“BRUTAL FORCE”
1 June, 2026
Four Corners
WARNING: This program contains confronting depictions of violence and coarse language
DYLAN WELCH, REPORTER: This is pretty much where it happened just here. If you just come down here. That tree there is where, it’s where she was sitting when the police turned up. Just here and she ran and they chased her the, the, you know, the assault essentially happened all just here right in front of us. How does it make you feel?
NICHOLE ALLEN: Pretty horrid now.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: Yeah.
NICHOLE ALLEN: Now that we’re here. It’s pretty bad. Yeah.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: They took an oath to protect the community, to protect the people and that’s not what they did here.
JODI KNOTT: I’m sorry that I didn’t listen. Go please, just please go.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: She was sitting in a gutter. And scared.
DYLAN WELCH: There were security cameras everywhere here and there. What does it say to you that they did it in front of them?
NICHOLE ALLEN: They just didn’t care. They knew they were there.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: She didn’t even have anywhere to go.
DYLAN WELCH, REPORTER: Caught on camera. Settled in secret. Who polices the police?
KURT HAYWARD, FORMER DETECTIVE: I was immediately concerned that the police had done the wrong thing.
HAYLEY CHARNOCK, NDIS SUPPORT COORDINATOR: She was not safe when the police were in her presence, basically.
DYLAN WELCH: A flawed system allowing bad cops to act with impunity.
DYLAN WELCH, REPORTER : You were arrested for something you didn’t do?
BRAD KELLSON: Yep.
DYLAN WELCH: You were taken to a police station and you were bashed. Then the cops charged you with assaulting them and resisting arrest?
BRAD KELLSON: Yep.
DYLAN WELCH: And then they lied about it?
BRAD KELLSON: Yeah. Or tried to, because they got caught lying about it
DYLAN WELCH: NSW police, the oldest and the richest force in the country, responsible for policing one in three Australians. Over the last decade it’s also become the most complained about police agency. It’s now the national leader in legal payouts. Last financial year it paid out $40 million including courts costs. The same year there were 478 civil suits filed. That’s about two cases every working day of the year.
DYLAN WELCH, REPORTER: How are you? Good to meet you.
BRAD KELLSON: What’s your name again sorry?
DYLAN WELCH: I’m Dylan. Is this your caravan?
BRAD KELLSON: Yep.
DYLAN WELSCH: I’ve come to Casino to meet a guy called Brad Kellson — and to see the caravan he’s bought.
BRAD KELLSON: That’s my dog, little JoJo
DYLAN WELCH: Hello Jojo.
BRAD KELLSON: I’d already looked at it about six times before I actually bought it. And I walked in and said, um, “I’ll give you 15 grand in cash right now for it. Will you take it? ” And he goes, “Deal.”
DYLAN WELCH: Brad Kellson doesn’t usually have 15 grand to spare.
DYLAN WELCH: This caravan, the, the money you had to buy it comes from your settlement with the government?
BRAD KELLSON: Yep. Yep. New South Wales Police paid for this caravan.
POLICE OFFICER: Oi.
BRAD KELLSON: I’m going home anyway dickhead.
POLICE OFFICER: Oi stop, stop mate. You’ve been asked to stop. Stand here.
DYLAN WELCH: In 2021 Brad was living in Sydney with his partner. They’d been out drinking, and had stopped at a pub on their way home for dinner but were refused entry.
POLICE OFFICER: What’s going on? Body worn video cameras recording our conversation your action.
DYLAN WELCH:Police are responding to a call about a man pushing a woman outside the pub. There are witnesses saying it was Brad.
POLICE OFFICER: Just gonna get some info from those guys. What were you doing just then? You had your shirt off, carrying on the middle of the road.
BRAD KELLSON: Oi…wanna keep going, come over here, I’m going to punch you right in the fucking mouth.
POLICE OFFICER: No yuo won’t.
DYLAN WELCH:The officers try to keep him calm but the sheer number of them is making Brad nervous.
BRAD KELLSON: How many coppers? Two, four, six, eight, nearly ten coppers what for me?
POLICE OFFICER: All for you.
