Feature
Eleven Seconds in Footscray: The Killing of Abdifatah Ahmed and Victoria's Racialised Policing
Reports state that from the moment police encountered Abdifatah in a state of distress, until they shot him, 11 seconds passed1.
On the evening of 17th April 2025, 35-year-old Somali refugee Abdifatah Ahmed entered Footscray Plaza, a bustling shopping centre near the heart of Melbourne’s West. Abdifatah had been sleeping rough in the area for some time. Struggling with poverty and mental health issues, he was known to local shopkeepers and service providers as a member of the growing community of homeless people living on the streets of Footscray. That night, it is alleged that Abdifatah stole a kitchen knife from the Footscray Plaza Kmart. Police arrived in central Footscray at about 9PM after bystanders made a 000 call, claiming that an “agitated” man was wielding a knife.
Once police located Abdifatah, they called for backup, shot and killed him. Victoria Police maintain that his killing occurred because Abdifatah allegedly lunged at officers with a knife in his hands.
This 11 second sequence of events—from encounter to fatal shooting—demonstrates the weight of racialised logic that governs police responses in so-called Australia. ‘Racialised logic’ refers to the ingrained patterns through which Bla[c]kness has come to be read as danger, mental distress as violence, and homelessness as deviance. Society positioned Abdifatah as an outsider rather than a valued community member, a Black man struggling with his mental health and sleeping on the streets rather than a son, a friend, a person who needed support. Police’s assessment that he was a danger that needed to be neutralised, and whose life was expendable in that process, stems from process of racialising him as a threat. From locating Abdifatah to shooting him, 11 seconds passed, and in those 11 seconds police assessed him as a danger, devalued him and fired the shots that ultimately killed him.
The Somali and broader community's unity and protest in the aftermath of the shooting reminded passersby that this approach was not new. While Abdifatah’s killing was shocking and tragic, it was not surprising. Abdifatah’s killing highlights the fragility of Bla[c]k lives in this colony, but also the staunch resistance that has always stood against this dehumanisation.
The Racial Logic of Policing in Victoria
The circumstances surrounding the shooting at the hands of police raises questions about how we have arrived here. What are the conditions that allow police to almost reflexively enact violence against racialised people in Victoria, and how do state authorities justify this? How does an 11 second police encounter end in the death of a Somali refugee? These encounters do not happen in a vacuum.
Colonisation laid the foundations of racial violence here, and First Nations people have forged the blueprint of survival and resistance in Melbourne. In the past few decades, Melbourne’s west has also become a site of both racialised police violence and grassroots community resistance by migrant communities, especially African communities.
In this piece, we look at the recent history of racial violence distilled in the 11 second police encounter with Abdifatah, and the conditions that continue to allow police to take Bla[c]k lives in this city. What appears to be an 11-second decision is shaped by over 20 years of historical processes creating the contextual framework for Abdifatah’s killing. Given Abdifatah's links to Flemington and the broader context of racialised policing in Melbourne's west, our examination begins with Operation Molto in 2006, an intense police operation that targeted Bla[c]k people in and around the public housing towers of Flemington and North Melbourne, and setting a dangerous precedent for the policing of African and racialised communities in Melbourne.
Operation Molto: A Blueprint for Racial Profiling
They kicked me on the ground, I thought I was gonna die or pass out ya know? Just after that, I thought they were taking me to the police station, [they] put me in the divvy van, they drove me all the way to back of [deserted locality]. Then they all bashed me, they chucked my wallet out. ‘Come out you black cunt. Get out of divvy van’, you know? They hit me straight away, aiming at my leg here with the torch. So I ran down you know, they just, they got in the car and they left ya know, they left me there.2
This is a quote from a young man taken from the 2010 report ‘Boys, you wanna give me some action,’ which examined young African people’s experiences of being policed in Melbourne’s West and Southeast regions. The investigation, initiated by a group of community legal services in Melbourne as part of a project on racism and policing, revealed the extent to which African young people in Melbourne were subjected to police intervention in their everyday lives. The quote above highlights the racial violence that this young person experienced at the hands of Victoria Police, putting a lie to the claim that the role of the police is to keep people safe. The report’s authors described the young man as having been picked up by police and subsequently “abandoned far from home, at night, without any money.” The whole report is filled with first-person accounts of police violence, and racism. In another section another young person describes being taken away in a police van.
