she would write Mother’s Day cards to, and who was in the birthing room when she delivered her children.
It was only in the years before her mother’s death in 2017 that the pair reconciled. “She put me through a lot, that’s unfortunate, but I did love every bone in her body…My whole life all I ever craved was a mother’s love and I never had that.
“My mum did apologise for being a sh** mother. I actually thanked her – I said, 'because of your bad parenting, I was an excellent mother'.”
Black and Blue: A Memoir of Racism and Resilience by Veronica Gorrie is out now. She is appearing at the