BRAD KELLSON: You gotta be fuckin’ jokin’ me. Fuckin’ dead set, this is fuckin’ stupid
DYLAN WELCH: There’s confusion about why they’re being stopped.
WOMAN: So what’s happening here now? Whats going on?
POLICE OFFICER: We’re, we’re sorting that out now.
BRAD KELLSON: This is too much.
DYLAN WELCH:A decision’s made to arrest him.
POLICE OFFICER: Has he been placed on, under arrest?
POLICE OFFICER: He’s been cautioned but not placed under arrest.
POLICE OFFICER: Yeah, place him under arrest. He’s not free to go because we’re investigating a DV offence.
DYLAN WELCH: Brad’s no angel — he’s been in and out of custody since his teens, sometimes for violence. Three years after this incident he was convicted of assaulting his partner. But that moment, that arrest, was unlawful and it became the starting point for a cascade of errors by police. Hayley Le represented Brad Kellson when he sued the police.
BRAD KELLSON: Here’s my ID.
HAYLEY LE, SOLICITOR: Mr. Kellson was cooperating. He had voluntarily given them his identification in case they needed it. He told them he was on his way home.
DYLAN WELCH: Someone might say, “Well, Brad you know, got what was coming to him by talking to the police that way.” How would you respond to that?
HAYLEY LE: Look the magistrate found that, um, Mr. Kellson was drunk and belligerent, but that’s not unlawful, and it certainly doesn’t warrant the level of force that the officer used on Mr. Kellson.
DYLAN WELCH: This is the police body-worn video of Leading Senior Constable Mark Davis. He’s about to do what police generally shouldn’t do, escalate the situation.
WOMAN: Oi!
LEADING SENIOR CONSTABLE MARK DAVIS: Don’t be a smartarse and stand in front of me.
BRAD KELLSON: Hey don’t touch my missus or you’ll be in trouble.
LEADING SENIOR CONSTABLE MARK DAVIS Don’t you tell me… get him in handcuffs now.
DYLAN WELCH: Brad’s face is slammed into a metal bench.
LEADING SENIOR CONSTABLE MARK DAVIS: You want to step in front of me again and you’ll hit the dock too.
BRAD KELLSON: Youse touched me for no reason.
POLICE OFFICER: Turn around, turn around, and sit down.
BRAD KELLSON: I was sittin’ down in the first place! What fuck you do that for? I didn’t do nothing to youse. Yeah look in your cop cams, coz next minute it’s gunna get shattered in a minute.
LEADING SENIOR CONSTABLE MARK DAVIS: It’s gunna get shattered is it? Alright, in the truck, let’s go.
DYLAN WELCH: Brad, already subject to an unlawful arrest is now handcuffed and thrown into a police truck.
BRAD KELLSON: I didn’t do shit bra. I didn’t do shit bra.
DYLAN WELCH: It’s about to get worse.
BRAD KELLSON: I was handcuffed behind my back. I remember going to the counter.
DYLAN WELCH:The same officer who slammed Brad onto the metal bench — Mark Davis — now hurls him towards the holding cells. He then grabs him by the neck, throws him onto the cell’s metal bench. Mark Davis is more than twice Brad’s weight. While Brad struggles, pinned to the ground under other officers, Davis knees him five times. At the end of all of this, Brad is charged with assaulting police, resisting arrest, domestic violence and given an AVO.
BRAD KELLSON: I’m emotional, brother, you know, like that’s, that’s, that’s something bad to watch, really. Especially when I remember it, the whole lot. I can’t watch that. That’s fucked.
DYLAN WELCH:In the end Brad wasn’t convicted of anything. And he received an undisclosed amount in a settlement.
DYLAN WELCH: The assault, later labelled “brutal” by a District Court judge, left him with 10 — 12 fractured ribs and a punctured lung. He ended up spending four days in intensive care.
BRAD KELLSON: Couldn’t work, lost me job. You can’t work with 12 broken ribs, can you? Or 11, punctured lung. Then I just, because I got depression anyway, I sort of got depressed a bit. Thought about some things I shouldn’t have, but I, I did go through…
DYLAN WELCH: What do you mean?
