VICTORIA Police insist individual officers should not be criminally investigated over the death in custody of Echuca woman Tanya Day, saying there is no evidence to suggest they need to be.
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But Ms Day's family argues the investigation is necessary to ensure accountability over the death and prevent others.
The 55-year-old Yorta Yorta grandmother fell and suffered a head injury while in a Castlemaine police cell after being arrested for drunkenness on a train on December 5, 2017.
She died two weeks later.
In a final written submission to an inquest into the death, Ms Day's family argued it is "possible" police committed offences which coroner Caitlin English should refer to the Department of Public Prosecutions.
They also want the coroner to acknowledge systemic racism and unconscious bias were central to Ms Day's death, because public drunkenness laws were more likely to be applied to her as an Aboriginal woman.
The family further wants the coroner to recommend police should not have the opportunity to investigate other police.
“There is no doubt in our mind that Victoria Police are responsible for our mum's death, that she died in custody because police targeted her for being Aboriginal, then ignored her and left her to die on the floor of a police cell,” Belinda Day said.
But lawyer for the chief commissioner of Victoria Police Graham Ashton, Rachel Ellyard, said the submission reflected the family's "feelings" and "deep distress" over the death.
“Those reflections ... are not evidence. They are not the material upon which Your Honour can act,” she told the court.
She said the inquest heard no evidence that an indictable offence occurred.
“The evidence isn't there. If it were, Your Honour would long since have made the referral.”
The lawyer also disregarded the suggestion that police involved in Ms Day's situation had been driven by racism.
“This case isn't what everyone feared it might have been,” she said.
“There was no inappropriate regard, consciously or unconsciously, to her Aboriginality.”
