NSW Police Minister Says He’s Cool With His “Young Children” Getting Strip-Searched
"I've got young children, and if I thought that the police felt that they were at the risk of doing something wrong, I'd want them strip-searched."
NSW Police Minister David Elliott has told cameras that he would be fine with his “young children” getting strip-searched.
“I’ve got young children, and if I thought that the police felt that they were at the risk of doing something wrong, I’d want them strip-searched,” Elliott said, in response to a new report that has criticised the NSW Police’s use of the controversial practice.
That report, exclusively published by The Guardian, has revealed that NSW police have strip-searched Australian women as young as 12.
It notes that 122 girls under the age of 18 have been strip-searched over a period of three years. Over the same time period, almost 4,000 women have been strip-searched, with young women making up about half of that number.
The practice has been under close scrutiny over the last year or so due to a ramping up of Gladys Berejiklian’s War On Festivals. Berejiklian has confused more police officers with more safety, throwing the full weight of the police force against young, vulnerable, and utterly harmless festival-goers. In turn, that has led to a spike in the presence of drug dogs, and strip-search tents.
A particularly shocking strip-search occurred at Hidden Festival in Sydney, when festival-goer Lucy Moore was allegedly separated from her friends and not properly asked for consent.
“I was taken away by another police officer and was told nothing of what was about to happen, I was never asked for my consent to be searched let alone my consent to be strip searched,” Moore wrote on Facebook.
“Not only did I see other people being searched, during my search the door was left half open and only “blocked” by the small female cop. I could easily see outside which means that attendees and the male cops outside could have easily seen in as well.”
Academics have long been criticising the acceptance of strip-searching as a mainstream practice amongst the police. After a report found that the number of strip-searches had increased twentyfold over the period of 2007 to 2019, many decried it as both useless and Draconian.