Knife crime Qld: Jack’s Law expansion to target hot spots

The police union has identified the Queensland zones it wants targeted for knife crime in an expansion of Jack’s Law wanding powers.

Queen Street Mall, South Bank Parklands and major festival locations should be sites for police wanding operations to protect Queenslanders from future knife violence as part of extraordinary legislative expansion, according to the police union president.

Queensland Police Union general president Shane Prior said he endorsed moves to make Jack’s Law permanent and “anywhere, anytime” including in major city hotspots and on public transport, which so far had allowed 100,000 wand searches and detected 1300 weapons since trials first began in 2021.

An amendment aims to make Jack’s Law permanent beyond next year and would allow police to use handheld scanners in public places.

Mr Prior told the Justice, Integrity and Community Safety committee on Wednesday that wanding should be conducted in these areas without approval of senior officers, such as inspectors and senior sergeants, and believed increasing location sites would clear up red tape.

Mr Prior said expanded wand search powers would give police on the beat a better chance of preventing tragedies such as the Westfield Bondi Junction shopping centre attack a year ago, in which six people were killed.

He compared wanding operations to non-invasive roadside breath tests.

“Unfortunately we had to do that because people were dying on our roads because of horrific circumstances because people were engaging in stupid behaviour while driving,” Mr Prior said.

Brett and Belinda Beasley with a picture of son Jack

“Now unfortunately we live in a world where people are engaging in stupid behaviour in taking out edge weaponry … and using that in the community or (to) cause fear or to stab someone.”

The laws were named after 17-year-old victim Jack Beasley, who was killed after being stabbed in the heart while with friends in Surfers Paradise on December 13, 2019.

His mother Belinda Beasley, motivated to use her family’s tragedy to lead education programs to prevent further stabbings, broke into tears as she told the justice committee about the aftermath of Jack’s death and the three years of court trials since.

“Seeing Jack’s lifeless body, touching him, feeling how cold he was, feeling the stitches all over his body,” Mrs Beasley said.

“This is forever imprinted in our minds and will haunt us for the rest of our lives.”

Mrs Beasley said wanding was non-invasive and believed each knife detected by police potentially saved another life.

But there were concerns raised that an expanded Jack’s Law could allow prejudice as police could scan without any reason of suspicion.

Queensland Victims Commissioner Beck O’Connor said open-ended powers to scan risked normalising extraordinary powers.

She said laws needed to be proportionate to the risk to the community.

Queensland Police Union general president Shane Prior

Originally published as Knife crime Qld: Jack’s Law expansion to target hot spots