BRAD KELLSON: I felt like this, everything was just like, I got put in a box and the walls was just coming to squash me, so I just wanted to end myself really.
DYLAN WELCH: Thirty years ago the NSW police force was mired in scandal and corruption. Some cops moonlighted as violent crooks and took bribes to allow drug dealing.
DYLAN WELCH: The Wood Royal Commission waded into this swamp.
PROF. TIM PRENZLER, THE CENTRE FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: It exposed enormous amounts of serious systemic corruption in the police force. It led to some major reforms including the establishment of an external oversight body.
DYLAN WELCH: This police watchdog, the roll-out of body-worn cameras and the professionalisation of the force, was supposed to bring accountability.
TIM PRENZLER: I think there’s been a trend away from the more blatant forms of police corruption, especially bribery and protection rackets and fabrication of evidence against suspects.
DYLAN WELCH:Tim Prenzler, one of Australia’s foremost police integrity experts, says some bad behaviour has never gone away.
TIM PRENZLER: So we have significant ongoing problems with allegations of excessive force and assaults by police, for example. We don’t see improvements in that area.
DYLAN WELCH:And on the force’s own numbers, very few officers are being criminally charged for misconduct, including excessive force. Over the 5 years to 2024, there were on average about 1000 findings of misconduct per year, following internal investigations. Only 2% of those cases led to charges against an officer.
VINCE HURLEY, CRIMINOLOGIST: It can be argued that the lack of prosecutions of police by police is an issue. There’s no denying that.
DYLAN WELCH: Criminologist Vince Hurley spent nearly 3 decades in the NSW police force.
VINCE HURLEY, CRIMINOLOGIST: There are police in there now who have never experienced or lived through a Royal Commission. So they have no fear of the consequences, some of them, of their actions. They haven’t lived through being scrutinized to the nth degree by the Royal Commission or the public about their behaviour.
DYLAN WELCH: Police officer Mark Davis struck Brad right in front of his colleagues and the station’s cameras
HAYLEY LE, SOLICITOR: Mr. Kellson’s case alone, how brazen that conduct was. It was within the view of the cameras in the custody room, the body-worn footage of all his peers. It was committed in full view of his peers, and he was assured as to his position because of the culture in that organisation that there weren’t going to be any consequences.
DYLAN WELCH: You mean other police would have lied for him?
HAYLEY LE: That’s what happened.
DYLAN WELCH:4 Corners can reveal that within days of Brad Kellson’s assault, a probationary constable who witnessed the incident made a complaint. Police launched an internal investigation monitored by the police watchdog. The results of the investigation were kept secret. Meanwhile, police pursued Brad’s charges.
HAYLEY LE: The officers, firstly, did not disclose the body-worn footage, um, when the brief was ordered to be served by the court.
DYLAN WELCH:They also failed to reveal the existence of the police station CCTV. Some officers also copied each other’s statements.
HAYLEY LE: The standard operating procedures within the police say that they should not share statements, and that’s to avoid contamination and you can see in the statements of two of the key officers involved, that there’s an entire paragraph that’s been replicated.
ACTORS: About 11pm Saturday, 13 November 2021…I attended the vicinity of Main Street, Blacktown, in response to a domestic violence incident occurring.
DYLAN WELCH: The statements of those officers, one of whom was Mark Davis, include an identical spelling mistake.
DYLAN WELCH: When Brad finally had his day in court, the magistrate threw out the charges. She found there was excessive force, “clear collusion” between officers, and that officer Mark Davis had lied on the stand. In a later District Court appeal, the judge said police had used “false evidence” to “patch up their case”. The NSW police force is required to report criticism like this to the Law Enforcement Conduct commission. That didn’t happen.
VINCE HURLEY, CRIMINOLOGIST: The case of Kellson says that there’s something seriously wrong with the system, and it was never thoroughly investigated, that it was never transparent. I find it difficult to believe in 2026 that that is the case. What message does that send to the public about police accountability and transparency of the organisation?
DYLAN WELCH:We put all of this to police. They told us their internal investigation had cleared Mark Davis and other officers of unreasonable force. Following pressure from the watchdog they launched a second investigation. This cleared the officers of dishonesty but proved other misconduct.
