Update: NSW police are currently being investigated over the strip search of a teenage girl at last year’s Splendour in the Grass.
The girl, who was 16-years-old when she attended the music festival, was forced to strip and squat in front of police without a parent or guardian present. No drugs were found.
According to NSW law, a parent or guardian must be present if a child between 10 and 18 years old is strip-searched.
According to the ABC, the public inquiry into the incident will hear from officers who were involved in the strip search.
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When Georgia and her friends were driving along the Murray River near the border of New South Wales and Victoria, they didn’t expect to come across an army of police.
The group of friends, who were heading to music festival Strawberry Fields, were still a few kilometres away from the festival in Tocumwal when they came across the police operation.
“This operation was huge,” Georgia, now 25, who attended the festival in 2015, told Mamamia.
“It honestly looked like a border patrol operation. There were around 30 cops, [drug] buses, and sniffer dogs.
Immediately, Georgia and her friends were flagged down by police.
After having their identification checked, the group exited the vehicle as it was “searched from top to bottom” by police.
Quicky News Headlines: Thursday April 25th 2024
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Top Comments
This is so bad, if they are finding that 2 thirds of people have nothing on them then this is a problem and it's clearly not working. Terrible.
Conversely, that means that one third of people really do have something on them. That's rather a high number don't you think?
We've had many articles here previously about drug overdoses and deaths at concerts which was seen as unacceptable and something MUST be done (it was also deemed a problem and evidence of something clearly not working).
I'm not sure what the balance is supposed to be here - purely Draconian measures or purely free for all.
I think strip searching innocent people is actually way out of line. It's degrading and humiliating. And of those 1/3 what were they caught with I'd be interested to know. If it was pot for personal use then that is out of line too. I'm not denying there is a drug problem. But if you do a drug test and fail then you should be strip searched. But if you are walking down the street minding your own business, then that is way over the top.
Pill testing works. Decriminalising drugs works. Treating drug addiction as a health issue, rather than a criminal one, works. If were were serious about reducing drug deaths, we would be trying things that worked, not violating civil liberties with heavy handed procedures.
Firstly, is someone popping a pill for a music festival every few months a 'drug addict' in your eyes?
Secondly, alcohol and nicotine are legal (and heavily taxed) and cause far far more deaths than party drugs at a festival so I'm not convinced by the "Decriminalising drugs works" as a solution.
Drug dogs are notoriously unreliable and should not be used as justification for an invasive search. They found nothing in the car or in their pockets, that should be the end of it. This is scary and the police were completely out of line and I think that these girls' had their rights violated.