On a knife edge: What are your rights when being searched by police?

Jack Beasley was just 17 when he was fatally stabbed while on a night out with friends on the Gold Coast in 2019.

His death sparked the passing of Jack’s Law, which allows Queensland police officers to scan people using metal detector “wands” in a bid to crack down on knife crime, particularly among young people.

Over several hours, officers can scan commuters at train stations or other transport hubs, or at designated Safe Night Precincts. Credit: Cloe Read

Police say the initiative has been successful, with officers seizing dozens of knives off the streets.

But experts have raised concerns around the practice.

We take a look at how Jack’s Law has been working after the Queensland government legislated the police powers following a trial of wanding.

What is ‘wanding’ and do you have to consent to police beforehand?

If you are at a Safe Night Precinct, such as Fortitude Valley, police are allowed to scan you with a wand, a small, black scanning device that detects weapons.

Queensland police officers search a person with a metal detection wand during the trial in Gold Coast party precincts. Credit: Queensland Police Service

They can also wand people on public transport, including trains, buses, and any station approved by a senior officer.

You must allow an officer to scan you in these approved zones, or there is a risk of being charged with obstructing police or another offence.

“The police officer conducting the wanding does not have to have any reasonable suspicion of an offence having occurred, and failure to comply with the scanning is itself an offence,” Griffith University Criminology Institute director Janet Ransley says.

“If the scanner goes off, the person has to submit a search of themselves and their possessions.

“Outside of those areas [transport hubs and party precincts], police can generally only search people where there is reasonable suspicion of an offence having been committed.”

What does the device do?

Like being scanned in an airport, the device is waved over your body to determine if you’re carrying anything beneath your clothing.

The device will beep if it waves over something of interest.

In the period between when Jack’s Law was implemented and early July, police seized 47 weapons across Brisbane’s north and south district, and 60 across the south-eastern region, which includes the Gold Coast and Logan.

At the start of August, the government said 16,000 people had been scanned since the laws passed and more than 220 weapons seized. More than 500 people were charged, including cautions, on over 900 offences.

Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Mark Wheeler said 60 per cent of the weapons were found on people at transport areas such as stations, with the rest found in party precincts.

What is the process like?

Brisbane Times was invited by the police to see how scanning operates at the Goodna railway station.

During a Wednesday-afternoon operation, several officers assisted by the police Rail Squad selected people as they exited the train.

Acting Senior Sergeant Teina Middleditch said Jack’s Law was working well to take knives off the street.

She said the scans were random, took minutes, and the scanning must be pre-approved by a senior officer.

Police conduct wanding searches at Goodna Railway Station.Credit: Cloe Read

Within hours of the operation this day, Middleditch and her team had already seized a knife and drugs.

Officers said they had received positive feedback.

The Queensland Police Service said the approach was about showing the community officers were present in their suburb to keep them safe.

Officers also had access to a mobile police van, allowing them to process charges and other issues without having to take people back to the police station.

What are the concerns with wanding?

Civil Liberties Council vice-president Terry O’Gorman said Jack’s Law meant officers could conduct warrantless searches, which did not rely on oversight by a magistrate or a court warrant.

“To be searched, police don’t even have to have the suspicion that you may have a knife on you,” he says.

The council had previously raised concerns that the overuse of wanding was based on generalisation and stereotypes, and police would use wands to circumvent restrictions on drug searches.

While more knives have been detected in Surfers Paradise, as yet this has not led to a statistically significant drop in violent crime during the trial period.

Griffith Criminology Institute report

“For a person to be searched in a public place for drugs, including at a music festival, there has to be reasonable suspicion that a person is in possession of drugs,” he said. “Wanding would simply be used as a means of getting around that protection.”

O’Gorman said the council based its concerns off a review of the trial of Jack’s Law, completed by Griffith University’s Criminology Institute in 2022.

“The report that was done at the trial period found there was no relationship between increased wanding and a decrease in knife crime,” he said.

Ransley said the research found some officers were targeting people based on racial or cultural stereotypes.

“We also recommended better training and stronger monitoring of how officers conduct these operations,” she said.

“We were also concerned that as a result of wand-related searches, there was an increase in the number of young people charged with minor drug-possession offences.

“This was not the intended outcome of wanding, with the whole justification being to reduce violence, and it raises the risk that wand-related searches can be conducted to get around civil rights that would otherwise operate.”

Experts regularly raised concerns around targeting and profiling, such as in New York’s stop and frisks, where officers routinely picked people based on race.

What laws must police operate under when they wand someone?

Officers can use Jack’s Law at a designated area, such as a train station, as long as it’s been authorised. Usually police will conduct wanding operations at the location for fewer than 12 hours.

Under Queensland police operation manuals, officers must “create a street check in ‘real-time’, on their QLiTE [iPad] device, to ensure the scanning is captured against the correct authorisation”.

Police must also turn on their body-worn camera and footage is to be downloaded at the end of each shift and categorised.

What should be done in future?

The Civil Liberties Council has called for a review into how Jack’s Law has been operating.

O’Gorman said where arbitrary searching happened in other parts of Australia or the UK, it had been found consistently over a long period of time to be “disproportionately used against minority groups”.

For this reason, O’Gorman said it should be reviewed to determine if the problems identified in Griffith’s University’s Criminology Institute review were still prevalent.

He said that when police powers were introduced after tragic events such as Beasley’s death, decisions must be based on research, not media-generated disquiet.

Queensland police had introduced an auditing process following recommendations from the institute to safeguard human rights.

The audits, conducted by senior supervising police of a proportion of all officers who participated in wanding, specifically focused on “whether they are over-targeting any particular categories of individuals or groups”.

“These audits are drawn from police body-worn camera and any CCTV footage, but also an analysis of both offence and street check data in QPRIME to identify any patterns of potential bias,” the QPS said.