A warning this story contains vision that some viewers may find disturbing. An Indigenous elder has expressed his dismay at social media vision showing a police officer shoving a man into a wall and dragging him through the front yard of a property near Port Augusta. Lindsay Thomas says he is particularly concerned for the children who witnessed the confrontation.
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00:00Noongar elder Lindsay Thomas has worked most of his life to educate people, and has been
00:07left outraged by the social media video of an Indigenous man's encounter with police.
00:12Seeing that I was disgusted and I said, where do I live?
00:17What century do I live in?
00:18The vision was posted on Facebook and has been shared thousands of times.
00:22SA Police later confirmed officers attended a home in Davenport near Port Augusta last
00:27Saturday where there was an altercation between police and a man not living at the address.
00:32The 42-year-old man was arrested and charged with hindering and assaulting police.
00:36A complaint has been made about the incident.
00:38I've been advised that there will be a thorough investigation into this matter in accordance
00:43with the Police Complaints and Discipline Act, and the Police Commissioner has also
00:46made plain that that investigation is presently ongoing.
00:49This is why this state must have not police investigating police, but a police ombudsman.
00:54The Greens have proposed a wider inquiry into policing in South Australia.
00:58I have long called for an investigation into racism in Saipol.
01:02It needs to happen and it needed to happen five years ago.
01:05Lindsay Thomas has major concerns about how the incident in Davenport will be handled.
01:09You want a lot of big trouble, riots and all this sort of thing, because that's what will
01:13happen if you don't act on this, because it's wrong, totally wrong, what they did.
01:20Laws usually prohibit information about an incident subject to a complaint from being
01:24released, but the Police Commissioner has authorised publishing details in this case.
01:29However, there has been no information provided on how long the investigation will take.