Just 1 per cent of ‘designated area’ searches find illicit items

Illicit items, including weapons, were seized in only 1 per cent of Victoria Police searches without a warrant or reasonable suspicion in “designated areas” over a two-year period.

Data released under freedom of information to civil rights organisation Liberty Victoria show that tens of thousands of Victorians had no weapon but were searched anyway in those areas, which can be designated by police for up to 12 hours.

Premier Jacinta Allan last week announced plans to significantly expand the use of these searches under her wide-ranging crime crackdown to allow police to declare designated areas at train stations, shopping centres, events or entire suburbs for up to six months at a time.

Premier Jacinta Allan and Police Chief Commissioner Rick Nugent on Thursday.Credit: Christopher Hopkins

Within designated areas declared under the Control of Weapons Act, officers can randomly stop and search anyone or their vehicle without a warrant or reasonable grounds. There is no legal need to have any suspicion the person has a weapon.

Liberty Victoria’s Rights Advocacy Project used freedom of information laws to determine the effectiveness of these searches between January 2021 and January 2023.

Victoria Police data obtained by the researchers and provided to The Age revealed officers conducted 23,718 searches at 61 designated areas over the two-year period. Most – 18,906 – were wand searches, while 4812 were pat-downs.

But only 252 searches resulted in “objects or substances being found”.

“This equates to a hit rate of just over 1 per cent,” authors Denham Sadler, Joey Cook and Britney Aguirre said in a report released last month.

“This means that thanks to this power, about 23,000 people were searched arbitrarily, for no reason, with no objects discovered.”

While the powers are specifically designed to find weapons, Victoria Police did not stipulate how many of those “objects or substances” were weapons.

“It is alarming that the broad language of ‘object’ or ‘substance’ is not further defined by the data to differentiate the ratio of non-firearm weapons or body armour found, in contrast to things outside of this regime such as drug substances,” the report said.

It’s not clear how many charges were laid as a result of the searches.

Victoria Police can declare a designated area where there has been more than one act of violence or disorder with a weapon in the past 12 months, if they believe there is a likelihood there will be a similar incident again. The government also wants to expand this to allow declarations where police have intelligence suggesting a likelihood of violence involving weapons.

Most of Collingwood, Abbotsford and Richmond was declared a designated area for 12 hours on March 5. The research team analysed locations targeted throughout most of 2022 and found Dandenong was hit the most, followed by Melbourne CBD and Narre Warren.

Suburbs with designated search areas between December 31, 2021 and November 13 , 2022

• Dandenong: 7
• Melbourne CBD: 4
• Narre Warren: 4
• Cranbourne: 3
• Pakenham: 3
• St Kilda: 3
• Southbank: 2
• Croydon: 1
• Melton: 1
• Geelong: 1
• St Albans: 1
• Doncaster: 1
• Werribee: 1
• Bayswater: 1
• Sunshine: 1
• Ballarat: 1
• Watergardens: 1
• Springvale: 1
• South Morang: 1
• Mooroolbark: 1
• Broadmeadows: 1
• Ringwood: 1
• Box Hill: 1

Labor, under then-premier John Brumby, introduced designated areas in 2010 and at the time acknowledged it was partially incompatible with the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

Police Chief Commissioner Rick Nugent said on Thursday the force was aware of about 635 stabbings with edged weapons and 265 aggravated burglaries involving machetes over the past 12 months. Three homicides in the last six months involved machetes, he said.

That figure does not include the death on Friday night of a 24-year-old man after he was stabbed during a brawl involving a group of young men armed with machetes in a shopping centre car park in Melbourne’s south-east.

Police were called to Marriot Waters Shopping Centre Society Avenue in Lyndhurst after reports of a group of men were fighting at about 8.30pm. The man from nearby Clyde received serious stab wounds and was taken to the Alfred Hospital, where he died before he was due to have surgery.

Police can also search anyone without a warrant if they have reasonable grounds, or anyone with a firearms prohibition order. A weapon was found in one in three searches without a warrant where officers had reasonable grounds, according to recent Victoria Police annual reports.

Almost 14,800 edged weapons were seized in total last year.

Deputy Commissioner of Regional Operations Bob Hill said weapons were increasingly used in aggravated burglaries, carjackings and street fights and the proposal would enable police to plan operations more effectively.

“As a society we simply cannot accept this pattern of behaviour, and Victoria Police makes no apologies for targeting those carrying weapons,” Hill said in a statement to The Age.

“These searches are about all protecting the community – if you are not carrying a weapon then there’s nothing to worry about.”

Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service chief executive Nerita Waight said any community-led program would be defunded if it had a 1 per cent success rate but that police were instead getting a licence to racially profile disadvantaged people under the guise of community safety, without demonstrable results.

Victoria Police, in its FOI decision, said it did not record the ethnic appearance of those searched under the powers.

The Centre for Racial Profiling Network, using FOI to examine all Victoria Police search powers where that data is recorded, found Aboriginal people were 11 times more likely to be searched than white people in 2023. People perceived to be African were six times more likely to be searched.

That research found police were consistently less likely to find something when they searched a person believed to be African, Middle Eastern or Mediterranean, Indian and Asian compared to someone perceived to be white.

Tamar Hopkins from the Centre Against Racial Profiling and the Police Accountability Project and supervisor of the Rights Advocacy Project research said searches in designated areas did not seem to be evidenced-based at all.

“Where is there evidentiary basis for expanding these powers?”

She said wand searches and pat-downs had negative cascading impacts on those randomly searched, humiliating people who had done nothing wrong and discouraging them from trusting the system or engaging in their communities. People in Toorak were unlikely to be subjected to this outside their homes, she said.

“That sends a really powerful message to individuals about their worth and status in society,” Hopkins said. “It has a real impact.”

Inner Melbourne Community Legal chief executive Nadia Morales said the “blatant overreach” imposed unreasonable and unnecessary restrictions on freedom of movement.

“People who have never been targeted under the stop and search powers before could be in the future. Our civil liberties are at stake.”

The government also proposes to allow designated areas to be declared with 12 hours’ notice, rather than 10 days under current laws.

The Allan government also wants to ban machetes and last week announced a suite of amendments to deny more alleged offenders bail.

A government spokeswoman said community safety must come first and thanked police for their work keeping train stations, shopping centres, festivals and streets safe from knife crime.

“Machetes are destroying lives, so we will destroy machetes,” she said. “The places we meet can’t become the places we fear.”

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