Extraordinary stop and search powers to be rolled out across Queensland were used by police to racially profile potential targets during a Gold Coast trial, which an independent review found had failed to reduce violence.
Civil libertarians are warning the decision to expand the use of metal-detector wands by police could amount to “mass, suspicion-less, warrantless” searches that would “inevitably result in unwarranted invasions of privacy”.
Trial use of the wands, previously confined to two sites on the Gold Coast, was expanded this week to allow police to use the metal detectors on people in nightlife precincts and on public transport across the state.
The powers are designed to prevent knife crime. However, a review of the Gold Coast trial carried out by Griffith University’s Criminology Institute said the use of the wands increased the amount of drugs found during searches that were conducted without “reasonable suspicion”.
It said this was “a very significant departure from normal criminal law and procedure”.
The report, tabled in parliament on Wednesday, found no evidence that the scanners deterred people from carrying knives or had led to a significant drop in violent crime.
It said some officers, who were interviewed as part of the review, had “looked for groups of young people of certain ethnic backgrounds that they believed had been found with edged weapons previously”.
Excerpts from those interviews also revealed that some officers saw jettisoning the need for reasonable suspicion as “one of the real benefits” of the searches through the use of the wands.
“Because we are able to engage with people in such a manner that you know reasonable suspicion isn’t required, and because we’re engaging with them around the knives, it’s just a lot of offences flow off the back of that and the way we’re going about that,” one officer was quoted in the report as saying.
The police minister, Mark Ryan, highlighted the report’s comment that the 12-month trial period was “generally regarded as too short a time to accurately identify any longer term outcomes, such as changes in offending patterns or possible deterrent effects”.
He said the government was working with the police to “improve the authorising, accountability and recording framework for the powers to ensure the extended trial is rolled out effectively, accurately and carefully”.
“The review makes a number of key findings, including areas of increased knife detection by police, and importantly, feelings of improved public safety among stakeholders,” Ryan said.
“Any detection or prevention of criminal offending is a positive result for the broader community.”
But Greens MP Michael Berkman said the wands had been “more successful at criminalising drug users than stopping knife crime”.
“If the government goes ahead with this they are completely ignoring all the experts and the evidence,” Berkman said.
“They’re selling Queensland families more lies because they’re not willing to face facts themselves.”
The report detailed a rise in the detection of illicit drugs as an “unintended consequence” of the use of detection wands. Of 201 charges that arose from the searches between 27 April last year and 17 January this year, 56 charges related to weapons and 76 to drugs.
The review warned of the potential of an increase in minor drug charges as a result of expanding the use of the searches, adding the increased detection of drugs “was not part of the rationale for the introduction of wanding”.
The Queensland Council for Civil Liberties president, Michael Cope, said that requiring a reasonable suspicion before a search could proceed was “a bulwark protection of our liberty”.
Cope said the legislation authorised “mass, suspicion-less, warrantless magnetometer searches”.
“Insisting on a requirement that there be a reasonable suspicion before a search can occur will hopefully prevent us from gradually trading ever-increasing amounts of freedom and privacy for extra security,” he said.
“Such a requirement is essential to being able to prevent arbitrary searches or searches based on bias.”
