These days, spotting police officers accompanied by a sniffer dog when leaving a train station, leads Sydneysiders to hardly blink an eyelid. Though some commuters will curse under their breath about the incursion upon their civil liberties the warrantless use of drug dogs in public involves. While others will stop and take a photo of… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim On 5 October last year, NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller commenced civil proceedings in the NSW Supreme Court seeking to have serious crime prevention orders (SCP0s) imposed upon alleged Rebel motorcycle gang members Damien Charles Vella, Johnny Lee Vella, and Michael Fetui. The orders sought to restrain and prohibit… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim With the advent of smartphones, members of the public have had the ability to film officers of the law as they go about their duties. And on the occasions that citizens capture them behaving in a questionable manner, these video clips invariably end up being shared on social media… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim As Keith Saunders was walking down a street in Surry Hills on 27 February 2016, he spat in the face of a baby being pushed along in a pram by her grandmother. The man spat a sizeable amount of phlegm into the 3-month-old infants’ face, for apparently no reason…. Read more »
Seemingly, in response to rising community concerns over a lack of transparency around NSW police use of search powers, which has seen a 47 percent rise in strip search use over the four years to June 2018, the NSW Police Force last month publicly released its Person Search Manual. The Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities)… Read more »
By Amy Sarcevic and Ugur Nedim As children, many of us heard the fable about the boy who cried wolf. For most of us, the story did its job and we learned never to make false assertions, for fear of being ignored the next time we needed someone to listen. But somewhere along the way,… Read more »
Earlier this month, a man in his thirties was fatally injured in a workplace accident in Sydney. Paramedics found the man with his head caught inside a piece of machinery at a pallet factory. He is believed to have suffered major head injuries and blood loss before dying at the scene. Tragic cases like this… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim The 2006 NSW Ombudsman report into the laws regarding the use of drug detection dogs by NSW police remains the most comprehensive study into this aspect of policing that’s ever been undertaken in this state. The statutory review delved into the effectiveness of laws governing the warrantless use of… Read more »
By Paul Gregoire and Ugur Nedim “Go for it. There is nothing in here,” was the response Troy Leonard gave to Constable Geoffrey Barnes, when he asked to search the man’s car on the Sturt Highway in April 2000. Barnes had pulled Leonard over to breathalyse him and remarked that the road was notorious for… Read more »
The annual review of the local court, which deals with more than 90 per cent of criminal matters in the state, shows a massive surge in the number of cases being dealt with by the court since 2013 – about 70,000 cases over the six year period. Last year, almost 340,000 criminal matters came before… Read more »