Police wouldn’t say what that misconduct was, or what action they took.
DYLAN WELCH:So, what happened to Mark Davis? I’ve come to Blacktown police station to find out.
DYLAN WELCH: So I just went in and asked them if Mark Davis was there. They said no, that he’s no longer at this station, he’s been moved to a different command.
DYLAN WELCH:We searched online and found this Instagram post. It shows the senior constable — who’d kneed Brad Kellson 5 times and lied in court — giving a talk to students at a Penrith high school about bullying. It says he’s the local youth liaison officer.
BRAD KELLSON: Makes me angry, but … Yeah, I can’t say it don’t make me angry, man, because it does. He shouldn’t have his job, mate, I’m telling you. After that, man, how can that still be going on in the police force?
DYLAN WELCH: Brad’s case exposed a failure of accountability. What this next case suggests is something even darker — officers acting as if they had nothing to fear.
DYLAN WELCH: That’s a photo of Jodi. Just tell me what she was like?
NICHOLE ALLEN: She’s gorgeous. She was a gorgeous person. Carefree, spirited, crazy woman. Loud. Funny. No harm in her at all. No harm in her body. And love for family.
DYLAN WELCH: Nichole Allen and Sharee Castagna are cousins. They grew up in a large extended family…spending long summers with other cousins, including the irrepressible Jodi Knott.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: She would take off, she would go, she would live her life to its fullest. Even with all her trauma and her mental health, she was still a happy person.
NICHOLE ALLEN: She was mentally ill from a very young age, but it just got worse. Obviously, as she got older and then substances and addictions and it was pretty hard. Um, but there wasn’t Jodi. She was just a lost little soul that just needed help now and then
DYLAN WELCH:Jodi was brutally assaulted by two police officers three years ago.
TV NEWS STORY: It’s as sickening as it is shocking. A mentally unwell woman in a psychotic episode brutally assaulted by the same people who were meant to protect her.
DYLAN WELCH:This is the first time Jodi has been named. For years, the body worn footage of her assault sat on a shelf, unseen. 4 Corners has obtained it, and Nichole and Sharee are the first members of the public to watch it.
POLICE OFFICER: The body worn video’s recording just to let you know that. I’m not going to shoot you like you just kept telling us…
DYLAN WELCH: Police are called after a report of a woman sitting naked on a western Sydney street.
POLICE OFFICER: What’s your name, you didn’t even tell us your name. If you don’t tell us we’ll just work it out at the hospital, but it’d be easier if you tell us now
DYLAN WELCH:When the two plain clothes officers arrive, Jodi is sitting calmly under a tree. They tell her an ambulance will take her to hospital.
POLICE OFFICER: The ambos are here now so. I’m telling you now that you’ll be going to Nepean hospital and you’ll be sectioned.
JODI KNOTT: No I won’t. An ambulance…here they are, they can’t take me, they can’t physically take me.
DYLAN WELCH: Jodi lives with schizophrenia and is experiencing a psychotic episode. She’s stopped taking her medication. This had previously been managed by a good friend but he’d recently died.
JODI KNOTT: I’m terrified of you people. Go away. There’s nothing you can do, you can’t physically beat me. Fuck off.
POLICE OFFICER: You’re not going anywhere.
JODI KNOTT: I’m going anywhere I want.
DYLAN WELCH:Over almost 15 minutes, a sickening and brutal attack on Jodi unfolds.
POLCIE OFFICER: Need a taser
JODI KNOTT: Get the taser then.
POLICE OFFICER: Go on, wash your cunt. Wash your arse. Go on, wash it out.
DYLAN WELCH:The officers empty their cans of pepper spray on Jodi, on her face at close range, even on her genitals. At times they even laugh.
JODI KNOTT: Go please, just please go. Please go
DYLAN WELCH:They kick her in the head, they stomp on her, one drags her by her hair.
JODI KNOTT: Take me, take me- I’ll get in there.
POLICE OFFICER: Let them go…
POLICE OFFICER: Let them go. Fuck me.
