Covid crackdown in Sydney’s southwest labelled racist amid major police operation

NSW’s Premier has held a private meeting with multicultural leaders in Sydney’s southwest after a controversial covid crackdown.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian has held a closed-door meeting with multicultural leaders in Sydney’s southwest amid a major police operation that has drawn criticism.

More than 100 extra police officers, including mounted police, will be deployed in southwest Sydney from 7am amid concerns that covid rules are being flouted.

Officers from the Bankstown Police Station are being deployed as part of a covid crackdown in Sydney’s south west.

The police operation has attracted criticism for targeting the heavily multicultural area with a heavy-handed approach that hasn’t been used elsewhere.

The Fairfield, Canterbury-Bankstown and Liverpool local government areas have seen high rates of Covid-19 transmission in recent days, with Ms Berejiklian warning the region could be subject to elevated restrictions.

Assistant Commissioner Tony Cooke said too many people in Sydney’s south west were flouting covid rules.

Assistant Commissioner Tony Cooke said on Thursday that there were still too many people leaving their homes without a valid reason.

“This is about us working together to comply with these orders and about police supporting [the community]. Where we don’t get that compliance, however, we will enforce,” he said.

Shortly after Mr Cooke’s comments, Ms Berejiklian held an online meeting with about 250 community leaders from Sydney’s southwest that was initially open to media in an invitation that was later rescinded.

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People not wearing face masks correctly gather at a food court on the main shopping strip of Bankstown in Sydney.

Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre CEO Kamalle Dabboussy told the ABC it was a constructive meeting but that concerns were raised about the intensified police presence.

He said assurances were given that police would work with the community.

Kamalle Dabboussy, CEO of the Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre.

Lakemba MP Jihad Dib said strongarming was not helpful and police needed to focus on communication not fines.

“While it’s important to have compliance … what we need to do is make sure we don’t create it in a way that instils panic or fear,” he said. “If this is about putting a whole heap of police there because we don’t trust the community, then I worry about that.”

Member for Lakemba Jihad Dib.

This is a terrible turn of events. Over-policing multicultural communities is a recipe for disaster. The mounted police were never called into Avalon or Westfield Bondi. The double-standard is there in plain sight. https://t.co/dJi2r9g2tb

— Mehreen Faruqi (@MehreenFaruqi) July 8, 2021

Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said the police operation is a “terrible turn of events”.

“Over-policing of multicultural communities is a recipe for disaster. The mounted police were never called into Avalon or Westfield Bondi,” she said on Twitter.

“The double standard is there in plain sight.”

Racial justice organisation Democracy in Colour described the operation as “thinly-veiled racism”.

“This isn’t a public health response, it’s explicitly targeting people of colour and working class communities in the western suburbs,” National Director Neha Madhok told SBS.

“Inner city suburbs and the Northern Beaches have had significant cases but they have not been harshly policed like this.”

President of the Lebanese Muslim society Samier Dandan.

Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan told the ABC that the police operation was a “disproportionate” response that would have harmful impacts.

“This is highly problematic and reinforces the experience of this community being over-policed and continues to create heightened sensitivities around the over-scrutinisation of these communities,” Mr Dandan said.

“We would have appreciated a much more balanced response and something that is more in line with their response to communities elsewhere who had similar clusters.”

Bankstown Police have been cracking down on people without face masks.

Epidemiologist Nancy Baxter from the University of Melbourne told the ABC the lockdown of public housing towers in Melbourne showed the inequity in how police treat certain communities.

However, she said there are a lot of essential workers in Sydney’s southwest that were at risk.

“It’s not that people in these LGAs are necessarily not behaving as well as people in other LGAs, the issue is there are a lot of essential workers there so they’re going to work, picking up the virus and they’re bringing it home,” she said. “It isn’t spreading because there’s more bad behaviour in those communities.”

Mounted police on covid patrol in Bondi last month.

While there were extra police deployed across the northern beaches during the Christmas covid outbreak and recently in Bondi, this is the first targeted operation of its size.

The police operation drew criticism on Twitter.

Although "Covid compliance is the same across metropolitan Sydney" the NSW Govt is sending more than 100 police officers into South West Sydney. There is absolutely NO logic for the direct targeting of Sydney's black and brown communities.

— David Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeMLC) July 8, 2021

"Of the 38 cases confirmed on Thursday, 21 were in south-west Sydney and the state government holds concerns about low testing rates in the area."

Awesome. So why aren't they instead launching a major SW testing blitz? Why send cops?https://t.co/u0ijXviYzj

— Celeste Liddle (@Utopiana) July 8, 2021

So the police are being called out, well, to police a lockdown in South West Sydney, one of its more disadvantaged and multicultural areas. Of course compliance is important. Asking though: was this used in wealthy, more white areas of Sydney? https://t.co/Ww268ZWOuS

— Diaa Hadid ضياء حديد (@diaahadid) July 8, 2021