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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 November 2009
Even though the NSW Police Service had formulated an Ethnic Affairs Policy Statement by 1988, no similar policy statement in relation to Aboriginal affairs existed during the period of my fieldwork. The television documentary Cop It Sweet, described briefly in the introduction of the book, was instrumental for the development of an Aboriginal Affairs Policy Statement in 1992. This chapter examines the processes and events which led to this development. It describes the reaction to the film within the police hierarchy, the attempt at damage control, and the subsequent repair work carried out in improving relations between police and Aborigines. The Cop It Sweet scandal provides a rare glimpse into how a police organisation, one that was in the middle of a great wave of change, reacted to external pressure to reform.
Cop It Sweet
The controversial television documentary Cop It Sweet was filmed over a six-week period in Redfern by freelance journalist Jenny Brockie, with police permission at a ‘senior command level’ (NSW Police Board 1992: 17). The content of the documentary was based on a collage of police work in this inner-city area, which has been well known in recent years as a site of tension between the police and the Aboriginal community. One account of the documentary neatly summarises the images presented:
Cop It Sweet … was a shocking account of six weeks in the life of the Redfern police … [T]hese real-life coppers artlessly revealed the bovine obstinacy and banal prejudice that sustains hostilities with the Aboriginal community … They spoke automatically of ‘coons’ and ‘gooks’ and pubs ‘full of lesbians’. […]
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