They picked me up, they put me in the back of the car. Then they took me to [locality] and all beat the shit out of me, and they left me there.
’Boys, you wanna give me some action?’ was published 5 years after Daniel Haile-Michael and his friends initiated a race discrimination complaint to the Australian Human Rights Commission because of racial profiling at the hands of police around the Flemington public housing estates, and 3 years before that complaint made its way to the Federal Court of Australia and settled days before the trial was due.3 The Haile-Michael case resulted in a landmark settlement that ultimately led police to ‘ban’ racial profiling in Victoria in 20154. It was in the midst of this landmark case, in 2006, that police were running a secret operation, Operation Molto, where police targeted African youth in Melbourne's west.
Reporters from the ABC confirmed the existence of this operation when they found a police ‘order document’ that highlighted an increase in “robberies and armed robberies occurring in and around the Flemington Housing Estate”.5 The order continues:
The as yet unidentified suspects for these serious offences are primarily young African males. The increased level of visible police presence will assist in the identification and targeting of offenders.
The month-long operation in 2006 revealed the mindset police had towards young African males. Acting Sergeant Nick Konstantinidis who at the time wrote the police order stated:
“The young African males stopped and spoken to by police on and around the Flemington area view this police activity towards them as racially motivated harassment and retaliatory incidents have occurred.”6
The community lodged scores of complaints against the police as Operation Molto swept through the community.7 In one instance:
an African youth alleged assault as a result of a police torch being struck into his face, causing dental damage. On the same occasion, an Afghan youth alleged assault by police as a consequence of being dragged off his bike and along the ground. The youths were respectively charged for hindering and resisting police. The charges against them were dismissed by a magistrate after a hearing, with the magistrate preferring the evidence of the youths over that of the police. While the magistrate did not make positive findings that the youths were assaulted (he was not required to do so), his finding made it clear that the police had no lawful basis to strike one of them on the face with a torch or to drag the other off his bike and along the ground8
The young people in the west were acutely aware of the increased police presence, and the racialised nature of the policing.
Another young person impacted by these events was quoted in the 2010 report, saying:
Like um, on a number of occasions they have assaulted me and yeah, they use racism, like they’re telling me, I’m a criminal, go back to your country and all that.
These encounters were sites of racial violence, as the statement above demonstrates. The racial slurs and profiling not only served to intimidate, but to dehumanise, where police positioning young black men as legitimate targets for abuse. These encounters also often involved intrusive questioning and searches with little to no reasonable suspicion. As the Haile-Michael case would show, it was a pattern of racial profiling that was a cornerstone of the policing experience.
Operation Molto spawned other police operations targeting young people in the West (Operation Square was another operation that ran in and around Flemington targeting young people around the same time). In the shadow of these operations, along with the incidents from the 2010 report, the Haile-Michael case meandered its way through the complaints and court system. The case not only highlighted the increased racial violence happening in the west through the testimony of the 6 young men taking on Victoria Police but also generated important statistical data on racialised policing practices. Professor Ian Gordon from the University of Melbourne found that young black men in the North Melbourne and Flemington area were 2.5 times more likely to be stopped than white people or non-African people. He also found that they were less likely to commit a crime compared to other populations.9
So what?
While Operation Molto was a specific month-long police order in 2006 to target ‘young African males’ in Flemington, the 2010 report ‘Boys do you want to give me some action?’ paints the reality for many of how such directives impacted their lives. More than just a temporary measure, Operation Molto officially sanctioned a mode of policing that helped entrench a mindset within Victoria Police, paving the way for ‘Molto-like’ targeting to become a recurring feature of interactions with these communities, rather than an isolated, month-long event.
