By Angus Thompson and Pallavi Singhal
NSW Police aimed to conduct almost a quarter of a million personal searches last financial year as part of a quota-driven system slammed as a politically motivated "numbers game" by the state's ex-top prosecutor.
Figures revealed under freedom-of-information laws show individual police area commands are set targets for the execution of powers such as searches and move-on orders, as well as addressing an array of crimes, with people in some areas targeted for searches at nearly 13 times the average rate.
The internal statistics show police aimed to undertake 241,632 searches in the financial year ending June 2019, an eight per cent rise on the previous year's target. The actual number of searches undertaken was 238,813, about 100 fewer than 2018.
The search target for 2019-20 is 237,089.
A Herald analysis of the data revealed Kings Cross area command had one of the highest targets in 2019 with almost 8800 searches, the equivalent of 44 searches for every 100 people living in the area.
Former director of public prosecutions Nicholas Cowdery, QC, who is now the president of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, said the use of targets meant there was "great potential for abuse of power."
Police patrol outside Field Day at The Domain on New Year's Day.Credit: Sydney Morning Herald
"If a target is set by superior officers, especially a target that will be relevant to performance assessment, natural human response will be to seek to meet the target by proper or improper means - by fudging, by exercising power where it is not properly warranted," he said.
A NSW Police spokesperson said the targets were part of various "proactive strategies as part of an ongoing commitment to reducing crime and the fear of crime in the community."
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge, who obtained the information, said personal searches could be traumatising and were only meant to be undertaken when police were satisfied they were necessary.
"The fact that people are being stopped and searched, not to address the circumstances on the ground, but to meet arbitrary quotas, is a dreadful development," he said.
“It is particularly troubling that thousands of these quota-driven searches are in fact strip searches with all the distress and trauma that they can bring."
Strip searches, of which almost 5700 took place in the 2018 calendar year, require officers to meet a higher legal threshold than general searches, which range from a frisking to asking someone to remove outer layers of clothing.
The police spokesperson said under state law officers must hold a reasonable suspicion when executing searches.
"A search cannot be conducted if this criteria is not met," the spokesperson said.
Police conducted 2200 extra searches on top of their set target in Auburn, the equivalent of 37 per cent more.
The lowest proportional targets were for Quakers Hill and Ryde, set at less than one search for every 100 people.
One serving leading senior constable said there was pressure from commanders, especially on junior officers, to record more incidents, describing the justification for doing so as "absolute garbage".
"They would rather you have a 100 no-finds than do three searches and find something because they think there’s some correlation between that and crime going down," the officer, who spoke to the Herald on the condition of anonymity, said.
The figures, which include but do not distinguish between strip searches being conducted, come as the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, the state's independent police oversight body, prepares to release its report into officers breaching search powers following public revelations of teenagers being illegally strip searched.
The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission is preparing to release a report on unlawful strip searches at music festivals.Credit: James Alcock
The revelations, coupled with the rising number of strip searches, has prompted the Redfern Legal Centre to call for the commission to investigate whether there is a correlation between the two.
The police spokesperson said "proactive" policing strategies, such as using personal search and move-on powers, "have been proven to significantly drive down crime", citing a recent Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research report.
However, the report found "no evidence that increases in move-on directions and person searches have an immediate suppression effect on burglary, motor vehicle theft and robbery" but that "sustained high levels" of policing could be linked to a fall of up to 3 per cent in these three crimes.
The spokesperson said police had a business plan target for executing those powers, which was calculated each financial year using a three-year average of incidents.
But Mr Cowdery described relying on the calculations as a "false exercise".
"It's very much a numbers game because the targets cannot be based on genuine assessments of the level of criminal offending in the community and ways in which it should be addressed, it's a political exercise on the part of the police and, consequently, on the part of the government," Mr Cowdery said.
The Herald calculated the search rates in proportion to the total number of people registered as living within each police district at the last census. Populations were divided evenly where the same postcode was served by multiple police districts.