WA Police officer Constable Lachlan Costello allegations, Digi Mart USA News (Western Australia): A Western Australia Police officer nicknamed ‘Tiny’ for his solid build is facing calls to be “stood down immediately” over allegations that he held his knee on the back of an Aboriginal boy for so long the boy begged for his life. The officer, Constable Lachlan Costello of Geraldton, is also alleged to have worn a badge reading “FOLD C–TS” on his uniform during a separate 2024 arrest of a 16-year-old Aboriginal teenager, with both incidents allegedly captured on body-worn footage.
The allegations were detailed by Aboriginal Legal Service of WA chief executive Peter Collins during a parliamentary committee hearing in May, while he was giving evidence on ways to modernise the Corruption and Crime Commission Act. Describing the first incident, which allegedly occurred early last year, Collins told the inquiry the boy was running away from the officer, then stopped, lowered to the ground and placed both hands behind his back.
“When the officer reaches the boy, he drives his knee into his back. The force of the impact is audible … and causes the boy to cry out in pain.
The officer then uses his knee to pin the boy to the ground, pressing his weight into his back for about half a minute,” Collins told the committee. He said that while the officer was still allegedly on the boy’s back, the boy said: “Tiny, you’re going to kill me bro.
I can’t breathe, Tiny. Please let up.
I love my family, Tiny. Please … please, I love my mum, man.” The boy repeated that he thought he was going to die.
In relation to the alleged badge incident in 2024, the same officer was shown on another officer’s body-worn footage turning off his camera while talking to the boy and telling him he would be given bail if he spoke to them. Stills from that footage were published by the ABC on Tuesday after being obtained through a freedom of information request.
Collins told the committee the officer was recorded saying the boy was “singing” because “he’s shit scared.”
Collins, who has been with the ALS for almost 30 years, described the incident as “very close to the worst thing I have ever seen.” “It is despicable. It is totally inappropriate, and it speaks of a willingness to engage in violence, in this instance, against Aboriginal children,” he said.
He told the committee he had complained directly to WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch late last year about the badge but had received no response six months later, and that a separate complaint about the knee-press incident also “went nowhere.”
WAtoday said it had contacted WA Police for comment from Costello and on both matters. A police spokesperson told the ABC the badge matter was an “isolated incident” that had been identified by a supervisor and the badge removed before the officer attended his next incident.
The spokesperson said the officer engaged with local youths through sport, where the term on the badge was common, but that this did not excuse the conduct and that the officer was “appropriately sanctioned and educated.”
WA Greens leader Brad Pettitt described the allegations as “unthinkable.” “A child pleading he ‘can’t breathe’, terrified an officer is about to kill him, should be unthinkable in Western Australia,” he said. Pettitt said the incidents could not be separated from broader concerns about systemic racism and the treatment of Aboriginal children in the state, noting that First Nations children in WA are locked up at 25 times the rate of non-Indigenous children.
He said both incidents raised “serious questions” about what WA Police tolerated and called for immediate action.
“Any public servant wearing such a badge should be stood down immediately and investigated, a police officer with the power to detain and use force,” Pettitt said.
