Traditional, social media and forms of community organising can be an important resource to advance your client’s case and your client’s public interest concerns.

In recent years, many of the major law reforms in police powers in Victoria have occurred as a result of families and individuals working with the media, community organisers and lawyers to highlight the injustice of the status quo. For example - Veronica Nelson’s family have been at the forefront of pushing for bail reform, Tanya Day’s family have lead the changes in decriminalisation of public drunkeness. Emma’s complaint about Victoria Police’s response to family violence by a police officer led to legal changes to make it easier to hold police to account, Corinna Horvath’s case to the UN Human Rights Committee led to reforms to the Victoria Police Act 2013 on police liability.

However there is still so much to be done to increase safety for people and communities including:

• Creation of Independent Police Ombudsman to investigate all complaints against police;

• Independent monitoring of all police activities for racial profiling and other forms of police misconduct;

• Creation of alternative first responders to issues involving mental health, homelessness, family violence; (eg. public drunkeness has now been decriminalised and is responded to by Co-Health).

• Giving control of access to and police compliance with body warn camera footage requirements to the Independent Police Ombudsman - including increasing access to footage through FOI and people making complaints about police.

• Legislative ban on all pedestrian and vehicle stops in the absence of observing an offence has been committed, or reasonable grounds to believe an indictable offence has been committed (except breath and drug tests where batches of vehicles are pulled over and there is no opportunity for selectivity)

• Legislative ban on ‘consent searches’ and designated area searches under the Control of Weapons Act.

• Raising the age of incarceration;

• Decriminalisation of drugs and other victimless offences.

• Funding of community controlled first response teams (like Aboriginal Night Patrols) rather than police.

• Overhaul of FOI access.

If your case fits into one of these (or other) areas where law reform is needed, it is worth speaking to colleagues, about how to build a campaign around of your case including use of media and MPs.

Issues to consider when speaking to the media/MPs:

• Your client’s instructions are privileged. You must get consent to discuss your client’s case with anyone.

• If a version of your client’s account is in the media/with MPs/outside your file, there is a risk it could be used as ‘prior inconsistent statement’ if your client says anything different in court proceedings or in a statement to police. This could impact your client’s credibility. It is critical to talk these risks through with your client.

• Making any public commentary about a client’s case, once they have been charged in relation a to criminal offence may place you or your client in subjudice contempt. The media/you may only report what is actually said during criminal court proceedings and not provide any commentary on it. This is particularly critical in jury cases, but applies to judge only cases as well. The time to provide commentary (ie information beyond the straight facts as described in court) in a criminal case, is after the case has been decided by the judge/jury if there is no risk of appeal or 30 days after the decision to ensure no appeal from the decision is lodged.

• The rules around subjudice contempt do not apply to coronial inquests or civil matters. But it is important that any commentary does not undermine your client’s interests.

• You may not provide any documents to the media/MPs that you have acquired for your client where those documents have been obtained under court order such as a subpoena, or court ordered discovery process. This limit does not apply once the documents have been read onto the transcript/viewed/played in open court or where they have been obtained through FOI.

• It is important to consider issues of defamation whenever speaking to the media. It is ok to say my client has lodged a complaint of racism against members of Victoria Police and the allegations are ‘x, y z’. It is also ok to say that issues of racism exist in Victoria Police or evidence points to the existence of structural racism in Victoria Police. Claiming an individual officer is racist could subject you to a defamation claim, but if you have evidence that would support the truth of that claim on the balance of probabilities, then it may be worth taking that risk.