A warning this story includes vision of a confronting attack on an Indigenous man. Video has emerged of three government-funded security guards kicking and stomping on a First Nations man in Darwin. The Northern Territory is the only jurisdiction that funds private security guards to conduct so-called ‘Quasi-policing’ on public streets. Despite an expert review calling for the system to be scrapped – the government has doubled down on the program with critics now calling for a federal intervention.
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00:00It's four o'clock in the morning when three security guards are called to this Darwin
00:07takeaway shop.
00:08This man is intoxicated and has damaged property, but he's on his way home and backing away
00:14when he's kicked to the ground.
00:16The three guards pin him down, he's punched and stomped on and his head is kicked like
00:21a soccer ball.
00:22These guards are on patrol for the NT government and have been described as quasi-police.
00:28They were later charged, one received home detention.
00:31But the quasi-policing program continues, with $5.4 million budgeted last year.
00:38These types of services effectively become policing on the cheap.
00:42Retired detective Vince Kelly warned the government to end the patrols in an expert report in
00:472024.
00:48The accountability mechanisms are not there.
00:51Successive NT governments have ignored his advice, and police now task the guards to
00:56patrol so-called hotspots.
00:58Many of those attending this Darwin breakfast service are homeless.
01:02Some are escaping violence in remote communities.
01:05Vanessa Karanua says the government's quasi-police harass her indiscriminately.
01:09They come along and then they ask questions and they remove us from where we are.
01:19The current Chief Minister Leah Finocchiaro declined an interview, but said in a statement
01:23community safety was her priority.
01:26Detective Vince Kelly says there's no evidence Darwin's quasi-police are helping.
01:31There's no real measurement around what actually is occurring and about how effective it is.
01:36The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Katie Kierse says
01:40the NT government is eroding human rights as it works to tackle law and order.
01:45We don't question the need for community safety, we're absolutely on board with that, but we
01:50want our people to be considered within that context because they're not safe either.
01:55She's called on the NT to comply with its international treaty obligations and for the
01:59federal government to step in if they fail to do so.