This period built the foundations of the current culture of policing that has thoroughly normalised the criminalisation of Bla[c]k people. It entrenched police’s racialised targeting practices and laid the foundations to associate criminality in Bla[c]k bodies. Racial profiling became de facto policy, rooted in and reinforced by implicit bias. Police enacted this daily through physical force, racial slurs and systemic harassment. As Dr Tamar Hopkins put it in her article on Operation Molto:
The police field remarks clarify that Operation Molto was never a strategy to identify offenders. Its purpose was to maintain control over racialised communities using criminalising labels to describe innocent everyday activities.10
This was by no means the first time that migrant groups had been subjected to excessive policing, but this period institutionalised the perception of young Bla[c]k men as inherently suspicious and criminal.
This moment also allowed police to ‘go hard’ with little to no accountability. As the 2010 report put it:
One youth worker described an incident in which it is alleged that police returned to a particular locality after hours in singlets, out of uniforms, in order to fight a whole group of young people. The worker’s interpretation of this incident was:
“That seemed like a group frustration on the part of the police and a sort of a snapping and just laying aside their professional responsibility and indulging in their frustration.”
While Melbourne’s west became more broadly understood as a site of racial violence, the Haile-Michael case also acted as a site of public resistance against Victoria Police. While that case would end in a settlement and an official ‘ban’ on racial profiling, it also mobilised a generation of young people to speak up to power through arts, theatre and community work.
Despite the plaintiffs’ legal ‘win’, Victoria Police were still adamant about their innocence in Operation Molto and its subsequent policing methods:
On 5 April 2013, the then Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay, who was in fact a senior officer in charge of the region when Operation Molto was carried out, gave an interview to ABC where he maintained that ‘the only problem with Operation Molto was that it was not properly explained to the affected community’11
The Haile-Michael case came to a close in early 2013. Undeterred by public scrutiny on racialised policing, however, mainstream media and politicians ramped up racist discourse in the lead up to the 2016 federal election, as well as the 2018 Victoria state election.
A stark example of the danger of this discourse was the killing of Liep Gony in 2007. Liep Gony, a young South Sudanese man, was murdered while on an errand to buy paint to help his mother prepare for his sister’s wedding. Gony was bashed and killed at the Noble Park train station in Melbourne’s East by two white men. In the aftermath of his death, the then Federal Minister of Immigration, Kevin Andrews, publicly admonished the South Sudanese community for not integrating into Australian society,12 effectively blaming his killing on ‘African gangs’. In 2018, 11 years after Liep Gony’s killing, his mother, Martha Ojulo said:
I hope that what happened to Liep never happens to another young man again … but I feel that for that change to happen, it would require even members of parliament to change the way they talk13
From Molto to Moral Panic: The Rise of the ‘African Gangs’ Narrative
Parliamentarians and the media play a powerful part in racialising and criminalising Bla[c]k bodies. Mainstream media has a significant influence in frames narratives about migrant communities through their reporting, shaping the public imaginary as well as political decision-making. Following the events of the Haile-Michael case, the ‘Molto-style’ policing tactics, and a growing wave of ‘anti-migrants’ discourse, the public rhetoric grew increasingly racist, cementing in the public’s mind the inherent criminality of the African (and migrant) diaspora groups.
This was evident in the early 2010s, as media outlets pumped out headlines heavily infused with racist dog-whistling:
- “Melbourne home to more than a dozen race-based street gangs” – Herald Sun, 23 August 2011
- “Migrant groups going gang busters” – The Australian, 9 March 2011
- “Warning of UK-style riots in alienated pockets of Melbourne (re: African-Australian youth)” – The Age, 14 May 2012
- “African youth crime concern” – The Age, 20 August 2012
- “Fear of Cronulla-like unrest as refugee lawlessness grows in Melbourne” – Sydney Morning Herald, 20 August 201214
This sustained campaign of racialised fearmongering created a tinderbox in the public discourse. It wasn’t until 2016 and the so-called Moomba riots that rhetoric hit fever pitch and became a fully-blown campaign of racial terror.
