Samantha Lee reports in the Sydney Morning Herald
Danny Lim is a well-known figure in the inner-city suburb where I live. I know he must be nearby when the cars start honking their horns in response to his many and varied sandwich board signs. I don’t know Lim personally, but like many Sydneysiders, he has become so familiar that I feel as though I do.
The footage reminds me of another use of force in Ward Park, Surry Hills in June 2020. A young Indigenous man was leg-swept by a police officer and his head, much like Lim’s, fell hard against the concrete ground. The footage was equally disturbing to watch. In that case, the constable was charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm.
The issue that stands out the most in both cases is the level of force used in response to the situation the police officers faced.
In regards to Lim, he was in the Queen Victoria Building wearing a sandwich board sign stating, “Smile CVN’T! Why CVN’T?” In 2019, magistrate Jacqueline Milledge ruled that this same sign was “cheeky” but “not offensive”. The law, she said, was concerned with what would offend the “hypothetical reasonable person”. “It’s not someone who is thin-skinned, who is easily offended. It’s someone who can ride out some of the crudities of life.”
Read full article (24 November, 2022).
