NSW Police scrap controversial search targets after quota rise during pandemic

NSW Police have scrapped their controversial strategy of setting targets for carrying out personal searches and move-on powers, but not before increasing quotas during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The use of numerical goals to monitor performance across police regions and commands has been criticised by legal bodies and civil libertarians as enabling the targeting of vulnerable groups, with the state’s former top prosecutor Nicholas Cowdery labelling the strategy as a distortion of law enforcement.

Mr Cowdery, an adjunct professor of law at Sydney University and a previous director of Public Prosecutions in NSW, welcomed the ditching of search and move-on targets – rebadged “community safety indicators” (CSI) by police last year – saying they could have “serious consequences for innocent citizens”.

“Police would be encouraged to put the worst construction on conduct that they observe to give them justification to conduct searches,” he said, adding a miscarriage of appropriate discretion could be severe for young and vulnerable people, particularly Indigenous Australians.

Police had 'no idea' about strip search laws, watchdog finds

According to NSW Police, the targets were removed for the 2021-22 financial year in line with the commissioner’s priorities for “prevention-focused policing”. No further comment was provided.

NSW Police previously faced heightened scrutiny over the legality of its strip-searching practices, including a public inquiry into several incidents of children being subjected to the procedure at music festivals.

A police spokesperson said the use of police powers, including search powers, were required to be done in accordance with the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2002.

Police increased their targets for carrying out personal searches and move-on powers during the pandemic while their use of those tactics fell markedly through the same period.

Officers had quotas to conduct more than 240,000 personal searches, issue nearly 110,000 move-on directions and detect 305,000 crimes in 2020-21, despite a fall in crime rates across most categories between 2019 and 2021.

Law enforcement persisted in pursuing quotas across a number of crimes during the pandemic, which saw historically low rates in some categories, with many other crimes remaining stable.

The police spokesperson said the indicators were an important assessment tool within COMPASS, the digital system that records incidents and targets, as it provided a three-year average of actual incident statistics across priority categories, to compare performance and identify trends.

“Where there are disparities – whether increased or decreased in comparison to a CSI – it is expected a commander would provide rationale and comparison of the pandemic impact when addressing and reporting on crime results. There is no punitive action in relation to CSIs,” the spokesperson said.

Overall search quotas were increased 1.8 per cent in the 2020-21 financial year, compared to 2019-20, but quotas for some parts of the state went up by far more.

Police were given targets to conduct 21 per cent more personal searches in Nepean in 2020-21 compared to 2019-20, while incidents fell by 24 per cent.

Greens MLC David Shoebridge said increasing targets for “invasive” personal searches by up to 21 per cent during a pandemic “shows how wrong these quotas are.”

“There is hope that with a new commissioner there will be a turn away from the very idea of policing to quotas,” Mr Shoebridge said.

The police spokesperson said preventative policing strategies, along with community engagement, played a significant role in the reduction of crime.

Search targets for Wollongong and Liverpool also increased by more than 15 per cent, while targets for Mount Druitt, Eastern Beaches and Campsie went up by more than 10 per cent. The incidents for those commands fell by between 6 and 20 per cent.

In Liverpool, targets for move-on directions - designed to order people out of public spaces - increased by 35 per cent despite their use decreasing by 22 per cent over the two financial years.

In Leichhardt, move-on targets increased by 21 per cent despite their use dropping by 31 per cent, and in Riverstone, in Sydney’s north-west, the target increased 20 per cent while the incidents dropped by double that.

While the overall target for detecting crimes fell by about 1.8 per cent between 2019-20 and 2020-21 and targets for most individual crime categories fell or stayed the same, the target for drug detection (supply) increased by 11 per cent, from a total of 6364 detections across the state in 2019-20 to 9959 in 2020-21.

The overall incidents of drug detection fell by 1.5 per cent during that period.

The police spokesperson said despite the impact of COVID-19 restrictions on drug markets in the latter half of 2019–20, a number of records were set, including 38.5 tonnes of illicit drugs seized nationally.

“We make no apology for targeting those who participate in, or direct the activities of, criminal groups that impact on the safety of people in NSW,” the spokesperson said.

Asked about the effects of the pandemic on crime trends during a parliamentary hearing in September, retiring NSW Police commissioner Mick Fuller said, overall, “crime is extremely low or extremely stable”.

“Property crime is certainly some of the lowest that we have seen in modern history. It sort-of has been fascinating to watch different factors, such as federal government injections of money into the economy and the movement of people,” Mr Fuller said during budget estimates.

Aboriginal Legal Service NSW and ACT acting Chief Executive Nadine Miles said setting targets “only incentivises police to take a heavy-handed approach and intervene in situations where their involvement may not be necessary”.

The internal data, obtained from NSW Police via freedom-of-information laws, also shows Newcastle City, Port Stephens-Hunter, Mid North Coast, New England, Chifley, and Central West districts all recorded an increase of more than 100 non-domestic violence-related assaults in 2021 compared to 2020, but all their targets for combating this crime were lowered.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/nsw-police-scrap-controversial-search-targets-after-quota-rise-during-pandemic-20220103-p59lhj.html