On March 12, 2016, a brawl broke out at the annual Melbourne-based Moomba community festival. This incident led to 53 arrests and 800 people being searched for weapons.15 Police were quick to label the brawl a ‘riot’ and pointed their fingers to the so-called ’Apex gang’. At the time police reported that the ’Apex gang’ had a membership of about 200 members, mostly young people of South Sudanese and Pasifika backgrounds.16 A report by the Centre for Multicultural Youth university researchers titled ’Don’t Drag Me Into This’ documented the experience of being South Sudanese during this time, and the moral panic that ensued. The report captured a piece from a newspaper article from that time:
Two suspected members of the notorious Apex gang that was implicated in Saturday’s wild Moomba riot were arrested yesterday. ... In a belated get-tough statement yesterday, Premier Daniel Andrews vowed to smash youth gangs. But concerns have emerged that some police worry about stopping teens of African background on the streets for fear of racism complaints. Apex is believed to number about 200 members, from a mixture of backgrounds including Sudanese, Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern. … A mounting number of carjackings, aggravated burglaries, robberies and assaults have been linked to Apex members in the past year.17
This Apex gang narrative was the perfect excuse for politicians and media outlets to verbalise the internal racism inherent in their institutions and to pander to a public primed by years of such rhetoric.
From the same report young people described the ‘riot’ and the aftermath:
Black people were made the talk of the town. ... Everything they did was, like ... just made bigger for that reason.18
The overt racism that media coverage promoted was captured again by another young person:
The media gave other people the power to kind of abuse that what so-called Apex. And that has kind of – you know – hyped them up. It’s hyped them up and you know just gave them the confidence to make assumptions.19
The ‘Moomba riot’ marked a turning point in crystallising in the public’s mind that the ‘Apex gang’ equated to African youth, painting them as inherently criminal and in need of punishment by police intervention.
A year later, Victoria Police declared the ‘Apex gang’ a non-entity, and admitted that it was never predominantly African.20 They now preferred the language of ’Youth Network Offender’ to gang member. But the damage had been done. In the public psyche, African youth had already been succesfully constructed as dangerous and gang-affiliated. They were assumed to be criminals and therefore positioned as legitimate targets of dehumanisation.
So what?
In the lead up to the 2018 Victorian state election, then federal Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said about Melbourne’s night life:
people are scared to go out at restaurants of a night time because they're followed home by these gangs, home invasions, and cars are stolen.21
The constant cycle of racist rhetoric by politicians and the media generated more ammunition for police and the public to dehumanise Bla[c]k people. Not only did Operation Molto-era police policies and practices allow this, but it was now firmly entrenched in the public discourse through heated political debates and racially charged headlines. It allowed for more police operations targeting ‘youth gangs’, with Operation Cosmas, Wayward and Regnant being just a few.2223
Police were now empowered by both their institutional racism, and the growing racist public rhetoric about racialised gangs. This inevitably resulted in a rise in racialised policing practices, particularly as police now had the social licence to be allowed to police Bla[c]k bodies differently. This social licence essentially meant that police actions against young African people were less likely to be scrutinised by the public. It was considered necessary and essential to ‘stop’ African gangs. It created a shield of public approval for discriminatory and aggressive policing.
The ‘Apex’ moral panic embedded powerful imagery of Bla[c]k bodies as threats into the collective psyche and importantly, into police. This pre-existing racist script, ready to be pulled out and used, could easily override a more nuanced portrayal of a person in distress so many years later.
It was during this moral panic and racially charged moment that renowned racist and far-right troll, Milo Yiannopoulos visited Flemington to give a speech to the then-growing number of white supremacist groups in Melbourne.
