‘We’re hog-tying’: Gippsland police accused of repeat misconduct after one victim suffers brain damage

Police officers across Gippsland have been repeatedly accused of using excessive force and unlawfully deploying tasers or capsicum spray, resulting in legal claims against the force and the recent conviction of an officer.

Brodie Holt sustained permanent brain damage after an arrest outside a Traralgon hotel in 2022, with his lawyer saying the case raises broader concerns about alleged police misconduct in rural and regional towns across south-eastern Victoria.

An investigation by The Age has uncovered five incidents – including two on the same night involving the same officer – through costly civil actions being pursued by victims in court.

Only two of the incidents were subject to investigation by the force’s professional standards unit – officers were cleared in one case, and the other remains ongoing.

Victoria Police said they had not investigated three further incidents because they had not received any complaints, despite the civil claims providing details of the excessive force allegations in two of the cases.

“We do not shy away from taking action as necessary to uphold community trust and confidence in our organisation,” the spokesperson said.

Revelations of the mounting civil claims also come a month after a Gippsland police officer was convicted on assault charges after tasering a man nine times in under 46 seconds while on duty in Warragul.

The scale of the alleged misconduct has fuelled doubts about the capacity of the state’s corruption watchdog to properly investigate hundreds of complaints from the region each year.

Between July 2018 and December 2024, the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission received 2365 allegations of misconduct and corruption against police in the Morwell and Bairnsdale regions, but just 0.2 per cent were investigated. Out of the 300 misuse-of-force complaints, three were investigated. Each complaint can contain multiple allegations.

In the same time, the substantially larger Wangaratta and Goulburn Valley regions recorded 2157 complaints – 229 of which were force complaints. None were investigated by IBAC, which has a higher threshold for investigating than Victoria Police.

Holt, 27, last month received a massive legal settlement from the state government, after his lawyers estimated that his medical expenses, loss of earnings and future care would cost almost $14 million.

The young tradie was verbally abused and repeatedly assaulted by several officers trying to find who had thrown a beer can at them. The Supreme Court statement of claim alleges an officer smashed Holt’s head against a brick wall before he was tackled to the ground while handcuffed, leading to his head smacking the concrete pavement.

The arresting officers were also accused of lying to paramedics when they claimed Holt had “fallen to the ground and knocked himself out”.

Holt’s mother and litigation guardian, Kellie, finds it difficult to put into words the life-altering impact her son’s injuries have had.

“For me, that’s the night I lost my son,” she told The Age. “He’s just not him any more.”

Kellie said Brodie’s traumatic brain injury has stripped away his independence, leaving him unable to work, drive, or navigate daily life without assistance.

“He hates that he’s different. He just can’t explain how, but he knows he’s different,” Kellie said.

The police officer who arrived at her doorstep hours after Brodie was rushed to hospital said her son had suffered an “intoxicated fall”.

It took months of fighting for Kellie to learn what really happened to her son that night.

“I was like, ‘Nah, that doesn’t seem right’,” she said.

Despite Brodie’s injuries, an internal investigation completed in March 2023 found no evidence that police assaulted him and “no grounds for the complaints whatsoever”.

“What Brodie wants, and what I want too, is justice. I want someone held accountable. But I know that’s not going to happen,” Kellie said.

The cases of Traralgon men Jy Smith-Goode and Darryl Ivory occurred within hours of each other and with the same police officer on Australia Day in 2023.

Indigenous man Smith-Goode was Tasered on his bare bottom, doused in the face with capsicum spray and “hog-tied” with three sets of handcuffs, despite initially complying with police, according to court documents.

The then-23-year-old was suffering a mental health episode while walking down a highway and wearing only a towel around his waist, when he was confronted by two officers and told he was breaching his bail conditions.

According to an amended statement of claim filed with the Supreme Court, one officer allegedly placed Smith-Goode in a “chokehold headlock”, before he was OC-sprayed by another.

The 23-year-old urinated involuntarily and cried out for help as officers struggled to handcuff him, before “one of the police officers tasered the plaintiff into the left side of the plaintiff’s bare buttocks.”

Senior Constable Steven Pope is then accused of saying: “Yep, we’re hog-tying”.

“One or more of the police officers used a third set of handcuffs to bind the plaintiff’s wrists to his ankles behind his back in a ‘hog-tie’ position, while the plaintiff yelled and pleaded for help,” the statement of claim alleges.

Pope has been named in three statements of claim alleging excessive force – Holt, Smith-Goode and Ivory.

Smith-Goode’s lawyers will pursue exemplary damages, alleging that Pope and another officer were “dishonest and deliberately misleading” when they completed a Use of Force form following the incident.

It is alleged the two officers exaggerated the conduct of Smith-Goode, while failing to mention that he had been hog-tied or placed in a chokehold.

“What Brodie wants, and what I want too, is justice. I want someone held accountable.”

Brodie’s mother, Kellie Holt

Victoria Police are yet to file a defence in the matter, and a spokesperson declined to answer questions about the case.

Ivory recently settled a civil claim against the force, after a breath test allegedly turned violent – hours before Smith-Goode’s arrest.

The 49-year-old was argumentative and refused to get off his scooter to attend the police station when “Pope said words to the effect of ‘I will quite happily taser you because I’m not f—ing around mate’,” County Court documents claim.

Pope is accused of then deploying OC spray against Ivory.

The financial settlement was agreed to by Victoria Police without admission of liability and was conditional on Ivory agreeing to a non-disclosure agreement.

Lawyer Jeremy King, from Robinson Gill, said the state’s corruption taskforce was unable to cope with a surge in police misconduct across regional Victoria, particularly Gippsland.

“There are clear and undeniable issues with police in the Gippsland region. We have seen a significant number of serious cases and complaints of police brutality from this region over the last few years,” King told The Age.

He said it was an example of the system failing regional communities.

“IBAC should have stepped up for our regional community and given them a way to call out misconduct without fear of local reprisals. The sad fact is that they haven’t. They take less than one per cent of complaints made to them and bounce the rest back to Vic Pol,” he said.

In the most recent civil case, Peter Walker alleges he was assaulted by two officers in Moe following a dispute with a relative over the storage of a car in March 2025.

The officers pointed a Taser at Walker during the arrest, despite him being compliant and repeatedly stating he suffered from a permanent impairment.

Walker was detained and charged with assaulting police and resisting arrest, but a magistrate dismissed the case after ruling officers had no power to arrest or detain him.

Last month, this masthead revealed senior constable Aaron Bowen had become the first Victorian police officer to be charged over deployment of a Taser, found guilty of 10 assault charges while arresting a man at his Warragul home in May 2024.

Body camera footage captured Bowen dousing the man in the face with capsicum spray and using a Taser nine times in 46 seconds.

Bowen was convicted and fined $11,000 by the court and has been suspended without pay as Victoria Police lead an internal investigation into his conduct.

The victim’s lawyer, Meliza Ludowkye, said the incident left her client suffering a “deep distrust” of police after the violent arrest, which he was now pursuing as a civil claim in the Supreme Court.

“He is seeking formal acknowledgement of what occurred and fair compensation for the harm he has suffered.”

In 2010, Gippsland became one of the first regions in the state to equip some of its officers with stun guns. Until then, Tasers were only issued to police within the force’s elite units.

By 2014, the weapons had been rolled out to almost all frontline officers in regional Victoria – a decision criticised at the time by civil liberties groups and legal advocates.

Research from 2024 by Dr Tamar Hopkins found that Aboriginal people represented 15.4 per cent of the cases where police reported using a taser in East Gippsland, but only accounted for 3.5 per cent of the population.

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