Chris Minns wants more visible weapons on Sydney’s streets to keep us safe.
The New South Wales premier authorised some police to carry assault rifles during this New Year’s Eve celebrations. He’s also in discussions with the prime minister, Anthony Albanese, about a role for the army on the streets, while also contemplating whether the private security force that protects Jewish places – the Community Security Group – should be armed too.
It is an understandable reaction to the horror at Bondi on 14 December and his thinking is no doubt driven by a sense of responsibility to act.
“I think you can expect changes now,” he said before New Year’s Eve.
“It’s not just about confronting terrorism or crime, it’s about making the public feel safe when they’re out with their family in the community.
“We can have no ambiguity about the state’s responsibility to protect the people of New South Wales. It is our highest responsibility … and I know that there’d be a degree of trepidation after the horrible events in December.
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“But I want the public to be assured that there is a comprehensive and massive police response to these terrible terrorist events.”
Personally, I am not sure I would feel safer by seeing NSW police carrying high-powered weapons.
I feel apprehensive when I step off a plane at a foreign airport to be confronted with people in military-style uniforms carrying dangerous-looking guns.
Rather, I would like to see police and our security agencies be on top of any violent extremists well before they are able to obtain weapons or bombs or drive a truck into a crowd.
This type of intelligence gathering requires an entirely different type of policing.
It requires working with the leaders and members of our multicultural community. It involves building trust and being part of the community, not apart from it.
Community policing has been adopted by most Australian police forces – and it’s not just a philosophy or an attitude. It’s about real engagement, through restructuring police organisations and altering the daily activities of officers.
It’s about empowering police to think and to interact with people, to identify crime proactively. It relies on the community sharing their knowledge of crime and their concerns by developing trusting relationships.
During Operation Shelter, a police operation that began in the aftermath the terrible events at Bondi, the most visible signs – apart from loud helicopters – are the groups of young officers in shopping areas in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.
The police are friendly. They talk to people in cafes and shops, and exude a vibe that they are there for the community.
Would people feel such a connection with them if they were carrying assault rifles? I doubt it.
A more militarised approach is used in other countries, notably in Latin America and more recently in parts of Donald Trump’s America.
The theory goes that deploying the military or militarised police forces will deter criminals in high-crime areas and push offending rates down.
However, this style of policing comes at a cost: it often results in a loss of civil liberties for the rest of the law-abiding population, who are forced to comply with orders, searches and other heavy-handed tactics.
A 2023 study, led by Brown University associate professor of political science Rob Blair, studied a militarised crime intervention in Cali, Colombia, and found little evidence to support the idea that military policing reduces crime.
In 2018, Cali had a homicide rate of 46.7 per 100,000 residents, more than triple that of the capital of Bogotá. In an effort to reduce crime, the government developed a program – Plan Fortaleza – that involved recurring, intensive military patrols targeting high-crime areas in the city.
The authorities and the military agreed to have monitors with the patrols, because they genuinely wanted to see if it worked. The crime rate fell slightly when the patrols were there but rose immediately once the operations ended.
There are other costs of arming police.
A study by Deakin University in 2020, Primed and Ready, looked at the number of fatal shootings by police across four countries. Australia has had more fatal shootings by police than the UK (where general police are unarmed) despite having less than half the population. Canada was even worse, where police carry semi-automatic pistols and shotguns in their patrol vehicles.
“It is generally accepted that a police officer with a firearm is likely to make different choices about how to handle a volatile situation than a police officer who does not have a firearm,” the study’s authors said.
“The latter will, of necessity, focus on de-escalation and containment. By contrast, an officer carrying a firearm has the option of fatal force from the outset.
Another study from 2013 noted that about 42% of fatal police shootings in Australia involved a person with mental health issues. Such deaths has led the NSW police to trial the Pacer program, where mental health experts accompany police to calls. It’s been highly successful in de-escalating incidents.
Before we rush to arm our police with high-powered weapons, its worth studying the data, looking at the evidence and evaluating whether the advantage of having higher-powered weapons more readily available outweighs the other potential effects.
What might we lose as a society if we make police more imposing and scarier figures on our streets?
• Anne Davies is the NSW state correspondent for Guardian Australia
