Civil liberties groups say the policy for Above and Beyond music festival in Sydney is a ‘clear abuse of police powers’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The New South Wales Police will ban people from entering a musical festival in Sydney if sniffer dogs detect illegal drugs on them – even if no drugs are actually found in a search.

Barely a month after the Australian Capital Territory allowed pill testing at a music festival for the first time, police in NSW have gone in the opposite direction.

On Tuesday the NSW police announced that people attending the Above and Beyond music festival in Sydney this weekend would be denied entry if sniffer dogs indicated they had drugs on them, even if a search did not reveal any illicit substances.

“Police will exclude any person from the venue that the drug dog indicates has or who has recently had drugs on them, regardless of whether drugs are located,” assistant commissioner Peter Thurtell said in a statement.

The decision has been slammed by politicians, drug safety advocates and civil libertarians who point to the questionable reliability of sniffer dogs and argue that police are abusing their powers.

“Penalising people for the failure of the drug dog program is a clear abuse of police powers,” NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge said.

“Young people who have spent upwards of a hundred dollars will see their tickets essentially torn up as some kind of perverse punishment by the police.

“It’s not an offence to have a drug dog falsely indicate you are carrying drugs.”

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The use of sniffer dogs has been controversial in NSW for more than a decade because of the high rate of error in detection.



In 2006 the NSW ombudsman released a report which found sniffer dogs were “an ineffective tool for detecting drug dealers” and were “overwhelmingly” used in searches where either no drugs or “very small amounts” were found.



The ombudsman questioned whether the use of sniffer dogs “will ever provide a fair, efficacious and cost effective tool to target drug supply”.

More than 10 years later the statistics on sniffer dog use bear those fears out.

Detection-rate data obtained by the Guardian show that between 2014 and 2017 the NSW Police conducted more than 42,000 searches with sniffer dogs. Of those searches 59% were false positives, where no illegal drugs were found despite the dog indicating otherwise.

It’s not the first time police in NSW have adopted such a hard-line stance. In May ticket-holders for the Midnight Mafia festival reported being denied entry despite not being in possession of illegal drugs.

The Guardian understands the use of the policy at that festival has prompted at least one legal firm to consider challenging the police in court.

Timothy Vines from Civil Liberties Australia said he wouldn’t be surprised if it was subject to a challenge.

“It’s concerning we still see sniffer dogs being used at all but to then use them as a final test without any mechanism of appeal or the need for police to produce any actual evidence that someone is trying to bring in drugs is deeply concerning,” he said.

“It’s a bold claim by the NSW police and I would think one that is very open to challenge by members of the community – by what lawful basis do police have a right to refuse entry to a private event or function on the basis of a test known to have such a large error rate?”

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It comes as other jurisdictions have taken steps to move away from punishment and towards harm minimisation. Australia’s first ever pill-testing trial was held at the Groovin’ the Moo festival in Canberra in April. Two potentially deadly samples were screened out during the trial.

Dr David Caldicott, an emergency doctor and Australian National University academic who supervised the trial at the Groovin’ the Moo after years of advocacy, said the decision was “Nancy Reagan messaging” which would not curb drug use.

“Isn’t it interesting that when health [authorities] want to introduce something like pill testing [that] has real science behind it and demonstrable health benefits we have to jump through hoops [and] sell a kidney for funding, yet when the law enforcement folk of a certain jurisdiction want to introduce something that looks as dumb as a bag of spanners and is far more likely to hurt people than help them, that’s OK?” he said.