Working in the Watch House

People have been asking me about what it’s like working in the watch house (aka police cells) and what kind of issues have I had to deal with, so I thought I would give you all a little bit of insight into it.  Now out of probably every 300 people who come through the watch house only one of those people are white.  The other 99.9% are aboriginal and they are intoxicated.  Mainly they are there in protective custody but a handful will be arrests, usually for alcohol related offenses such as aggravated assault, domestic violence or breach of a domestic violence order.   In case you’re wondering, these are not all men.  In fact it’s almost a 50/50 split of men and woman.  I have seen people as young at 14 years right up to their 60’s.  Unfortunately, due to poor health status few aboriginals live past their 60’s.

Everyone I have seen (young and old) have a poor health status.  It’s not uncommon for me to see people in their 20’s who have rheumatic heart disease, Arial fibrillation and whom have already suffered their first heart attack. They may be partly deaf from untreated otitis media in childhood. They also smoke gunga  (cannabis), cigarettes and often sniff petrol especially if they don’t have access to grog.  These people tend to be pulled out of school at an early age to look after their younger siblings so are often not very illiterate. Most of the people I see under 40 have been treated in the previous two years for all the following STI’s: Gonorrhoea, Chlamydia, Syphilis and Trichomoniasis (fortunately HIV hasn’t made its way into Aboriginal communities as yet).  Most people over 35 years whom I see have diabetics, kidney disease, latent TB, hypertension & heart disease.  Most men have scars all over their bodies from tribal fighting, sorry business*, or domestic violence incidents.

I tend to be patching up lacerations and doing a lot of neurological observations on prisoners with head wounds from falling over when drunk or from being assaulted.  It’s not uncommon for a man to punch his ‘Mrs’ and for her then to pick up a stick or chair and launch it at his head.  Also punch wounds on hands and wrists and punch injuries around the eye feature often. There are also the odd injury, abrasion that occurs during apprehension which needs patching up.

I see quite a few people who say they have chest pain or try self harming or fake seizures when intoxicated as a way to get to ED where the police will then release them (those in Protective Custody) into the care of the hospital and then they abscond before being seen.  So there are a lot of close observations to do on people in custody, and mental health assessments to do on people before they are released from custody once sober.

But the thing that is the most frustrating are the people who come through with acute infections that don’t care until they are in the watch house where they use it as a means of getting to hospital to escape.  People have infected ulcers that they have clearly had for ages but don’t care.  I give out dressings, saline and gauze to people to take to do their own dressing, as I know they won’t go to the clinics or hospital.

I have seen a few woman who are intoxicated and pregnant who have had no prenatal care because they don’t care.  I see people with fractures who I arrange to get x-rays but they don’t present.  Any follow up is really ‘hit and miss’ as people just don’t go to appointments and they rarely take their kids to appointments either.  The Community Nurses, ED Manager and NGO’s all say they face the same issues with people just not attending appointments, self discharging, not taking their medications, or just not caring about their or their childrens health.  So it’s not just the demographic I see, it’s an epic problem for the aboriginal population here as a whole. They live for the day only.

The other week I saw a young girl at the Watch House who was not much older than my own son.  She was too angry and enraged to talk to; self harming, swearing and just raging like I have never seen a child rage before.  She was arrested for aggravated assault, was also heavily intoxicated and referred to herself in language I don't want to repeat.  Her medical history showed as a baby, ‘failure to thrive’, later, partly deaf from untreated otitis media.  Right through to first being treated for STI’s at 11 years; being raped my all her father’s* and beaten regularly since.  She has also served time at the Juvenile Detention Facility a few times already.  So, what is her future?  It’s not ok in NT law to remove people from their Communities but for her, that community is not protecting her and, her story is sadly not uncommon of the young people I see.  She will again be another youth suicide before much longer.

So yeah, mainly it’s heartbreaking stuff I see.  I do often get to see the same people over and over again coming through Protective Custody, as is the nature of addiction, which is nice in one way as I get to know them, but largely it’s just very sad.
It’s incredibly hard for police when often such incidents go to Court and nothing meaningful can be done to improve things as violence is often referred to as ‘culture’.  It was not unusual in the past for aboriginal men to take (and I mean, take) more than one wife, the youngest one often being 11 or 12 years old.  While this is not legal in our Courts, it still does happen.  So where does culture begin and end in a civilised society?  It seems we have gone from the stolen generation too far the other way..... handing over children to communities of people who are destroying them.

*       Sorry business refers to the ceremony around death and dying often in the form of cutting or scarring (self harm) or payback.  Aboriginal culture is about ‘balance’. Therefore, when someone dies or there is some other ‘issue’ then payback or penance must happen.  This is also true with a suicide. The community looks to blame a person and that person gets the ‘sorry business’ for that death.

*        Father in aboriginal communities is your actual father and all the brothers of your father (aka, your uncles) as well as any stepfathers and their brothers.  All of these fathers children are therefore, called your brothers and sisters too (aka your cousins are called your bro & sis).

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