New South Wales Police have said they will “review and consider” a ruling made in the Australian courts yesterday in which a woman was awarded AUS$93,000 in damages in relation to an unlawful strip search that she was forced to endure at the Splendour In The Grass music festival back in 2018.
Judge Dina Yehia ruled that a NSW police officer was “entirely wrong” to assume that a strip search was justified simply because a drug detection dog “sniffed towards” festival-goer Raya Meredith at the 2018 event. “The actions of the searching police officer went far beyond those objectively necessary for the purposes of the search”, the judge added.
Meredith is the lead claimant in a class action involving 3000 people who were searched by NSW Police at music festivals between 2016 and 2022. The lawyers representing Meredith say this is the “largest class action against any police force in Australian history”, while the NSW government has admitted it could face liabilities of up to AUS$150 million if the class action is successful.
Speaking after yesterday’s ruling, Meredith said pursuing the case against NSW Police had been “harrowing and traumatising”, before adding, “NSW Police have admitted fault by me and now need to take ownership for the wrongdoings to the rest of the class”.
According to SBS News, after a drug detection dog indicated that Meredith may be carrying drugs at the Splendour In The Grass festival in 2018, she was made to remove all her clothing, including her underwear and a tampon, in a make-shift cubicle that did not offer privacy. Although a female officer undertook the search, at one point a male police officer walked into the cubicle without warning.
Meredith, 27 years old at the time, was detained for around 30 minutes before being let go after officers failed to find any drugs or other prohibited items on her. The judge ruled that police breached safeguards meant to protect the privacy and bodily autonomy of individuals being strip searched, including failing to formally brief Meredith before the strip search began in order to gain her consent.
Earlier this year, two years into the legal case, the NSW government admitted that police had acted unlawfully during the search on Meredith. However that admission did not extend to the other festival-goers involved in the class action, and NSW Police did not formally apologise to Meredith, something that the judge said was “confounding” and an “own goal”.
Yehia awarded Meredith AUS$43,000 in general damages for assault, battery and false imprisonment; AUS$30,000 in aggravated damages because of serious departures from state law and NSW Police policies; and a further AUS$20,000 because the government took two years to admit fault.
The judge also said that Meredith should be paid additional exemplary damages because of systemic failure on the part of NSW Police to properly train its officers. However, she said those damages should be calculated after the court has considered the claims of the other 3000 people involved in the class action.
According to ABC, lawyers working on the class action said yesterday’s ruling “could render thousands of strip searches unlawful” and would have significant implications on police searches in the future that are conducted on “mere suspicion” or through drug detection dogs.
Lawyer William Zerno also told reporters, “We’re urging the state to bring this shameful chapter of police abuses to an end and negotiate a settlement for the remainder of the group”.