This is a video about what happens if you were called by police to go down to the police station when they suspect that you’ve committed an offence.
Now the first thing that will occur when you get there is that police will say that you’re under arrest.
Now that doesn’t mean that they’ll put handcuffs on you, drag you in.
It simply means that they formally say that you are under arrest, which triggers certain rights that you have and trigger certain obligations that they have.
They will caution you, they’ll say you do not have to say anything but anything that you do say can be used against you later.
So that’s the first thing that’ll happen.
They’ll say that you’re under arrest.
The second thing that will happen is you’ll be taken to the custody area.
Now you’ll be introduced to what’s the custody manager and that person will read you your part 9 rights.
Now they’re the rights that you have when you’re under arrest.
Rights include that they must either release you or charge you after four hours unless they get permission to make the time longer, that you can contact a lawyer, that you can seek medical attention if you want, and so on.
So there are a number of rights that are triggered once you are under arrest.
They call the part 9 rights.
They will take your property.
So your property will be taken from you, such as your wallet, your keys, and they’ll be processed and you’ll be given a receipt for that property, you will then be offered an interview.
Now an interview is referred to as an electronically recorded interview with a suspected person or an ERISP.
Now my advice normally is not to participate in an ERISP there because my clients often are under a lot of pressure at that stage and I don’t want them to go in front of the camera and say things that they may not mean, say things that come out of the fact that they’re under pressure and things like that.
So the normal advice would be not to participate in an ERISP.
I also advise my clients not to go in front of the camera and have their refusal recorded.
You don’t have to go in front of that video camera because sometimes when you go in front of that video camera police will try to reel you in and they do that and they do that quite often, they’ll try to reel you in to answering questions, they’ll put forward what the complaint against you is and they’ll ask despite the fact that you’ve told them that you don’t want to go ahead with an interview.
They’ll ask what you say about that.
So I advise my clients not to go in front of the video camera.
However I do advise my clients to sign a book when it’s prepared by police recording their refusal to participate in an interview.
So if you don’t participate in a recorded interview police will say “do you mind signing the book to say that you refuse”, that’s fine, you can sign that book.
After some time police will then decide whether to charge you with an offence or to release you from custody there and then.
Now if you are charged you can be fingerprinted, you will have a photo taken, and they may want to get a buccal swab, a swab from you for DNA purposes.
Now that’s one of the things that they can ask you to consent to, and my advice to clients is don’t consent to a buccal swab, that is a swap a DNA swab until you get advice from a criminal lawyer.
After this is done police will ultimately give you a court attendance notice; a CAN; and that court attendance notice will talk about what they say occurred it will record what you’re charged with, the offence that your charged with, for example assault or whatever it might be, and it will give a date of court sometime down the track.
So it may say Downing Centre Local Court on the 21st of X month, and you’ll have to of course attend court on that date.
The next thing that police will have to decide is whether they give you bail to that court date.
That is whether they allow you to walk out of the police station and promise to attend court on the next court date.
That’s called police bail if they let you out there and then.
Now the senior officer at the police station will decide whether you get police bail or not.
If you are a refused police bail then police must bring you to a court as soon as practicable.
So that the court can decide whether you’re going to be let out of custody pending your court date.
Now there’s some of the basic steps that occur when you present yourself to the police station.
Video transcription by YouTube