Aborigines, who make up 2 per cent of the general population, make up 20 per cent of the prison population. They are half as likely to have finished high school as white kids. Around half are unemployed.
In Redfern, a march took place yesterday, the day of Hickey's funeral. It passed by a police station barricaded against a reprise of the riot.
The local police grumbled at taunts that they are racist and do the bidding of the white majority. Of particular offense to police officers is a claim by Lionel Quartermaine, the acting head of the government-funded Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) that relations between police and blacks have not improved in 50 years.
ATSIC receives more than A$1 billion (US$750 million) a year in funding for programs to address Aboriginal disadvantage in health, education and welfare.
"They've always used the police as a tool to do their dirty work," Quartermaine said of successive Australian governments. "The Aboriginal community has always been treated as a second class citizen and that only creates the bad
relationship."
Inspector Paul Huxtable, the head of the Redfern branch of the Police Association, said it was imperative that the area did not degenerate into a no-go zone for the police.
"The only thing holding this joint together is us," Huxtable said. "We are the difference between total anarchy and chaos and some hope of social functionality."
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