POLICE OFFICER: I don’t want to do it at the front…
NICHOLE ALLEN: That was too, that was horrendous. I need a break. That was just fucked up. That was so bad. She just wanted fucking help. She just wanted fucking someone to help her.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: It’s worse than what I thought. Mm.
NICHOLE ALLEN: She just wanted help.
NICHOLE ALLEN: Floored. I don’t know, gutted, disgusted, and very angry, very angry.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: It’s disgusting.
NICHOLE ALLEN: Horrendous.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: You, you just couldn’t imagine what, what she went through
NICHOLE ALLEN: She was in a psychosis episode and that’s why they were called out there.
DYLAN WELCH: The officers charged Jodi with assaulting police and resisting arrest. Over the next day, one of the officers sends a string of messages to a colleague
ACTOR: “Both OC cans emptied on her…The whole body-worn is so good, shows her being fucked…Nurses are lodging a complaint…we caved her”
DYLAN WELCH:He also sent them some of the body-worn vision. It was after this that police launched an investigation. At the time a deputy commissioner said it was one of the worst things he’d seen in his 40 years in the force.
DYLAN WELCH: Do you think those officers were concerned about the consequences of their actions?
SHAREE CASTAGNA: No, absolutely not. The fact that they shared the body cam footage, they had no fear of consequences. Once they started, there was no stopping them. They had no care whatsoever.
DYLAN WELCH:18 months after the assault, Jodi Knott died of cancer. The two officers, Nathan Black and Timothy Trautsch, pleaded guilty to common assault. Black received three years and three months non-parole. Trautsch received 3 years. Black told the court a lack of training, a high pace of operations and a toxic workplace culture, contributed to their actions.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: They didn’t care that there was cameras around or that their body cam footage was on. That says to me that there is a significant cultural issue within the police department that this type of behaviour is okay and it shouldn’t be.
DYLAN WELCH: During this investigation we’ve examined hundreds of cases of alleged police misconduct that are on the public record. But there are many more that remain unexamined. Trapped in the police internal investigations system, most misconduct complaints never become public
PROF. TIM PRENZLER, THE CENTRE FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: So thousands of complaints every, come in against police every year, what happens to them? There are some cases on the record where officers are named, but generally speaking, we don’t know the outcomes of cases, whether an officer was, disciplined, uh, whether they were subject to some sort of remediation program, uh, whether there was an apology. That information is not on the public record.
PETER O’BRIEN, SOLICITOR: The impact of police investigations of police misconduct is, uh, woefully inadequate.
DYLAN WELCH:Peter O’Brien has launched hundreds of cases against police for alleged assault and misconduct.
PETER O’BRIEN: A court might find, uh, serious misconduct has happened. In the same instance the complaint process has exonerated, the police, uh, the police misbehaviour.
DYLAN WELCH:The police run at least 1500 misconduct investigations a year. By comparison, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, the independent watchdog designed to keep police in line, runs roughly 70.
PETER JOHNSON, CHIEF COMMISSIONER, LAW ENFORCEMENT CONDUCT COMMISSION: In a state like New South Wales, a large state, if our agency was to be the, uh, sole body dealing with all complaints against police, you would need to have a very large number of investigators.
DYLAN WELCH: Former supreme court judge Peter Johnson heads up the agency.
PETER JOHNSON: You would have to have an enormous budget to have a separate body that dealt with all complaints against police. So we have a type of hybrid model in a way and I think that’s reasonably effective in the circumstances.
DYLAN WELCH: The head of the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, has said police investigating police in the main is appropriate and that’s how it should work.
PROF. TIM PRENZLER, THE CENTRE FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: It’s not best practice, no. And my, my question would be, well, what is the evidence of effectiveness? I’m not aware of any, and all the evidence that I can see points to the contrary.
DYLAN WELCH: The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission can recommend changes but the police are under no obligation to implement them. One area where police have ignored the watchdog is on the use of body worn cameras. In NSW, unlike in most other states, it’s not mandatory for officers to use their cameras when exercising police powers.
PETER JOHNSON, CHIEF COMMISSIONER, LAW ENFORCEMENT CONDUCT COMMISSION: Body-worn video is critical. It is, uh, the friend of the honest and ethical police officer, potential enemy of the officer who is doing the wrong thing. It should be mandatory.
