Day family win the Tim McCoy human rights award

The children of Tanya Day – Belinda, Warren, Apryl and Kimberly – have been awarded the Tim McCoy Award for their outstanding achievement in advocacy of human rights and justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in Victoria.

Their mum – Tanya Day – was a proud Yorta Yorta mother, grandmother, aunty and advocate.

In 2017, Tanya fell asleep on a V/Line train on her way to Melbourne. Despite causing no disturbance, she was woken and then arrested for being drunk in a public place. At the time Tanya was arrested, Aboriginal women were at least 10 times more likely to be targeted by police for being drunk in public, when compared to non-Indigenous women.

While in police custody, Tanya fell and hit her head on the wall of the police cell. The police officers responsible for Tanya’s care failed to follow procedure and properly check on her wellbeing, leaving Tanya injured on the cell floor for over three hours. When the police officers finally called Ambulance Victoria, they provided an inaccurate description of Tanya’s injuries and fall. Tanya later died from a brain haemorrhage. She was only 55 years old.

Almost 30 years ago, the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody recommended that Governments across Australia abolish the offence of public drunkenness because it disproportionately targets Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Two state Governments are yet to act on this recommendation – Victoria and Queensland.

Advocacy

Since their mum’s death, the Day family have powerfully and tirelessly advocated for the Victorian Government to act on the recommendations the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody and abolish the offence of public drunkenness.

The family prepared and distributed an online and hard copy petition demanding that the Victorian Government change Victoria’s destructive public drunkenness laws. Together, those petitions have collected almost 15,000 signatures.

As a result of the Day family’s advocacy, on the eve of the inquest into Tanya’s death commencing, the Victorian Government announced that it will abolish the offence of public drunkenness and replace it with an Aboriginal-led, public health response.

The Day family’s advocacy has not stopped there. The inquest into Tanya’s death heard final arguments in November 2019, with the Day family demanding that the Coroner consider the role that systemic racism played in the death of their mum. The family have also called for an end to police investigating police, and have continued to demand justice and accountability at each and every turn of the process.

The Day family said: 

“We know that our mum died in custody because police targeted her for being drunk in public and then failed to properly care for her after they locked her up. We know that racism was a cause of our mum’s death. Both individual police officers and Victoria Police as a whole must be held to account. Without accountability, more Aboriginal people will die in custody.”

The Coroner is expected to release her findings early in 2020.