Following a NSW coroner’s recommendation that police limit the use of search powers at music festivals to cases of suspected drug supply, Fuller claimed in an interview with the Sydney tabloid newspaper The Daily Telegraph on Monday that a reduction in the use of the controversial power could lead to increased knife crime.
Comparing NSW to London, where the use of stop and search powers and knife crime is a major law and order issue, Fuller told the Telegraph young people should have “a little bit of fear” of police and said questioning “the legitimacy of policing” had “a negative impact on public safety”.
Fuller claimed knife crime in the UK had done “through the roof” after police scaled back the use of stop and search powers in 2014 – a broader power not necessarily the same as a strip search – and “isn’t taking over Sydney” because of the use of strip-searches.
But of the more than 20,000 searches conducted by police in the period between 2015-16 and 2018-19, less than 1% were done on the basis of a suspicion the person was in possession of a knife or other weapon.
Instead the vast majority were based on the suspicion that person was in possession of illegal drugs.
The data was first published in a report commissioned by Redfern legal Centre and conducted by UNSW law academics Michael Grewcock and Vicki Sentas.
Grewcock told Guardian Australia advocates for reform of strip-search powers had never called for police not to be able to search people suspected of carrying weapons.
“The point is that this is not an argument about strip-searching for weapons. When police are strip-searching 16-year old at Splendour in the Grass in ways that are plainly quite abusive this has nothing to do with weapons,” he said.
Police aren’t looking for knives when they’re strip searching people at music festivals.”
Samantha Lee, Redfern Legal Centre’s police powers solicitor, agreed, saying advocates wanted police to target things like weapon possession.
“This is precisely what RLC is calling for, that strip searches be limited to serious offences such as weapon offences and drug supply,” she said.
Read the full article here (The Guardian Australia, 18 November 2019)