DYLAN WELCH:The police watchdog has spent three years calling for the force to make body-worn video use compulsory. So far the police haven’t acted. What’s clear from the vision we’ve obtained is that some officers are leaning on the lack of hard rules.
DYLAN WELCH: In the case of Jodi Knott, one of the officers at times mutes his body worn camera. The other officer either didn’t have one, or didn’t turn it on. None of that is against NSW police rules.
DYLAN WELCH: What is against police rules is throwing your camera away. That’s what happened in a case that was investigated by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission. I’ve come to meet the victim in that case — he was 15 years old when he was arrested after police responded to a report of teenagers fighting. We can’t identify him for legal reasons.
TEENAGER: I dropped down to the ground, put my hands up, and then the girl officer, she cuffed me. She put my hands behind my back. Then the boy cop come up to me, picked me up, slammed me onto the ground, started booting into my back. He picked me up again. He walked me a few feet away, punched my face, knocked me back down.
DYLAN WELCH:The officer who assaulted the teen then disposed of his camera.
DYLAN WELCH: How did he dispose of it?
PETER JOHNSON, CHIEF COMMISSIONER, LAW ENFORCEMENT CONDUCT COMMISSION: He threw it into, a body of water.
DYLAN WELCH: The officer then told 5 colleagues that he’d assaulted a kid and thrown his body-worn away to hide what he’d done. Only one reported it, months later. Sometimes accountability needs a cop to stand up the moment something happens.
KURT HAYWARD, FORMER DETECTIVE: I come from a police family. My, my old man was in the cops for 36 years. And that was obviously all through the, the 80s. Uh, he had some great stories that he’d repeatedly tell me.
DYLAN WELCH: I’ve come to the NSW Central Coast to meet Kurt Hayward, a former detective who spent 23 years in the force. This is a rare interview, over three decades of reporting on police, I’ve almost never found a cop willing to break the wall of silence about allegations of misconduct.
KURT HAYWARD: There it is, the old building up there with the police checkers out the front and the mirrored glass.
DYLAN WELCH: In 2020, Kurt found himself at the centre of a high-profile case. That year had been a stellar year for 22-year-old Canberra Raiders hooker Tom Starling, until he was involved in a violent incident with police at a bar on the NSW Central Coast.
NEWS REPORTER: You’re obviously injured what happened. Were you involved in the brawl?
DYLAN WELCH: So you’re in that cell, six in the morning. What’s going through your head?
TOM STARLING, NRL PLAYER: It was a pretty dark place, to be honest with you, mate. Just confused. I didn’t know what was going on. I was scared, to be honest with you.
DYLAN WELCH: Tom Starling was charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest, he was also accused of taking hold of a detective’s gun.
TOM STARLING: Since you’re a little kid, you’re told the police are there to look after and if you’re in trouble, call the police, and when it’s the police putting you in, putting you in that position, it’s, you don’t know where to turn to.
DYLAN WELCH:Kurt Hayward was the detective tasked with working up a brief against the footballer. From the moment he took on the case, he believed it was his fellow officers who were in the wrong.
KURT HAYWARD: I knew that it, um, it was going to cause a storm because NRL player, um, blatant police violence…
DYLAN WELCH:One of the first things Kurt did was watch CCTV from the bar.
KURT HAYWARD: I read the report and the charge sheet that, um, was associated with the footage and saw a, a classic case of overcharging and trying to justify their actions by overcharging and saying things that just didn’t happen.
DYLAN WELCH:That’s Tom Starling in the red circle, being dragged out and punched by a riot squad sergeant. He’s knocked out …then a local officer throws a few more. Kurt Hayward decided he had to report what he saw as police misconduct to his boss.
KURT HAYWARD: I went to the crime manager and I expressed my concerns with what’s happening and I’m, we’re watching the footage together and I’m saying, yeah, there he is punching an unconscious man three times, and I said it a few times in the conversation and the crime manager said, “Oh, you keep saying that. I, I see a man who’s resisting arrest, not a police officer punching another man, an unconscious man.”
