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Police stopped Brad on his morning walk for wearing a hoodie. Ten minutes later, he was dead

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-03-17/nsw-police-shot-western-sydney-man-bradley-balzan-inquest/103592578

Brad Balzan died a violent death in his own backyard. Some are calling it "the worst outcome imaginable of proactive policing".

Police stopped Brad on his morning walk for wearing a hoodie. Ten minutes later, he was dead

Alternative title: NSW cops murder a kid because he ran home when 4 people in plain clothes pile out of a car and accost him. For wearing a hoodie.

35 comments

brisk

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The inquest heard that due to shortages, only Officer B took a body camera that day, but did not wear it for any of the searches he conducted. He told the inquest his priority was “to get out of the car quickly due to the way Bradley was walking”.

If we ever want to be able to have a just police force, this sort of thing needs to be considered sufficient evidence of intent to commit a crime. Either you have a body camera on, or you are a civilian, not a cop

The whole the article is incredibly damning; an illegal stop, a "proactive policing" policy which can so obviously only ever lead to injustice, violation of the right to walk away, targeting without sufficient evidence, police lying about callouts on the radio

naevaTheRat

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Yeah like the consequences on one side: idk a kid with a can of spraypaint gets away? maybe worst likely case someone runs off with a handbag of replaceable, material, things.

OTOH a child is murdered under shady circumstances and the killers get off due to lack of evidence.

Ilovethebomb

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maybe worst likely case someone runs off with a handbag of replaceable, material, things.

I think you're seriously understating how scary something like that can be to the victim, to be honest.

naevaTheRat

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I've had someone let themselves into my house while I slept and steal my adhd medication, I've been hunted over the course of several hours by a gang of young men who were beating me up to let me run to chase me over and over again before being left to die in a gutter (saved by a cab driver, 1 person of several hundred who drove by), I've been held hostage as part of a shakedown, I've been mugged at knife point.

I'm not unfamiliar with being a victim of a crime, it sucks. The fear doesn't go away just because someone gets caught later on. There is no world in which catching someone bolting with a handbag/laptop/whatever is worth not having body cam footage because of situations like this. If you want police to actually stop crimes from happening in the first place in dangerous areas then I put to you that a marked car and uniformed officers wearing cameras would be far more effective.

They executed someone in their backyard for no reason and there is no evidence. This is literally the most terrible sort of crime that can happen and there is no fucking evidence because this chud was more concerned with being a hero (allegedly, of course maybe he wanted no evidence while he murdered someone). There is no excuse.

Catoblepas

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Damn I wonder if it’s as bad as having the cops kill your family member? Probably worse I bet.

Ilovethebomb

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https://lemmy.cafe/pictrs/image/eb88fec7-fdb6-40e1-8e0f-b06beb547285.webp

Ilovethebomb

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Who said it was either-or? It's not a competition, I just find it very insensitive to say something like "it's just a handbag".

Catoblepas

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The hypothetical handbag in question does not exist. You are doing this on a post about a real young man who was shot dead by police for wearing a hoodie. Read the room.

Ilovethebomb

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You're getting very antsy about a hypothetical handbag.

grue

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The whole the article is incredibly damning

Yeah, like this part:

On the first day of the inquest, the lawyer for the other male officer, Officer A, asked that he be excused from giving evidence due to a serious mental health condition.

WTF? If he had a "serious mental health condition," why the Hell was he working as a cop?!

zik

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If police don't have a working body cam there should be an automatic presumption of guilt on their part.

Jumuta

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is body camera footage available to the public? if not, i don't really see the point.

TheBananaKing

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If an officer's 'mental health condition' is so severe that they can't testify in court, MAYBE THEY SHOULDN'T HAVE A FUCKING GUN.

naevaTheRat

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being fair, they might be traumatised from watching their partner murder someone. They should probably testify against them in that case though

TheBananaKing

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No, fuck that.

Try that as anyone but a cop.

Sorry yeronner I can't face trial, the trauma of being arrested for murder is impacting my mental health, you'll just have to let me go.

naevaTheRat

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Soz I thought it was obvious I was joking. Obviously they should testify. At least in writing.

PTSD can be pretty bad, but a 20 year old kid was murdered in his backyard for the crime of wearing a hoodie on a mild day.

That's the sort of thing you just need to buck up for.

orcrist

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Dirty cops have a history. Probably they saw that cop do shady shit before. They didn't take action then because they didn't care. Now they care, but only because they're selfish.

imoldgreeeg

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This is horrific. There's no excuse for those cops 'not knowing' when they can retain someone and when they are allowed to walk on...that's literally their job. So sad.

naevaTheRat

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Disguised "proactive" stop and search shit is secret police stuff.

This is an entirely predictable outcome of the policy. It is social murder.

If you heard about this happening in North Korea, China, Russia etc you would go "well duh, this is why authoritarian policing is unacceptable". It is intolerable that we permit this, he was a child and he was gunned down with all the cruelty of a cartel hit squad running home for safety.

Stanley_Pain

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America and by extension other parts of the world are too busy with culture war shit to notice the real war going on.

And people wonder why anyone with half a brain keeps say the world is sliding into a Conservative shitehole.

naevaTheRat

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Idk what the usa has to do with this. We've had an authoritarian policing style since our days as a prison colony. Our old cities are designed without public squares to prevent assembly. It's... not good.

It got worse faster since 2001 and the islamophobic moral panic around terrorism. Even our Parliament house, designed to have a green on top so pollies would remember they are below the people, is fenced off now with armed coppas.

Stanley_Pain

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The brain rot comes from there and spreads like wildfire 😑

Ilovethebomb

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I was amazed to find this happened in Australia, not the USA. What a shitshow.

naevaTheRat

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nsw pol are complete bastards. Murdered a 90 year old with dementia cause she was armed with a walking frame and knife. Patrol the streets with drug dogs that indicate based on handler not drugs (and even aside: wtf?), strip search tweens illegally, stop music festivals by charging organisers a few hundred thousand to cover the costs of stop and searching random people.

Completely cooked force. My BIL is one of them and I really mean it when I say they're all fucking cunts.

hacknsplat

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They have neither the warmth nor depth of a cunt.

negativeyoda

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American here

John_McMurray

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No, it's just the usual Aussies in denial about how shit their country has become. All.they have left is pretending they're superior to assauge some pretty significant cognitive dissonance. (Any Australians reading this, that means when your heads hurt.)

x4740N

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Yeah same as someone who lives in Australia

I thought this shit would never happen here

John_McMurray

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Oh. What's it like being fucking retarded?

grue

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And (at least as far as I can tell), he wasn't even ~~black~~ aboriginal!

Ilovethebomb

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They probably couldn't tell what skin colour he was under the hoodie.

solomon42069

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NSW Police are the most corrupt and incompetent in the nation. But not to fear - NSW politicians and the media will defend them to the ends of the Earth! /s