Sigh….
Maybe they’ve been told not to hassle the festivals by Macquarie St so. they have to pick on easy targets just around the corner ?
As the concrete brutalist police HQ is only a hop and a skip from Oxford St where LGBTQ venues taht have been in operation at least twice the lifespans of your average constable why not pop out and hassle the shit out of their clientele so as to put the knife into the shadow of nightlife that remains at the bottom of Oxford street.
If the police are allowed to in anyway involved in Mardigras 2027 then you know it is officially all over
The Sydney Morning Herald
More than a dozen NSW police have raided a handful of Oxford Street clubs just a day after the state government hosted a roundtable to canvass the impact that the watchdog-referred police drug raids in June had on LGBTQI+ nightlife venues.
On Saturday, police with drug-detection dogs were allegedly asking patrons at several Oxford Street venues to remove clothing in public view, walking the dogs along queues and questioning patrons about why they were leaving venues or what they were doing in the bathroom, said MP for Sydney Alex Greenwich.
He said that “a large visual presence of police” of between 12 and 20 officers raided multiple LGBTQI+ venues, including Darlinghurst’s Universal, Palms, Arq and Kinselas, while also entering The Dolphin and The Beresford in Surry Hills, and Darlinghurst’s Oxford Art Factory.
NSW Police Acting Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna said that 65 people were searched in an “intelligence-led, prevention-focused, high-visibility operation in Surry Hills” which resulted in 28 drug detections, 12 fines, six cannabis cautions and one move-on direction.
Police inspected 15 venues and identified four licensing breaches and one minor inside a venue.
“Officers were deployed to the Oxford Street Entertainment Precinct where they aimed to proactively disrupt and address drug supply and possession, antisocial behaviour and other offences related to illicit drugs,” McKenna said.
He said that while NSW Police ran a similar program across the state “intermittently”, the Surry Hills precinct had a “higher than average detection rate for prohibited drugs; it is not the most frequented command to have such operations occur”.
“There is no targeting of any venues frequented by any minority group, but rather the whole entertainment precinct, in line with every other police command,” McKenna continued.