DYLAN WELCH: Kurt says he was told the head of his entire command, the superintendent, thought police had done nothing wrong, and if he disagreed, he’d have to go all the way to the top.
KURT HAYWARD: I was in my office pondering for a little while about the situation and thought, all right, I’ll write the career suicide note and report to the commissioner.
DYLAN WELCH: Essentially your view was you were doing the right thing, you were reporting a clear case of misconduct, and you thought by doing that, you were probably going to end your career.
KURT HAYWARD: Yep.
DYLAN WELCH: Kurt’s complaint was a pivotal moment. It led to an internal investigation and the two officers who punched Tom Starling were charged. All this came at a cost for Kurt. Disillusioned, he quit the cops 18 months later.
KURT HAYWARD: I didn’t want to work for those people. If they’ve got that stance and they agree that those actions are justifiable and right, then that’s not who I want to work for.
DYLAN WELCH: There was also a cost for Tom Starling.
TOM STARLING: It was hard to I guess show up sometimes and, and put it, put that brave face on and pretend like it wasn’t, it wasn’t affecting me, but 100% it was. It just, as I said, I was a young kid trying to live out my dream and I used to go to games and just think, everyone used to think, oh, there’s that, you know, there’s that thug Tom Starling that, you know, that assaulted police officers.
DYLAN WELCH: And it’s not over yet. It took two years and a 12 day trial, for all the charges against him to be dismissed. The trial of the two officers who punched him is due to start next week, more than 5 years after the incident. They’re pleading not guilty. Starling’s planning to sue the police but that won’t even begin until the criminal case is resolved.
TOM STARLING: It’s hard because they’re the ones that are supposed to be protecting you. Who do you go to — to complain about them?
DYLAN WELCH:It’s a rare case that sees officers charged. More often, the consequences are unclear.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: I seen that officer and I looked back and he waved and laughed at me. Yeah, he made, made a comment and there was a security guard there and I said, “See that officer there? He terribly assaulted me.”
DYLAN WELCH:Samantha Testalamuta is a proud Wiradjuri woman from Sydney’s south. She lives with bipolar disorder. She’s been involved in a years-long dispute with neighbours that’s seen police repeatedly called.
DYLAN WELCH: So you were just out here listening to music and then suddenly you hear the, the banging on-
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Very loud banging. Very scary banging.
DYLAN WELCH: And then you realise or they are telling you its the police?
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Yes. It’s the police, the police open, the, open up. What time is it? I looked at my phone. It was eight, eight, after eight.
DYLAN WELCH: In January last year police were called because Samantha was playing her music loudly. At the time she was experiencing a manic episode. The incident was recorded on her mobile phone and home security camera.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: It’s only 8:30 at night. It doesn’t matter…
POLICE OFFICER: Yes it does
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: It’s only 8:30-
POLICE OFFICER: No it does…
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: It’s 8:30 darlin’ so hooroo, on your way.
POLICE OFFICER: Okay, so I’m giving you a noise abatement direction.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: On your way.
POLICE OFFICER: Okay. I’m giving you an official noise abatement direction.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: (screaming) Help.
POLICE OFFICER: Get back, get back
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Help I’m being hurt. Help me, mum! Help me Legal Aid! Sutherland Legal Aboriginal Legal Aid
POLICE OFFICER: Give me your arm!
POLICE OFFICER: Stop resisting.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Owwww! Why are you doing this to me?
POLICE OFFICER: Get Back. Stop fucking pinching me, you-
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Help Help
DYLAN WELCH:The junior officer, who has less than a year on the job, threatens to taser her.
POLICE OFFICER: I will Taser you!
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Help! Help
POLICE OFFICER: Stop resisting. Put your hands behind your back!
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: They’re hurting me really bad! They’ve assaulted me.
DYLAN WELCH:Over the course of two minutes, the officers punch Samantha repeatedly while she is face down on the ground.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Call me an ambulance.
POLICE OFFICER: Stop fucking- stop fucking resisting
WOMAN: Hey, don’t punch her in the back man, Jesus!
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: He was putting knees into my ribs and punching me down from the back. It was very scary, just the amount of force that was put in with the fists, I couldn’t believe it.
