Victoria Police has settled a civil case over alleged racial profiling of African-Australian men.
A group of young men claimed that between 2005 and 2009 they were stopped indiscriminately by police, searched, and verbally and physically abused because they were of African origin.
The parties have come to an agreement in the Federal Court saying the allegations should be addressed away from the adversarial court environment.
The men at the centre of the case were teenagers living in and around public housing in the Melbourne suburbs Flemington and North Melbourne when they claimed racial harassment by police.
Maki Issa is one of the men celebrating the settlement of the court case.
"It comes down to stereotyping. They see three or four African guys there and automatically assume hat these are gangsters, or they're in a gang. So what we're trying to work on is for them to understand that these are a group of kids who live in the (Housing) Commission flats who all share one little park. They're obviously going to be in big groups all the time, [so] understand that that's their backyard."
Victoria Police denied during the case that they had engaged in racial profiling, but now has released a statement acknowledging that any policing involving racial discrimination is unacceptable.
Police have agreed to examine the way they stop, search and question people, and will invite public comment on their policies.
Victoria Police has also agreed to review its cross-cultural training, after receiving complaints about how appropriate it is for police officers on the streets.
The Flemington Kensington Legal Centre lodged the original discrimination complaint against police in the courts.
Tamar Hopkins, a lawyer at the community centre, says there are sound reasons for police to re-think how they treat African youths.
"One of the extraordinary things that's come out of this settlement is the release of a whole lot of data that has been analysed by some experts about what's actually happening in the Flemington and Kensington and North Melbourne areas. And contrary to what's been released in the media to this point, that data has revealed that African people in the Flemington and Kensington area are about 2.5 times more likely to be stopped than white people, or non-African people, and furthermore that Africans are in fact less likely to commit criminal offences than other populations."
Another of the men who brought the case against the police, Daniel Haile-Michael, says the recognition of a level of racism among police has been important.
But he says the issue of racial profiling is something that affects everybody in the Australian community.
"It could be the mother who looks at her child every time there's an African young guy who gets on the tram because of racial profiling that exists not just in Victoria Police but any community in general. So this is a really topical subject that's actually becoming more addressed and it's going to take all Australians and the media and a huge community support to get these changes to happen. And I think we're heading in the right direction."
Outside the court, Peter Seidel of law firm Arnold Bloch Liebler, paid tribute to the young men who brought the case.
"It's an extraordinary moment particularly as the men here have shown such braveness and courage in seeing this struggle through over the last seven years. There were many times when they could have given up and they didn't. They saw this case through, they stood tough and it's an incredible gift that they've given to the public through this exposure of various processes."