Protecting Fascists, Policing Communities: The Milo Protests
On December 4th, 2017, far-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos stood inside a Flemington event venue with about 600 attendees24, right across the street from the public housing high rises home to some of the most diverse communities in Melbourne.
Milo had been touring Australia during the heightened public discourse about migration, crime and race. He had come under a cloud of controversy due to public outrage over his views but still had enough of a following to provide something new to the growing alt-right movement in Melbourne.
He cloaks his ideas in urbane witticisms and declares himself immune from charges of bigotry because of his identity (he is gay, has a black boyfriend and claims Jewish heritage). He offers a new narrative for people who have been desperately seeking a different kind of radical right-wing politics.25
One Crikey reporter wrote of interviewing one of the attendees of the event:
“What do you like in what he’s saying?”
She thought for a long time.
“Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh … well, I mean immigration. Not that we don’t like Muslims! Just not the wrong ones!”
“There anyone in Australia who inspires you like he does?”
“No one! No one!”
“Andrew Bolt?”
“He’s pretty boring.”
‘What about the pro-paedophilia stuff? ‘Thirteen year old boys can consent meaningfully’ …”
Trisha squirmed.26
Milo’s deliberate provocative presence, across the road from a community that was in the middle of being demonised by the ‘Apex’ gang narrative, drew a strong and fierce protest from left-leaning and anti-fascist groups. As the protest swelled, the racialised communities from the flats flocked to the gathering, adding their voices to those protesting the presence of Milo and in turn, the racist atmosphere that had been created in the media and political rhetoric. The subsequent police response to this event further evidences the racialised nature of policing in Melbourne’s west. It starkly demonstrated how the demonising narrative from the Molto and Apex eras had shaped police perceptions of threats, and ultimately, of who was and was not deemed worthy of protection.
For hours, Milo’s event was site of a large public demonstration. Due to the high-profile controversy Milo’s tour was attracting, police lined up outside of the venue, providing security for attendees entering and exiting the event. Milo predictably attracted the small but loud cadre of local fascist groups like the ‘True Blue Crew’ and ‘Soldiers of Odin’, many of whose members are outright neo-nazis.27 Protestors would later claim that police were protecting far-right groups and facilitating racist and Islamophobic gatherings.28 As the protest drew on, residents from the flats across the road came down to see the commotion and the Milo sympathisers.
As the Age later reported:
Footage of the protest shows a group of residents, nearly all Muslims, standing outside the front of the housing estate on Racecourse Road before they are targeted by a group of alt-right protesters who hurl racist and Islamaphobic abuse at them through megaphones.29
As the encounter heated up, police closed in and began to lash out indiscriminately at the crowd with OC spray (pepper spray).
Riot police stormed the protest and used pepper spray to subdue the crowd, which included members of left-wing group Campaign Against Racism and Fascism and right-wing groups Reclaim Australia and The Freedom Party.30
The police intervention was fierce and blunt. The Public Order Response team, whose primary job is to police events and public gatherings, came out in full force. They had shields, helmets, batons and armoured uniforms. The policing looked and felt like a paramilitary response.
In the few hours after the clashes, the local community started reporting that police were also conducting raids into their homes, using force on their young people and that there was a heightened police presence on the estate.
Flemington housing estate residents say they were chased, doused in pepper-spray and shoved into apartment buildings by police as violent protests erupted outside an event hosting controversial British alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos.
Others claim they were stalked and ordered to leave the grounds of the housing estate which is their home by police, as tensions flared between hundreds of left and right protesters gathered in front of the Melbourne Pavilion on Racecourse Road and Stubbs Street on December 4.31
Another testimony, this time from the Overland Article ‘Monday Night in Flemington’ quoted a local resident:
One resident told me: ‘We thought they were raiding our area. They come for us and our boys – they just target us. A couple of months ago our boys were down here and they just came for them. They weren’t doing anything, but they just started raiding them.’32
In the days that followed, various local human rights organisation and MPs wrote letters to police stating their concern about that night’s policing activities.
