Andrew John Bornen, 16, was killed while lying in the middle of the road of a busy street outside of Ipswich, Australia. Bornen was not engaging in some high school prank. He was lying face down in the middle of street with his hands cuffed behind him at the insistence of the police. The prosecutors have decided that no charges will be filed against the Queensland officers.
Police were responding to a report of a man with a machete and arrested Bornen who was carrying a baseball bat. An inquest confirmed that he was not acting aggressive in any way. Yet, the police left him face down in the middle of a busy road until he was run over.
The director of public prosecutions, Tony Moynihan SC, insisted that “[t]here is no suggestion that the police officers were acting unlawfully or not in the execution of their duty in arresting Andrew Bornen who was intoxicated and armed in public . . . Given the momentary opportunity the police officers had to assess and act in this situation, the efforts made to alert the driver of the vehicle and the contribution of the driver of the vehicle which ran over and killed Mr Bornen, there is no reasonable prospect of a conviction.’’
In what he described as a ‘‘terrible error of judgment,’’ the officers not only left him in the road but positioned their police car so that its headlights blinded approaching cars. They failed to put on their emergency lights.
Source: Brisbane
This just goes to show that Australia can match any of the police and legal system outrages of the US.
‘‘terrible error of judgment,’
To say the least.
This is an error of judgment?
It happened because they all drive on wrong side of road. If they don’t drive on wrong side of road, perhaps it wouldn’t have happened.
Must be cuz they live upside down, stupid buggers.
A poor excuse is better than none, but it should at LEAST be believable!!
(These weren’t the Keystone cops….right?)
“…not only left him in the road but positioned their police car so that its headlights blinded approaching cars. They failed to put on their emergency lights.” (from the article)
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…and no charges. Wish I could say that I’m surprised. Unconscionable, at best… Another sign of the times.
If you want to be a murderer and get away with it go into law enforcement.
If we citizens have a ‘‘terrible error of judgment,” that results in another person’s death, we are charged with at least some degree of manslaughter, if not negligent homicide.
There are otherwise very good people in prison because of a split-second error in their judgment.
When a police officer handcuffs someone, that officer takes responsibility for the safety and welfare of the person in their custody. At a minimum, the officer who handcuffed Andrew should be charged with involuntary manslaughter.
These are the not-so-distant cousins of the crackers and rednecks of the US. Add in the cop mentality, stir. Surprised?
BBB,
You hit it on head. These officers were in charge of this detained individual and any harm that came to him is their responsibility. What would the prosecutor have done if the victim had fought off the policemen successfully and used their own handcuffs to detain them and left them in the road to be run over? I am just guessing that there would be a “reasonable prospect of a conviction”.
Let’s see what the civil suit says about this.
Well that makes sense, I mean, what would you charge a boy that’s been run over with Jay Walking?
Now, just let me go read the article to make sure I can keep my faith in our law enforcement community.
Edit: “…faith in the law enforcement community”
It’s murder … failure to prosecute simply expands the number of those responsible … rather like Obama and torture
Well said Blouise.
Blouise wrote:
It’s murder … failure to prosecute simply expands the number of those responsible … rather like Obama and torture
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Well said, Blouise. I didn’t want to go there — I was looking for some other explanation but, bottom line, in the absence of any other information, that’s exactly what it appears to be: a cold-blooded murder.
Not knowing Australian law, it is hard to know what the officers might be charged with, but negligent homicide comes to mind. I wonder if the Aussies have a civil remedy for wrongful death? At any rate, no matter what the boy had done to get arrested, there is no excuse at all for what happened to him. Not only that, but the poor motorist who ran over him will live with the terrible aftermath the rest of his life.
The boy was carrying a baseball bat. That is an event so unusual, that I am sure any officer should arrest any teenage boy carrying such a weapon of mass destruction. Not!
Did the police car have one of those video cameras that some police cars have?
” TO SERVE & PROTECT “…….”error in judgment”??? Point 1, their cruiser had its lights on blinding traffic??, Point 2, failure to use emergency lights, error in judgment??……..more like ineptness on their part……..civil suit indeed……rip them a new one please……………..
Well you just wonder if there was more to this story. Maybe it was a police hit disguised as an accident.
Traffic cop, huh?
The cops are supposed to have manuals as to how they do things.
Part of this has to do with making it so difficult to go to court for a civil hearing. The cops can do anything to anyone and are very rarely held responsible.
When I read this story I started looking around the web for a picture of the victim of this crime (IMO) to see if he was an indigenous Australian. This young man was not, which may be progress of some kind. Queensland has a history of problems with police brutality against the indigenous population and the police apparently get a pass. I had read about this in connection with one high profile case a few years ago that led to a riot (turns out to be Palm Island), but had no idea about the extent of the problem until I started searching today.
Link to the Palm Island history in Wikipedia but a search of ‘police Queensland brutality’ or a variant turns up page after page of various reports regarding police brutality, which is ongoing. It’s like reading about the US
2004 Palm Island death in custody
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Palm_Island_death_in_custody
This is Australian Justice….the way things are done down under….
Its all cyclical.
Lawsuits were respectable years ago but in recent years there has been war on plaintiffs.
Thus, plaintiffs generally lose and are also hounded for even filing a lawsuit.
Thus governments can do anything.
I suspect that this wasn’t negligence but was actually deliberate. Maybe someone wanted to get back at his parents so they sent the cops to murder their kid.
Lottakatz.
The case to which you are referring is that of Cameron Doomadgee who was arrested and beaten so badly that his liver was almost cleaved in two. The policeman who did it was charged with manslaughter but acquitted (white perpetrator, black victim, Queensland jury one could not expect any other outcome). The people who burned down the Palm Island police station immediately after aboriginal Doomadgee’s death were charged and convicted.
We call Queensland “the deep North”., it is Australia’s equivalent of Alabama or Louisiana.
Curse not having an edit option. The last sentence of the first paragraph in my previous post should be:-
The Aboriginal people who burned down the Palm Island police station immediately after Doomadgee’s death were charged and convicted.
It sounds sort of like the Rodney King beating in Los Angeles.
Apparently what happened in L.A. is that the county judges started taking pay offs from the city so that the city couldn’t be sued. Then when attorney Richard I. Fine complained they put him in jail without a criminal charge for 18 months.
Carlyle Moulton, Thank you for the follow-up and clarifying the regional relationship between the US and Australia. My dad spent time in the south and central region of Australia during WWII in a (then) little town Ballarat and on a sheep station and eventually traveling through the ‘heartland’ to Mutitjulu (Ayres Rock) while crossing the continent by jeep and truck convoy to the far north for deployment into the islands.
He always spoke very highly of the hospitality and character of the Australian people. Very, very highly. I’m always kind of let down when I read about things like this.