Speaker 1: I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to seven AM. This week,
Speaker 1: more than a dozen people were arrested while protesting at
Speaker 1: a defense conference in Sydney. The demonstrators from Palestine Action
Speaker 1: Group were protesting the presence of Israeli defense contractors who
Speaker 1: are exhibiting at the event. The riot squad, along with
Speaker 1: dogs and mounted police officers, clashed with protesters and used
Speaker 1: pepper spray several times on the crowd. Clashes like this
Speaker 1: one have become routine in Australia with a change in
Speaker 1: police tactics, as officers increasingly use pepper spray and rubber bullets.
Speaker 1: Today journalist and author Ariel Bogel on the use of
Speaker 1: these so called non lethal weapons and how protesting in
Speaker 1: Australia has become more dangerous. It's Sunday, November nine, and
Speaker 1: this episode was originally published in October.
Speaker 2: So Ariel.
Speaker 1: At the moment, we're seeing weekly public protests, thousands of
Speaker 1: people gathering regularly in pro Palestine marches, also climate protests.
Speaker 1: We saw anti immigration rallies. As all of this happens, though,
Speaker 1: we are also regularly hearing reports of people being injured,
Speaker 1: sometimes quite seriously.
Speaker 2: By police.
Speaker 1: So can you tell me some of the stories that
Speaker 1: you've been looking at of this happening.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, I've been.
Speaker 3: Tracking these same protests that you're talking about and just
Speaker 3: noticing perhaps an uptick in the appearance of what you
Speaker 3: call leslie or police tools. So these are things like
Speaker 3: oc spray, pepper spray in some cases, rubber bullets, things
Speaker 3: called flashbangs that kind of let off a loud sound
Speaker 3: like sort of miniature explosives for one of a better
Speaker 3: way to put it. The inventive branch now also trying
Speaker 3: to stop this group which is on the Clarendon Street.
Speaker 2: Side, from coming down along the era.
Speaker 3: Jeez, that's so pepper spray gets in the area. I
Speaker 3: started wondering what impact this might be having on protesters
Speaker 3: or others observing them, And one person I spoke to
Speaker 3: was Alex Zuko. She's a photographer in Melbourne who was
Speaker 3: pepper sprayed while doing her job as a photojournalist at
Speaker 3: a protest in Melbourne towards the end of last year.
Speaker 2: It caused her to go blind for about an hour.
Speaker 2: She needed help. There was another.
Speaker 3: Photographer too was injured at the same protest. He told
Speaker 3: me he was hit in the ear with a rubber
Speaker 3: bullet and required medical attention for that.
Speaker 1: And tell me a bit more about these weapons, about
Speaker 1: the OC spray and the rubber bullets, these things that
Speaker 1: police seem to be using a protest. What I mean,
Speaker 1: can they cause long term damage?
Speaker 3: So when we use the term OC spray, we were
Speaker 3: referring to the kind of chemical compound us in the
Speaker 3: spray that causes that intense burning to the eye. And
Speaker 3: people told me it's like getting stabbed in the eye.
Speaker 3: You know, it's really excruciating if it gets into your eyeball.
Speaker 3: And people probably have heard of pepper spray, but they
Speaker 3: might have this idea it's like a small cannacy sort
Speaker 3: of spray it someone's eye kind of miss. These days,
Speaker 3: the type that police have is it's more like a
Speaker 3: sticky foam, if you can imagine it. The issue is too,
Speaker 3: like how to get it off. A lot of people
Speaker 3: who go to the protests now have techniques for doing this,
Speaker 3: but when you get home, you need to have a shower,
Speaker 3: get out of your hair, get out of your eyebrows,
Speaker 3: get out of your clothes. But it's not a simple
Speaker 3: thing to get this stuff off. And then of course
Speaker 3: there are things like rubber bullets or different forms of projectiles.
Speaker 3: We heard from somebody Kylie Martin. She says she was
Speaker 3: shot in the leg by police with a projectile she
Speaker 3: believes was a baton round. Just for clarity, a baton
Speaker 3: round they can be fired from a weapon ressembling a
Speaker 3: kind of grenade launcher. So in a statement she said
Speaker 3: that police were just shooting into the crowded protesters, and
Speaker 3: she claims to have had lasting pain and damage to
Speaker 3: her leg. And when we look at injuries from these
Speaker 3: tools globally, we can see really serious instances of injury,
Speaker 3: brain damage, and even death. I think the term less
Speaker 3: legal quote unquote is a bit of a misnomer. Certainly,
Speaker 3: these tools, especially projectiles, can be lethal depending on how
Speaker 3: they're used, so they're not something to be used lightly.
