NEW SOUTH WALES POLICE FORCE AND THE ONGOING GAY, LESBIAN AND TRANSGENDER HATE CRIMES

As early as the 1960s and 1970s gay, lesbian and transgender people were the targets of homophobia and hate crimes of various sorts in the community.

There were assaults, bashings, verbal abuse and of course murders.

From the 1980s onwards and with the onset of the AIDS crisis from 1983 to the present, homophobic incidents continue unabated.

See our web pages on homophobia and hate crimes at: Mannie and Kendall's Home Pages


What has aggravated the situation from the beginning was the homophobia of the NSW Police and the NSW State government. As far as can be ascertained, the police may themselves have been involved in crimes against the glth communities which of course there would never be any attempts to investigate and solve.

Further aggravation of the situation was caused by the police refusing to investigate what it wanted hidden -incidents in which they may have been involved but had to keep this under wraps so that they would not be in trouble over the non-action of so many episodes over time.

A current gay and independent member of the New South Wales Parliament has recently been making attempts to get the NSW ombudsman to re-open inquiries into the gay murders of the 1980s and 1990s in which dozens were murdered between Sydney's North Shore and Bondi and Tamarama and related areas south of the Harbour.

Whether the ombudsman will accede to the request or not, the fact remains that it is beyond time when there should have been community protests and demands that the NSW government act to solve so many of the crimes which were either mishandled, not handled or abandoned "for lack of evidence" or because they were not considered hate crimes and were, in some cases, classified as suicides as with Scott Johnson in the late 1980s.

This intolerable homophobia must be stopped because elsewhere around the world there has been a deterioration relating to gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV/AIDS communities who are suffering crimes against humanity on a scale equivalent to a war on a certain group of people because of who they are!

There isn't a day which passes where there is some new expose of goings on - past and present - by the New South Wales Police Force and the governments which "control" them.

A complete overhaul of the system by some independent investigators who would be able to put the systems right in the face of insuperable odds is what is required in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia - and in fact all the states and territories in Australia.