Source : Perth Now news
A judge is due to hear allegations that thousands of music festival attendees were “traumatised” by unlawful and invasive strip searches over several years.
The class action hearing is scheduled to begin on Monday into tens of thousands of NSW Police drug searches at festivals between 2016 and 2022.
Lawyers allege the searches became routine practice and were regularly unlawful.
“For decades, people have been humiliated, intimidated, and often left traumatised by these experiences, with police officers abusing their powers,” Redfern Legal Centre’s Sam Lee said in a statement.
“This class action is about securing justice for those individuals and ending these invasive and unlawful practices.”
NSW Police in March admitted unlawfully searching the lead applicant in the case but does not accept fault for thousands of other searches.
Anyone stopped and strip-searched by police on festival grounds was deemed an eligible group member for the class action, regardless of whether police found drugs on them.
The firms sent out 100,000 notices to festival ticket holders from the six-year period, informing them of the class action and how to register their interest if affected, or opt out of the claim.
More than three thousand have registered their interest.
The NSW Supreme Court civil trial is expected to run for four weeks.
Police strip searches have been in focus since 2019 when a woman tearfully admitted to a coroner she no longer attended festivals due to her treatment by officers.
The young woman raised her case during a major inquest into drug-related deaths at music festivals.
She said she repeatedly told a police officer she didn’t have drugs on her before the officer responded: “If you don’t tell me where the drugs are, I’m going to make this nice and slow.”
“She (the cop) opened the door while I was still naked … and made me stand there for a bit,” she told the inquest in 2019.
A review released in 2023 revealed many police conducting strip searches at music festivals did not have specialist training and kept inadequate records.
Fewer than half of NSW officers who carried out strip searches at five music festivals in 2021 and 2022 completed specialist training, the police watchdog found.
NSW Police acknowledged the deficiencies flagged by the audit but blamed a change in organisational priorities during 2021 and 2022 due to COVID-19 public health orders and restrictions.
