'They ignored me a couple of times and then I kicked out, and he said, 'Oi! Stop banging on the windows or I'll pull over there!' 'I hit the window and said: 'Here! The police station is this way.' With his friends travelling in two other separate, marked police vehicles, the eldest soon realised something was wrong.

They hadn't committed any crimes, and they weren't under arrest. 'We didn't wanna jump in the car with them. He recalls initially refusing - but tired, cold and eager to get home, they eventually got in. We weren't into drugs or any of that.'Īs the boys began to walk back home to a hostel in Brisbane's West End, the 13-year-old saw a group of police, and was struck by a feeling of unease.

The eldest in the group remembers them 'just running around Brisbane as kids' - kids who would 'just cruise around and get coins, go play games. Like Daniel Yock, an Aboriginal teenager who died in custody only six months earlier, they had strong connections to Cherbourg, an old Aboriginal mission north-west of Brisbane. The three boys who were hanging out in the Valley mall that night were part-time street kids, in and out of school at the time. Now, two of the boys involved are speaking out for the first time, as experts warn over-policing of Indigenous youth is still prevalent, and still perpetuating a vicious cycle of crime for vulnerable kids. Through their union, their actions were excused as an act of frustration, but for the broader Aboriginal community, the incident exposed a toxic culture within the force that many feel still exists today. Police denied threatening the boys - either to make them get into the cars or while at Pinkenba - but they did admit it was wrong to dump them at the site.

'I thought it was him - and I just started shaking then.' 'They took up to the bridge, and they said they was gonna throw him off, and then we heard a splash,' the youngest of the three, now 38, told the Thin Black Line podcast. Though they hadn't committed a crime, the boys - aged 12, 13 and 14 - were driven to the swampy industrial suburb of Pinkenba, 12 kilometres from the CBD.Ī wide-ranging suppression order means the ABC cannot identify anyone involved in the case. In the early hours of a cold morning in May 1994, three Aboriginal boys were placed into separate police vehicles by six officers in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.

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