NSW Police Officer’s Casual Assault on First Nations Woman Highlights Systemic Issue

Footage capturing yet another incident revealing the casual callous violence with which NSW police officers regularly approach First Peoples has gone viral. The 22 July 2025 incident involves an officer approaching Aboriginal woman Jaleenah Collins unawares from behind and forcefully shoving her to the ground outside a school on Ngarigo land in the southern NSW regional town of Bungendore.

The short clip that the Guardian reported on last week shows the 32-year-old Aboriginal victim of the police assault standing on a footpath engaged in an argument with another person, when the officer approaches and uses both gloved hands to flamboyantly shove her over, which sees the woman fall and hit her head on the side of a metal pole, prior to collapsing lifelessly on the ground.

The actions of the white Australian police officer as he tossed the women over appears performative in front of onlookers, and on first view, his cruel disregard for the First Nations woman, he’s about to owe a duty of care to, is jarring. The reaction of witnesses further reveals this, as one male standing by is seen to tell the officer that he’s out of line, prior to being forcefully pushed back himself.

The officer acts with impunity the entire time. After the shove, he hovers over the woman, applies hand cuffs and yells directly into her ear, “You’re under arrest for a breach of the peace, do you understand that?” Obviously not functioning properly by this stage, the woman doesn’t respond, yet the officer continues to scream and wrench at her arm, prior to giving up and calling for backup.

Clips showing NSW police brutalising First Peoples on arrest, such as this one, are posted to social media periodically and go viral. The casual manner in which Australian police apply violence to Aboriginal people on the street reflects a lack of thought or concern for the consequences, but then again, these institutions were established on unaccountability, and there continues to be none.

Charging the victim of police assault

An Australian police brutality page on Instagram features the clip and a brief statement from Collins, confirming that she was knocked out by the officer. She states that she suffered “severe concussion”, along with a wounded ear and a fractured rib. “Police brutality at its finest,” the Canberra resident further remarked. “Bungendore police have some explaining to do.”

Despite what is captured in the short clip, the NSW Police Force has gone on to charge Collins with hindering or resisting a police officer, contrary to section 60(1AA) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW), which carries up to 12 months prison time and/or a fine of $2,200.

The admin for Instagram account policebrutalityawarenessdayaus explains in the related post that the process of charging an individual assaulted by NSW police is the norm. “This is what police do, they harm citizens and then charge the victim with offences to distract from the harm they’ve caused, and it is only when there’s enough publicity that they act and ’review’ the assault.”

Appearing in Queanbeyan Local Court on Monday, 11 August 2025, Collins pleaded guilty to the absurd resisting police charge, along with two counts of intimidation, contrary section 13 of the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 (NSW), which carries up to 5 years imprisonment. These extra charges appear to relate to a broader dispute involving a rock being thrown at a car.

The Daily Telegraph reported on Monday that NSW police had been called in after it was a reported that a 15-year-old boy threw a rock at a car that another 15-year-old boy was travelling in, which shattered the vehicle’s window. The woman driving then got out and approached the boy, who was with a 32-year-old woman, and a dispute ensued.

Collins is to go before the court again on 29 September and following the video clip of the police assault having gone viral on social media, the NSW Police Force has stated that the incident is now under review.

The DNA of Australian policing

As those tracking Australian police brutality have explained, without the clip capturing Collins’ vicious assault, the officer who dished out his brutality with flare would not likely have come under any scrutiny from his employer, and the woman would have appeared in court to state her innocence in respect of her having resisted an officer whilst laying injured and unresponsive on the ground.

The fact that NSW police is now reviewing this incident does not mean the officer involved in what appears to be criminal behaviour will be reprimanded, as that depends on the fallout that results from the footage of the incident. And the casual way in which the cop delivered his excessive force reflects the dehumanising attitude towards Indigenous people many Australian police officers hold.

Australian policing systems were established in the early days of colony by the British and to the detriment of the hundreds of First Nations that did and continue to exist here. The law enforcement bodies that are established as part of settler colonial projects might provide law enforcement to settler populations, but these bodies consider Indigenous people as the enemy on inception.

The NSW Police Force was established in 1862. This process involved the amalgamation of the preexisting Border Police, Mounted Police and Native Police. These early police forces were integral to the colonisation of the continent now referred as Australia, and these law enforcement bodies that served as the foundations of NSW law enforcement treated First Peoples as adversary.

The recently released report into the Northern Territory coronial inquiry into the killing of Warlpiri Luritja man 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker by then 28-year-old NT police constable Zachary Rolfe found that the NT Police Force is riddled by “institutional racism” and due to this, an officer like Rolfe was meting out violence towards First Peoples and despite complaints about this was left unchecked.

As Senator Lidia Thorpe often explains, the continuing colonisation of this continent takes place in more subtle ways than the vast, militarised landgrabs of the past. However, various Australian policing forces have continued on with their extreme prejudice towards the continent’s First Peoples with the same racist and dehumanising attitude that Israel is currently applying to the Gaza Strip.

The dainty manner in which the NSW police officer took to assaulting Collins clearly displays a lack of humanity towards her, as he shows no concern for the consequence of his actions. This is further revealed as he repeatedly pulls at the woman’s lifeless arm, demanding that she get up off the ground.

A frightening approach to community safety

“This brutal police assault on a First Nations woman is absolutely sickening and frightening. Look at the impunity he knocks her to the ground then abusively arrests her,” said NSW Greens MLC Sue Higginson in a social media post, in which she featured the clip of the police assault. “The officer needs to be immediately dismissed and prosecuted for violent assault.”

But this incident is simply the latest Australian police brutality clip to have gone viral. A NSW police officer who picked up a 16-year-old First Nations boy in a park and then slammed him head first into the ground on Gadigal land in Sydney’s inner suburb of Surry Hills in June 2020, resulted in the same shocked reaction from public and press due to the officer’s callous approach to the teenager.

The reaction of civil society to this incident did see justice prevail, but only after then NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller attempted to dismiss the incident away as an officer having “a bad day”. This officer was found guilty of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and he too lost his job as a result of the incident.

But this instance of justice served is not the norm, and neither does it result in any change in the attitude of police on the beat, who continue to liberally apply excessive force to Aboriginal people on the street in much the same way as one can imagine it was applied in the early days of the colony.

Higginson called for a parliamentary inquiry into NSW police use of force in mid-2023, after a clip emerged of an officer walking with an 18-year-old Aboriginal boy with disabilities, whom he had in his custody, and when the boy starts fitting, the law enforcement agent continued to drag him along. Then as they were walking post-fit, the officer gave him a leg sweep and dropped him on his spine.

But the Minns government refused to run the inquiry. So, nothing has since been done to address the institutionalised racism of the NSW police towards First Peoples and these incidents of police brutality continue unabated, with the interruption of the odd officer being criminally convicted, but the essence of the prejudicial culture underpinning the policing institution remains unchanged.