Gunpoint arrest on ACT public bus, police suspected wrong teen

The 17-year-old's family and First Nations advocates have called out "police brutality" and "racial profiling.

Transcript

00:00The family of a 17-year-old Aboriginal teenager who was incorrectly arrested on a Canberra bus

00:06has deemed the incident as an act of racial profiling.

00:09Yeah, it's disgusting.

00:12The only thing that they had in common was that they had the same colour skin,

00:16and the police admitted that they had the wrong child.

00:19ACT police have apologised for the misidentification,

00:23but the chief police officer supported the actions of his officers

00:27and said the arrest could not be avoided based on the context and circumstances at the time.

00:33Until we entered the bus, we weren't aware whether the young person would be compliant or not.

00:39So they are operating in the context, obviously, of a response to a dynamic incident,

00:44high levels of violence, a female had been stabbed.