Reporting shortly after the event stated the police ‘understood’ the concerns:
Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane said police understood the protests which marred Mr Yiannopoulos’ show had a “significant effect” on the residents of Kensington and Flemington.
“We are working closely with those communities to better understand the impacts of that event, including the police response,” he said.33
However, the experience of residents and the subsequent analysis of police actions paints a stark picture of their priorities on the night.
So what?
The events surrounding the Milo Yiannopoulos event in Flemington offers an illustration of Victoria Police’s priorities and their racialised approach to 'public order’. While far-right agitators were largely shielded from harm, the residents from the Flemington high-rise were harassed, assaulted and vilified by both the police and the far-right protestors. The Flemington residents, already marked by the legacies of Molto and Apex, were once again framed as the source of the disorder, rather than a racialised community deserving of protection from racist agitation.
Victoria Police were now allowed to employ differential policing tactics towards racialised communities, sanctioned by the racial discourse driven by politicians and the media. Their risk assessment was driven by this discourse, allowing them to judge that a proven alt-right provocateur and known far-right nazi sympathisers required protection, while the communities living in the local area were legitimate targets of paramilitary style public order policing.
This further dehumanised large swaths of the community in the eyes of the police. Police violence against Bla[c]k people was increasingly framed as necessary, reinforcing a cycle where use of force had become routine rather than exceptional. The far-right protestors were not raided, nor policed out of their homes, instead, the Bla[c]k bodies were the ones that absorbed the state’s violence. The public and police grew closer to ‘normalising’ the use of force on their bodies, even when they were simultaneously being victimised by outright racists.
The institutionally racist script police operated under solidified the justification of use of force and paramilitary policing. While this was not a new element of racialised policing, police were significantly enabled to view Bla[c]k communities as inherently criminal, and as reasonable targets of both surveillance, and violence, backed by the state and the public’s social license.
The patterns of racialised policing, the public demonisation, and the state sanctioned aggression established through Operation Molto, amplified by the ‘Apex’ moral panic and illustrated during Milo Yiannopoulos’s visits, would find their large-scale expression during the COVID-19 pandemic. The hard lockdown of the public housing towers was one of the most publicised expressions of these trends, of racialised policing and Blackness-as-threat that ultimately led to the 11-seconds before Abdifatah’s killing.
Hard Lockdowns and the Theatre of Policing
Victoria became the most locked-down jurisdiction in the world during the 2020-2021 period of the COVID-19 pandemic.34 By late 2021, Melbournians had spent a total of 245 days under lockdown orders. It was in between the first two lockdowns declared in Victoria that the North Melbourne and Flemington towers were put into ‘hard’ lockdown.
On July 4th, 2020, then premier Daniel Andrews declared that the North Melbourne and Flemington public housing high-rise were the site of a COVID-19 outbreak. In response, he imposed a ‘hard’ lockdown, with no one allowed to enter or leave 9 housing towers for 5 days.35 These estates are home to approximately 3,000 people, many of whom are from migrant and refugee backgrounds, with a significant African population. In the immediate hours after the announcement, hundreds of police were deployed to surround the towers. This was not to provide aid or support, but to enforce resident containment. For many residents, especially those from refugee backgrounds, it felt like an occupation.
Police are already at the unit complexes making sure no-one leaves and that only residents can go inside. [...]
"The police presence and police operation will be unprecedented," the Premier said.36
The lockdown was immediate. There was no forewarning or time for residents to respond. As the premier was announcing the lockdown, police were already swarming to the estates.
From the subsequent Victorian Ombudsman report into the lockdown, it was shown that little consideration was given to the resident's human rights:
Yet at 4.08pm the Premier of Victoria announced the lockdown, effective immediately.