Speaker 3: So police have growing access to these types of tools,
Speaker 3: but there has been a bit of a lack of
Speaker 3: public discussion or examination I think of how these tools
Speaker 3: are being used and even what tools are out there.
Speaker 3: I think the average Australian might be quite shocked if
Speaker 3: they go to a protest and see police with some
Speaker 3: of these things.
Speaker 2: They might never even heard of them.
Speaker 1: And so where are these tools developed and how do
Speaker 1: they make their way to Australian police forces.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so when you look at some of the manufacturers
Speaker 3: of sea spray, flash bangs, rubber bullets, they do often
Speaker 3: come out of companies that make other more traditionally legal weapons.
Speaker 3: They often have a side trade in these kind of
Speaker 3: less legal policing tools. So we got some new South
Speaker 3: Wales parliamentary documents that show some of the caps can
Speaker 3: spray launchers used by police are made by Germany's largest
Speaker 3: arms manufacturers, Ryan Metal. I'm not one hundred percent sure
Speaker 3: what brand the Victoria police use at the moment. There
Speaker 3: have been a range of reports on that topic, but
Speaker 3: certainly some of the legal observers at some protests in
Speaker 3: late twenty twenty four, especially outside the Landforces Arms Expo,
Speaker 3: which sort of faced a quite significant protests over a
Speaker 3: number of days, observed the use of these flashbank kind
Speaker 3: of devices as well, and you know.
Speaker 2: It's pretty terrifying by all accounts.
Speaker 3: You know, I spoke to one police officer in the
Speaker 3: United States who trains officers on how to use these tools,
Speaker 3: and to his mind, they are a form of explosive
Speaker 3: So you really have to make sure officers are trained
Speaker 3: in their use and really consider the fact that if
Speaker 3: you throw such a thing into a crowd, it can
Speaker 3: cause panic, it can cause stampede and cause a range
Speaker 3: of injuries. And I guess there's just very little accountability
Speaker 3: or discussion about how police.
Speaker 2: Are using these tools.
Speaker 1: Coming up the people who are suing police over the
Speaker 1: US force.
Speaker 2: I think that most Australians think.
Speaker 1: That we do or we should have the right peaceful protests,
Speaker 1: that being able to do that is an important and
Speaker 1: normal part of living in a democracy. But in recent
Speaker 1: years we have seen various state governments introduced laws that
Speaker 1: restrict that right to protest. So can you tell me
Speaker 1: more about that and about how that has in turn
Speaker 1: affected the way that policing works.
Speaker 3: I think Australia's attitude to protest I wouldn't say it
Speaker 3: has ever been like one hundred percent friendly.
Speaker 2: If you go and.
Speaker 3: Talk to protesters against the damning of the Franklin River
Speaker 3: and Tasmania, you know there was continuous face off with
Speaker 3: police over that.
Speaker 2: There have been protests, of course.
Speaker 3: Against various conflicts, but reports coming out of places like
Speaker 3: the Human Rights Law Center have suggested there is a
Speaker 3: growing crackdown and they are found at least forty nine
Speaker 3: laws in active by governments have constricted the right to
Speaker 3: protest over the past twenty years.
Speaker 2: If we look here in New.
Speaker 3: South Wales, where I am our state may be considered
Speaker 3: to have led the pack in that way. There's broad
Speaker 3: discretion now for police to penalize people who disrupt major
Speaker 3: roads or infrastructure. But there's a lot of discretion there
Speaker 3: for police to decide what is a major road, what
Speaker 3: is infrastructure when they can use these laws. Other states
Speaker 3: have rolled out a suite of similar legislation. What was
Speaker 3: suggested to me by a variety of lawyers and advocates
Speaker 3: is this is creating a permissive environment for use of
Speaker 3: force by police. We managed to get our hands on
Speaker 3: some of the statistics. There has been an uptick in
Speaker 3: use of force in general in New South Wales and
Speaker 3: also you know hundreds of documented cases of use of
Speaker 3: OC spray in Victoria.
Speaker 2: Again, when you're relying on.
Speaker 3: Police to report use of force, it's not always an
Speaker 3: accurate record, so it's a complicated space to get a
Speaker 3: really clear picture of.
Speaker 2: But it does seem like use of force in general
Speaker 2: is on the up.
Speaker 1: So tell me about the data that you have managed
Speaker 1: to gather about the increase in use of force against protesters.
Speaker 3: This is really part of a trend I know at
Speaker 3: this point of at least four settled cases in Victoria
Speaker 3: since twenty twenty one, cases have been brought against Victoria
Speaker 3: police and they've been settled over the treatment of photographers
Speaker 3: and journalists, including the use of OC spray.
