We must demand urgent action on the violence and continued injustice that is killing our people.

Sign the petition here: https://www.lidiathorpe.com/end_deaths_in_custody_petition

Police are currently investigating themselves over the inhumane police killing of Kumanjayi White. The community mourning his death is the same community who are awaiting the findings into the death in custody of Kumanjayi Walker in 2019.

The inquest into Kumanjayi Walker’s death exposed the racism within the NT Police. Yet public calls for an independent investigation into police killings of First Peoples have been rejected.

Zachary Rolfe, the police offer who shot Kumanjayi Walker, was not only acquitted of murder, but has been invited to speak at leadership summits on “ethical decision making”.

Not long after Kumanjayi White’s death, the NT scrapped its promised racism review into the NT Police Force.

And that’s only in the last week.

Deaths in custody are a national crisis and need to be treated as such. Since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, there have been nearly 600 deaths in custody.

This year alone, ten of our people have died in custody. To this day, not a single police or prison officer has ever been held criminally accountable.

Now more than ever, we need to pressure the government to take real action on deaths in custody. We cannot accept the denial of racism from governments, while our people’s lives are stolen by the state.

We cannot accept the police force treating the erasure of Blak People like quotas – like a death in custody is just another day on the job.

Head to the link in my bio to sign the petition to end deaths in custody -and share it on your socials