Most of the residents found out about it when they saw uniformed police officers surrounding their homes. The Deputy Chief Health Officer – the expert on infectious diseases acting as Victoria’s Chief Health Officer on the day – told us that although she signed the directions, the timing was not on her advice. She was given less than 15 minutes to consider the terms of several lengthy documents and their human rights implications.37
While emergency powers had been provided to police since the start of the pandemic, it was at the towers that these state sanctioned powers mingled with a public sentiment already primed by years of racialised discourse, allowed such blatantly racialised use of police powers. The Victorian Ombudsman commented on this, stating:
It is unimaginable that such stereotypical assumptions, leading to the ‘theatre of policing’ that followed, would have accompanied the response to an outbreak of COVID-19 in a luxury apartment block.38
From the moment the announcement was made, chaos ensued:
Despite the best efforts of those on the ground, the early days of the lockdown were chaotic: people found themselves without food, medication and other essential supports. Information was confused, incomprehensible, or simply lacking. On the ground few seemed to know who was in charge.39
The ‘theatre of policing’ was on full view at the bottom of these buildings. 500 police officers were deployed and stationed around the estates.40 Police cars and equipment were everywhere, and their presence was visible to the whole nation via news cameras and reporters.
As the days went by, the lack of food and medicine deliveries to residents became apparent. The then Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) took charge of delivering food parcels to residents. The police oversaw the delivery of food parcels into each building. As the large logistical endeavour dawned on DHHS, and their response proved ill-equipped, it became apparent that the state’s priority was on the ‘theatre of policing’ and contaiment of the COVID ‘threat’ rather than a genuine public health response for residents in the towers. Young members of the community working with the local mosque, AMSSA, quickly organised their own food relief program in response. Culturally centred, and quick and efficient, the mosque’s food relief program was successful in providing residents what they needed. Despite this, their efforts were met with resistance by police:
The lack of recognition of AMSSA as suppliers of legitimate food relief from officials on site also contributed to an altercation which led to one AMSSA volunteer being arrested on the evening of Tuesday 7 July. It also required constant (and tiresome) negotiations and led to frustration for residents.41
Once the ‘hard’ lockdownhad hit 5 days, many of the residents were released from the restrictions. It was only one tower that continued to be subjected to hard lockdown. These residents had not had fresh air for over a week when they were allowed, under police guard, to go to the bottom of the buildings for relief:
Such arrangements were first trialled on the evening of 11 July 2020. Those participating in the fresh air and exercise program were escorted by Victoria Police officers to an outdoor area enclosed by temporary fencing. These residents likened the area to a cage or prison exercise space and said they felt ‘surrounded’ by Victoria Police personnel.42
One resident commented to the Ombudsman:
‘It was a concrete area – a cage. I counted 20 plus police officers. I thought, “Am I going in here?” … I said, “Is there a need for all these police officers?” DHHS shrugged and said, “What can we do?43
The Victorian Ombudsman asked Victoria Police if they thought about the policing of the estate, given the history of policing there. They responded:
[W]e know these communities; we know that policing in these communities is sensitive. We know in particular that policing the Flemington community is sensitive, so it’s inconceivable that it wasn’t on our minds.44
Despite knowing that this was going to be an issue, they went ahead.
So what?
The policing of the COVID-19 hard lockdown represented a culmination of the past 15 years of racialised targeting of African communities in Melbourne. The logics that pervaded Operation Molto, the ‘Apex’ hysteria, the policing of Yiannopoulos’ talk were now at play in this unprecedented act of state control. The full force of state power and a public licence allowed for this ‘theatre of policing’, completely disconnected from actual community needs. Residents were seen as vector of disease and a threat to the public health of Victoria and therefore needed immediate policing and punishment. The immediacy of the lockdown and police presence sent a message to all the state that these Bla[c]k bodies required the full intensity of the state to stop them from flaunting the law. As Melbourne Activist Legal Support, who deployed legal observers over the course of the hard lockdown put it:
The extreme police presence (with 500 officers deployed across the towers) reflected an assumption of widespread non-compliance with health advice.45
This was a moment in which the state needed control over these bodies. Much like Operation Molto, that harassed young black bodies to control a population seen as criminal, this operation confined bodies into the towers because they were seen as a threat. This was like Operation Molto but on masse. It was a collective act of dehumanisation. When 3,000 peoples can instantly be transformed into threats, and likened to prisoners, the perceived value of their individual lives diminish in the eyes of the state and its enforcers.
