WENDELL HUSSEY | Cadet | CONTACT
NRL stars Jack Wighton and Latrell Mitchell have this week been found innocent, after a 10 month long battle with lying senior ACT cops and the Canberra legal system.
The saga has caused countless headlines in a media landscape obsessed with bringing certain types of people down, and began after the two young Indigenous men were arrested on a night out.
The pair, who are cousins, were arrested during a celebration of Jack Wighton’s 30th birthday.
As well as both mates being charged with fighting in a public place, Jack Wighton was charged with ignoring an exclusion order and Latrell was charged with resisting arrest and affray.
Following a viewing of footage of the night, the court heard that there was evidence that no incident had taken place, and the cops had forcibly removed Wighton because he was looking ‘violent’ – which is a pretty concerning eye-ball test when you think about it, given previous examples of police behaviour.
After reviewing fabricated police evidence and hearing that the allegations brought by senior cops were a load of shit, the court dismissed all charges against the pair.
The court didn’t offer too much in regards to the quite violent sounding nature of that arrest, with the Chief Executive of the Canberra Raiders saying he doesn’t think this is the last the cops have heard in regards to their behaviour.
The bullshit charges and the forceful nature of the arrest which could have very easily escalated into something else, really do make ya ponder what might have happened in this situation, had the two men not been high profile sportspeople with a highly skilled and highly paid cohort of lawyers at their disposal.
Imagine what happens in instances like this when it’s just a random young Koori kid who is ‘looking violent’ in the eyes of the cops, and doesn’t have a profile or a sporting organisation of very powerful people to defend him.
And then what happens to him when the cops ramp up the charges against him and he can’t afford to pay solicitors and barristers to prove his innocence in court through a 10 month long legal process.
And then what happens when (when, not if) that young man goes to jail and enters a prison system where the statistics start getting fatal.
Really makes ya think.
