Over the last year we have all been shocked at the tactics of Donald Trump's ICE Agents, rounding up and detaining thousands of men, women and children. Surely that couldn't happen here?

But there is footage circulating from a Perth train that appears to show a 13-year-old Aboriginal girl being pinned and forced into a seat by an adult male police officer who was off duty and out of uniform. It has been reported that the girl says she was injured as a consequence of the police action. WA police say she was charged with common assault for allegedly assaulting the officer and that they are now reviewing CCTV and conducting an internal investigation.

We have not seen the CCTV footage or heard the officer's full account, and the officer involved has not been charged or convicted of wrongdoing, but what the public has seen is disturbing enough to demand more than an internal review. It requires an independent inquiry and a serious reckoning with how police use force against children.

On any view, the footage appears to show an adult male officer using a very high level of force against a child. That fact may not determine the legal outcome. But it does sharpen the moral and institutional questions. In any confrontation between an adult police officer and a 13-year-old girl, the power imbalance is obvious. Add the officer's authority, his physical size, her age, and the confined space of a crowded train carriage, and that imbalance becomes impossible to ignore.

Police are entrusted with the powers to use physical force and to assault members of the public because they are supposed to exercise them lawfully, proportionately and with judgment. They are meant to calm a situation, not intensify it. They are meant to understand that a child is more vulnerable, more impulsive, more easily frightened and more likely to react emotionally.

For many First Nations children, encounters with police can also carry an added layer of fear and distress because of their communities' long and painful history of harmful interactions with law enforcement. This is especially true in Western Australia. That is another reason why restraint matters most when First Nations children are involved.

The seriousness of the incident has also been underscored by senior child advocates. The national commissioner for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children and young people, Sue-Anne Hunter, described the footage as "deeply disturbing and unsettling to watch", condemned the use of what she called "unreasonable force", and called for an immediate investigation. WA's commissioner for children and young people, Jacqueline McGowan-Jones, said in her opinion the officer used "excessive force" and that there were many other ways the girl could have been restrained.

These are measured assessments from people with expertise, looking objectively at the situation.

Aboriginal families are unlikely to see this incident in isolation. Many will view it through a long and painful history in which First Nations children have too often been treated as risks to be controlled rather than children to be protected. They will see it against a background of repeated warnings about over-policing, racial bias and the over policing of young Aboriginal people.

That concern does not arise from this incident alone. Across the country, First Nations families continue to demand answers and accountability in cases involving police use of force, including incidents that have led to a death. It would be inappropriate to comment on the merits of those cases before those processes run their course. But their existence is itself part of the broader context in which many Aboriginal families experience policing, not as protection, but as risk.

De-escalation is not weakness. It is the core test of professional policing. It means using time, distance, communication and calm authority before force. It means understanding that gaining physical control is not the same thing as policing well. It means recognising that a child in distress, panic, fear or anger needs an adult capable of reducing harm, not intensifying it.

None of this requires a rush to condemn the officer before all the evidence is known. But nor does caution justify silence. What this incident already reveals is the urgent need to confront an ongoing policing culture in which force can appear too quickly, especially when the person on the receiving end is young, Aboriginal and vulnerable.

There should be an independent inquiry into this incident, not simply an internal process. The CCTV and all witness accounts should be examined. The use of force should be scrutinised. The decision-making should be tested. The training should be questioned.

The response should not end there. This incident also calls for stronger guardrails around the use of force on children, real investment in de-escalation training, and accountability that is visible rather than buried.

If the full evidence paints a more complex picture, that should be acknowledged. But a fuller account will not erase what the public has already seen. A decent society should not have to keep watching children being subjected to violent force before it acts on the need for change.

Children need adults to calm a crisis, not intensify it. They need police who understand that authority is not proved by overpowering the vulnerable. It is proved by protecting them.

Surely a decent society can provide that.

George Newhouse is the chief executive and director of the National Justice Project.

Disclosure: George Newhouse AM of the National Justice Project acts for First Nations families in matters concerning police accountability, including matters that remain subject to ongoing legal processes.