This episode further ingrained the ‘racist script’ within policing. The pervasive script now seeped and cemented into institutional policies and practices. This script now dictated that this communities' liberties could be extinguished without due process.
It was further cemented when the Government refused to apologies to the residents, despite it being a recommendation from the Victorian Ombudsman:
In her report, Ms Glass said the action "appeared to be contrary to the law" and the government should apologise for the "harm and stress caused by the immediacy of their lockdown".
Nearly 12 months later, residents are still waiting for that apology.46
It has now been nearly 5 years and residents are still waiting for an apology.
Despite the hard lockdown, the community resisted by creating parallel care infrastructure. The local mosque acted as the site of food relief. Young racialised people from across the suburbs arrived to help distribute food and medicine. The ‘Voices from the Block’ social media account held testimonies and advocated from within the buildings. Where the state punished, the community created care.
In this context of devaluation of life, inherent criminality, and normalised state aggression, communities still resist and care for each other. Ultimately the imbedded structural racism inherent in police shaped the tragic 11 second encounter of police with Abdifatah.
Abdifatah: History in Eleven Seconds
So the 11 seconds leading up to the killing of Abdifatah are no longer just about the immediate ‘risk’ police have in front of them; they are filtered through years of conditioning that frame Bla[c]kness, homelessness, and mental distress emanating from Bla[c]k bodies as inherently dangerous, requiring decisive, and ultimately, fatal force.
Was Abdifatah’s killing by police inevitable? The current of history is strong, and to swim against the current requires strength. While it’s impossible to know what exactly went through the minds of the police officers in those 11 seconds, history must have played a part. In recent 2023 police data, African appearing, people are 8 times more likely to be stopped and searched then white people and are less likely to be found with contraband items.47 This data reveals that the racialised logic that dictated the past still exerts its power over policing today. It never stopped. And while governments are off fighting elections on law-and-order politics, using Bla[c]k and brown bodies as their fodder, Nazi’s are emboldened to furl banners at local shopping centres.48
One of the ‘wins’ for community during the Haile-Michael case, was that police promised to review their policies and reform themselves. They released yearly reports on the state of these promises in the ‘Equality is Not the Same’ reports.49 These reforms culminated in the ’banning’ of racial profiling by Victoria Police. But as this piece has set out, racialised logic still permeates through the very structure of Victoria Police. We cannot ’reform’ our way out of racism.
Perhaps we must look towards the very communities that are policed. In these places' resistance, care and community thrive. It was the community that took Victoria Police to court for racial profiling, it was the community that stood up to Milo Yiannopolous, and it was community who organised food and medicine despite the chaos of the hard lockdown.
In 2013 the Flemington community came together to hold the ‘People’s Hearing’. It was a public hearing into racism in policing. It was organised by many young Bla[c]k and brown women from the communities that were policed. It was held over two days and invited racialised communities to speak their truth. The rooms echoed with stories of violence and racism, but it also spoke about hope and healing.
One of the facilitators, Reem Yehdego, believes the forum has ended debate about whether or not discriminatory policing exists in Melbourne. ''It was an incredibly emotional and heartbreaking two days, but the general responses were of relief, hope and healing,'' she says.50
After Abdifatah was killed, the community came together in Footscray to protest. Similarly, there was anger, grief, sadness and defiance, but mostly there was care and hope for one another.
“Abdifatah was a son, a brother, and a young man in visible distress. He needed care, compassion, and support, not fatal force,”51
Eleven seconds, yet laden with the weight of nearly two decades of racialised conditioning. As history shows, from the People’s Hearing to the protests in Footscray, communities continually forge spaces of care and demand accountability. The path is in amplifying these voices, and dismantling structures that deny lives of their inherent worth.