“Well the whole clip was inspired by myself and my husband getting arrested,” she begins the long and sordid tale, “we were out in Chapel St one night, we had a music industry meeting. We’d had barely anything to drink, I was driving. I was there with the band and some other friends. We were walking back to our car and the police drove past us, but then they came back around and they approached my bandmate Matt, our other guitarist, and they said, ‘Empty your pockets, we want to search you’, and I went up to them and said, ‘Hang on a minute, you can’t just approach us for no reason and expect him to empty his pockets. He’s with me, we’re leaving, what’s the reason for you approaching us?’ Because we had done nothing to warrant their attention.
“The guy couldn’t give me a reason, or refused to give me a reason, we just had to blindly do whatever he said. I am a believer that anyone can write a rule. Some people maintain a certain level of authority where their rule happens to be the go, and other people’s rules are insignificant. But these sort of issues became very apparent in my life at that time. So I decided that just because I was born, doesn’t mean I had to agree to this person’s rules, and I don’t care that they’re wearing a police uniform. I know that I haven’t done anything wrong as an educated citizen, and I don’t need to be held captive. And my bandmate doesn’t need to be subjected to humiliation without a reason. So I stepped in and refused that they search my bandmate for no reason.
“So anyway, the situation escalated in that the police officer in Chapel St called a SWAT team to come and intimidate me, and they all rocked up, about four cop cars, and they were all wearing SWAT team bulletproof vests. And I rang my friend who’s a police officer and said, ‘What’s my rights here?’, and he told me that they need to give me a reason, he said, ‘Ask for a reason’. So I asked for a reason, and then they arrested me, put me in the paddy wagon, and took me back to the Chapel St police station, where all my belongings were searched.
“So my husband said, ‘You can’t take my wife!’, so they arrested him as well, and they took him back and charged him, and put him in the lockup for four or five hours for being found drunk in a public place. He’d probably had four beers over five hours. So he wasn’t actually drunk, but the police officers’ law is that if they deem, by their opinion, that you’re drunk, without any actual proof then you are.
“So he was in lockup all night. I spoke to the superintendent at the police station, I stated my case that I was sober, that I didn’t believe the police officer had any reason to have us there. They let me go, but they’d locked my husband up.
“He got a fine for being drunk in a public place, which was $500, which was untrue. And then six months later, on ANZAC Day, this cop rocks up on my doorstep in plain clothes, by himself on a public holiday and gave me a court summons, for two very minor fines, like not producing my ID, so I had to go to court.
“We looked into it, we had all these glowing references. My solicitor advised me not to state my claim in court about how the police were acting wrongfully and to say that I was sorry, to get out of the case that way…so basically we walked away with all these bullshit fines, a whole lot of time wasted fighting a fine and all this stuff which was the policeman’s way of saying, ‘We have all the power and you have none.’
“I strongly disagreed with that whole thing, which inspired me to make the film clip!”
The irony of it all was that the band were actually working for a charity at the time, organising a bunch of concerts around Australia to raise money and awareness for anti sex slavery. It’s a sad story, but one which will only serve to make the band and their resolve stronger.
BY ROD WHITFIELD
Disclaimer: Beat Magazine doesn’t endorse the opinions stated in the above piece, nor have we had the opportunity to offer a right of reply.