Speaker 2: We also found there.
Speaker 3: Were at least seven protesters alleging police violence who have
Speaker 3: active civil cases in the Victorian County Court. There are
Speaker 3: a range of allegations there, including a dislocated shoulder, burning
Speaker 3: painted testicles, caused by police including through the use of
Speaker 3: OC spray or foam, and what was claimed to be
Speaker 3: unnecessarily violent arrests and through FOI. We did get data
Speaker 3: that showed in New South Wales overall number of incidents
Speaker 3: where force has been used has risen from almost eighty
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen eighteen to more than nine thousand in the
Speaker 3: last financial year, but that data couldn't be broken down
Speaker 3: by protests scenario.
Speaker 2: We could see too that OC spray was used almost.
Speaker 3: Nine hundred times in New South Wales in the past
Speaker 3: financial year, as well as more than two thousand takedowns
Speaker 3: which is kind of where police might sweep the leg
Speaker 3: out of somebody to get them to the ground as
Speaker 3: part of an arrest. And we saw there too in
Speaker 3: those stats, fifty four percent of those who had experienced
Speaker 3: a takedown identified themselves as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait islander.
Speaker 1: And there is the obvious question then, of what you
Speaker 1: do if you believe you've been on the other end
Speaker 1: of that, if you've been assaulted by a police officer
Speaker 1: at a protest, where do you turn?
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's definitely tough. Various states have different mechanisms for
Speaker 3: making complaints. But I spoke to a law professor, Simon Rice.
Speaker 3: He won a case against New South Wales police a
Speaker 3: few years ago for assault, battery and false imprisonment. He
Speaker 3: was thrown to the ground and arrested while observing a
Speaker 3: student protest at Sydney University back in twenty twenty. In
Speaker 3: his view, there was no really realistic way of complaining
Speaker 3: about police overstepping the mark general investigate themselves if you
Speaker 3: can plain directly, a lot of the oversight bodies really
Speaker 3: take on only kind of systemic instances of police misconduct
Speaker 3: or corruption. And again, as I mentioned, it's really hard
Speaker 3: to get those sheer numbers. You know, after a protest,
Speaker 3: police often come out and announce how many people were
Speaker 3: arrested at an event, but there's not really a public
Speaker 3: record of how many times force was.
Speaker 2: Used, what was used, what tools were used, and whether
Speaker 2: it was appropriate.
Speaker 3: So that level of accountability is really difficult to obtain
Speaker 3: without taking legal action, and so we did speak to
Speaker 3: a number of protesters who feel their only option to
Speaker 3: get an outcome was to take it to court. There's actually,
Speaker 3: in fact a class action currently underway in Victoria about
Speaker 3: police use of OC spray back in twenty nineteen at
Speaker 3: the I Mark climate protest, so the outcome there will
Speaker 3: be interesting because that will play out in public. We did,
Speaker 3: of course approach police in Victoria and New South Wales
Speaker 3: when working on this story. Victoria police told us that
Speaker 3: it makes no apologies for officers having to use force
Speaker 3: to separate and safely disperse crowds during protests. They said
Speaker 3: they don't attend protests with aim of using force, but
Speaker 3: is always in response to the actions of protesters.
Speaker 1: And what effect do you think all of this is,
Speaker 1: having this use of force protests, both on the individual
Speaker 1: level on people who you know might go to protests
Speaker 1: or you know, decide not to and expose as well
Speaker 1: on the bigger level in terms of how you think
Speaker 1: the very idea of protesting or going or peaceful protesting
Speaker 1: is seen in Australia now.
Speaker 2: Well, certainly people that have been affected by these tools.
Speaker 3: A lot of the people I spoke with, you know,
Speaker 3: it remained with them. You know, if you get oc
Speaker 3: sprayed directly in the eyes, that type of pain, you know,
Speaker 3: you don't forget it quickly. I think it might you know,
Speaker 3: affect people's willingness.
Speaker 2: To share up and protest.
Speaker 3: It's part of this overall picture of antagonism in some
Speaker 3: parts of the media to protest. We do have an
Speaker 3: implied right political communication in the Australian Constitution which is
Speaker 3: read as supporting protest for very little positive law.
Speaker 2: About that fact. I think some people when they show
Speaker 2: up to protest might be surprised about the kind of.
Speaker 3: Use of force that they're facing, because again it's not
Speaker 3: well known that police have these kinds of tools in general.
Speaker 2: Well, Ariel, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Ruby, thanks for listening to this
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Speaker 2: Ideas or story tips. We'll be back tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Catch you, Ben,