MP blasts police - Sydney

New South Wales Greens MP David Shoebridge has blasted the NSW police over it's performance (or lack of it) at the Sydney Mardi Gras this year. He raises the concerns that many have felt in Sydney in recent years at the shear numbers of police that turn up at events, not only the Mardi Gras. 

Crime’s decreased in recent years, but the police’s “in your face” tactics on Oxford Street and during Mardi Gras have increased – and that’s agitating the community, suggests a member of NSW Legislative Council. 

We’ve also ended up with an ineffective a ‘police-investigating-police’ complaints system among a force keen to quickly deny any wrongdoing before investigations have started, Green MLC David Shoebridge (pictured) suggests. 

Shoebridge believes the New South Wales Police Force’s presence in large numbers at Mardi Gras this year resulted in searches and arrests that were not warranted, despite strong laws limiting police’s right to search someone. 

He blames successive state governments for wanting to appear tough on crime. But with a reduction in crime and no reduction to the police force, it flows that there is now over-policing, he says. 

“The shear number of police at major events actually creates an air of tension,” he tells Same Same. He claims that of all the police officers on duty in NSW, one in three were working at Mardi Gras this year, with the “bulk of arrests coming from people having interactions with police, with them being charged with the trifecta of resist arrest, assault police and offensive language.” more

Exactly right. It's happened to me in the past, although not at Mardi Gras. If not for the cops being there so aggressive and over the top, people wouldn't get charged with anything. Their presence and arrogance incites reactions from the public, then they get charged with the trifecta. As the magistrate told those involved when it all got to court, they need to have thicker skins.

I know that on occasion in Sydney we may very well require such huge numbers of police, like the other month when the Muslims started going ape shit about some picture put out on the other side of the world. Yes, they were bent on violence some of them, certainly by the pictures that came out soon after the event, and deserved to have a strong police reaction to that violence. 

But when you're talking about an event such as Mardi Gras, what possible danger is there that requires 1,000 fuckin police there? The crowds in years past have always been very well behaved. Indeed the whole theme of the parade is about love and inclusion. WTF do we need the bloody riot police there for?

BTW, the water canon bought a few years back by police commissioner Scipione, to my knowledge has never been used once.