Sydney southwestern leaders divided on police crackdown

Community leaders and local councillors across Sydney’s southwestern suburbs are split about the area’s recent police crackdown.

Masked shoppers in one of the latest COVID-19 hotspot suburbs, Lakemba. Picture: Jane Dempster

Community leaders and local councillors have come forward to support the police crackdown in Sydney’s southwestern suburbs as the only way to curb surging case numbers, after critics claimed it unfairly targeted their communities.

Last week, cultural leaders and residents across the LGAs of Liverpool, Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown met to discuss the planned NSW Police crackdown in the three areas, with a clutch of community leaders condemning the authorities’ approach as intimidating and “disproportionately targeted”. The display of force included an additional deployment of 100 officers, a dog squad, mounted police and the use of the police air wing, Polair.

Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Khal Asfour argued that “police should be out in force across all of Greater Sydney, not just our area” and that many in the community believed the police were “over the top”.

He was joined by Liverpool Mayor Wendy Waller, who told The Australian the police approach was not a “community policing exercise”, adding “we didn’t see the same messaging throughout the Bondi outbreak”.

But as NSW Health recorded 77 new locally acquired cases on Sunday – with the majority of infections detected in Sydney’s southwest – leading community figures have come forward in support of the police clampdown.

Cardiologist Yadu Singh, who is a resident in Liverpool, said community leaders should welcome the greater police presence because too many people were “willingly” flouting restrictions.

 

“We can’t have a situation where we have community leaders being divisive and playing politics and victim here,” Dr Singh said. “It’s clear there is a cultural problem in some of these communities when it comes to understanding and abiding Covid regulations.” Dr Singh believes there is strong local support for the police operation, but people feel afraid to speak up.

“We need to have a balanced approach to this … We have had great messaging from the NSW government, with 58 languages used to communicate to different community groups, and the police are here to protect us against the virus, not target us,” Dr Singh said.

“Let’s stop playing the victim and start following the rules more carefully.”

The NSW government should learn from the experience of Victoria and employ members of culturally and linguistically diverse communities as part of its Covid response to share information about prevention, vaccination and testing, leading epidemiologist Nicole Allard says.

Dr Allard, an epidemiologist at the Doherty Institute and clinical lead for the Covid response at community health service cohealth, said the Victorian government had adapted its response in CALD communities to include employing their members as part of the broader rollout.

“The message that we as a community organisation and the Victorian government learned from the state’s harsh lockdown last year and subsequent lockdowns is that it is vital to be employing community members as part of the response.”