DYLAN WELCH: Samantha was taken to the police station… the officers intended to charge her with assaulting police but the arrest was discontinued. Hayley Charnock is Samantha’s NDIS support coordinator.
DYLAN WELCH: What do you think, what’s the change been in her, like, when you look at pre and post that incident?
HAYLEY CHARNOCK, NDIS SUPPORT COORDINATOR: There was a massive decline. She spent, um, she was going quite well. She’d have ups and downs, um, but after the police assault, she had a massive decline in her mental health and was scheduled for about two to three months, uh, under the mental health act.
DYLAN WELCH: So like forcibly detained?
HAYLEY CHARNOCK: That’s right
DYLAN WELCH: Within weeks of the incident?
HAYLEY CHARNOCK: Yeah, it was, I think it was about six weeks
DYLAN WELCH: A year after the incident, with her mental health spiralling, Samantha ended up in jail on remand, over a series of AVOs.
HAYLEY CHARNOOK: There’s a whole massive ripple effect, um, in terms of the impact on the family that the assault have, and I think that’s what these officers don’t realise.
DYLAN WELCH:Police told 4 Corners they’d investigated and taken “appropriate action” against the two officers. More than a year later, they’re still working at Samantha’s local police station.
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: I don’t understand the police force when police do the wrong thing, how does the superintendents or the ones in charge deal with those matters? Like, should they not send them to another area or, um, yeah…
DYLAN WELCH: Why is it a problem for you that they’re still in this area?
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: ‘Cause it’s traumatic. If, um, someone decides to call the police and he rocks up here and decides to have another, to hurt me again.
PETER O’BRIEN: There was no need for any sort of physical contact. There was certainly no need for police to have entered or attempted to enter her home, and there was certainly, uh, never a need for her to be, uh, forcibly and physically dealt with in the manner which she was. So this is a, a noise complaint after all.
DYLAN WELCH:Peter O’Brien is helping Samantha in her fight for compensation, but even he acknowledges that settlements allow police to avoid accountability.
PETER O’BRIEN, SOLICITOR: Whilst the plaintiff might get, uh, compensated for what happened adequately, uh, the flip side is that what is actually happening out there can go largely unspoken and unknown. And, the possibility of, uh, repeat or recidivist, uh, police officers conducting themselves badly, poorly, or unlawfully or brutality is, is a, an ongoing problem that can be perpetuated by that system yes.
DYLAN WELCH: Have you come across that?
PETER O’BRIEN: Yes. There’s, there’s certainly instances where we’ve seen the same police officers, uh, again and again being named in, in statements of claim, uh, that have been taken against the, the state.
DYLAN WELCH:Policing is difficult and dangerous work. Every day, police respond to situations involving violence and mental illness. Most do so with care. But this investigation is about what happens when officers abuse their power, and whether the system is strong enough to hold them to account. Four Corners asked NSW Police for an interview, they declined.
DYLAN WELCH:In a statement NSW Police told us it’s reviewing the rules around body worn video. And that they have clear requirements that make it mandatory for officers to report misconduct.
PROF. TIM PRENZLER, THE CENTRE FOR PUBLIC INTEGRITY: It’s a brave person who sues the police. You have to have a very strong case
DYLAN WELCH:Some people in this program have, or will receive compensation. But that’s not accountability. And for many of them, it’s not true justice.
DYLAN WELCH: If police turned up here right now, what would be your concern?
SAMANTHA TESTALAMUTA: Oh, my heart would just start pumping. My blood pressure would be going up, yeah, very scared
TOM STARLING: It’s something that’s always going to be there. You still Google my name, it’s still there. The video’s there and, you know, the initial headlines or everything is still there. It’s, it’s not, that will never go away, just the fallout of it all.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: We hope that this gives her- her voice.
NICHOLE ALLEN: Her voice, her face, and rest at peace.
SHAREE CASTAGNA: Correct.
NICHOLE ALLEN: Yeah. It gives her name to Australia. This was our cousin. We’re proud and we loved her to death. Always have and always will. She had a face, she had a name, and it was Jodi, our beloved cousin.