Angus Thompson reports for the Sydney Morning Herald
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) has confirmed it will investigate the 2019 incident at the music festival near Byron Bay, on the NSW North Coast, and scrutinise the practice of strip-searching more generally during a three-day public hearing next month.
A NSW Police spokesperson said he was unaware at this stage whether or not Police Commission Mick Fuller would be giving evidence before the inquiry.
Police can only carry out field strip-searches if the urgency and seriousness of the situation requires it and, in the case, of minors, only if a parent or guardian is present, unless an immediate search is necessary to protect the person or prevent the destruction of evidence.
NSW Police data obtained by the Redfern Legal Centre this year showed almost 300 children were strip-searched in the field over a two-year period between the financial years 2016-17 and 2017-18, with the youngest person subjected to the procedure being 10 years old.
The hearing announcement comes two days after the closing of evidence in the coronial inquest into six drug-related deaths at NSW music festivals between December 2017 and January 2019.
A 28-year-old woman, whose identity was protected by a court order, gave evidence that a female police officer threatened to make a strip-search “nice and slow” at a Sydney music festival.
After being questioned by Greens MP David Shoebridge about the woman’s evidence, Mr Fuller stated that it was an “absolute disgrace” that he be quizzed over the testimony of someone “hidden behind the veil of anonymity”.
Mr Fuller’s comments moved his lawyers to “correct the record” as the court heard his legal team not only had the woman’s name but her clean criminal history.
Read the full article here (Sydney Morning Herald, 26 September 2019)
