NSW Festival Drug Policing Challenged in Court
Thursday, 8 May, 2025.
CW: sexual assault; descriptions of invasive police searches
Police use of dogs has historically been associated with brutality and the targeting of marginalised communities. Birmingham, Alabama, 3 May, 1963.
If you’re at a music festival in Australia and police are patrolling with drug sniffer dogs, you know you’re in NSW. You may also be aware that if the dog “indicates” you by approaching you or sitting down next to you, then you are likely to be searched and possibly subjected to a strip search, regardless of whether you have drugs on you or not.
On Monday, May 5, the NSW Supreme Court began hearing a class action suit brought on behalf of more than 3000 festival goers by Redfern Legal Service (RLS) and Slater and Gordon against the State government for unlawful strip searches between 2016 and 2022. The case was initiated in 2022, but on April 2, barely a month before the start of the trial, the government made the stunning admission that the search of the lead plaintiff, Raya Meredith, was in fact unlawful.
“The State of New South Wales has now admitted, on the eve of trial, that there was no lawful basis to strip search the representative plaintiff at a music festival. The State have also admitted that in the course of the strip search the plaintiff was unlawfully directed to remove a tampon and that a male police officer walked in when she was undressed. The admission by the State include that the strip search of the plaintiff constituted an assault, false imprisonment and battery,” the RLS said in an April 2 media release.
The large number of plaintiffs in the class action reflect how prevalent the use of drug dogs at music festivals has become, and how this has led to invasive strip searches. Legally, strip searches should be a measure of last resort, though they have become routine. Moreover, this is not just something that happens at music festivals; police with drug dogs are a common sight patrolling pubs, nightlife areas and train stations, particularly in areas where poorer and more marginalised communities live.
“This is an important step in holding NSW Police accountable for the degrading strip searches that thousands of festival goers were subjected to,” Redfern Legal Centre Supervising Solicitor Sam Lee said in a media statement before the Supreme Court hearing began on May 5.
“For decades, people have been humiliated, intimidated, and often left traumatised by these experiences, with police officers abusing their powers. This class action is about securing justice for those individuals and ending these invasive and unlawful practices. This isn’t just about music festivals — it’s about everyone’s rights and the need for police to follow the law. Strip searches should never have been allowed to become routine practice.”
Gruelling testimony
The court heard the gruelling testimony of lead plaintiff Raya Meredith and her lawyer Kylie Nomchong SC about the search of Meredith at Byron Bay’s Splendour in the Grass festival in 2018.
Meredith described her treatment as “degrading and humiliating,” saying: “It was a horrible thing to go through. It was humiliating, having to expose myself to a complete stranger.”
NSW police admitted in court documents that its July 2018 strip-search of Raya Meredith, which discovered nothing illegal, was unlawful and unjustified, and ignored laws protecting her rights.
Meredith said she was “beyond infuriated” that police denied her version of events yet later admitted that she was telling the truth, saying she felt “violated, yet again” by what was “just a bunch of gaslighting and mind games”.
“It was difficult to have police officers, who were there, who saw it, say I was lying. I don’t like being called a liar … having my integrity called into question,” she said.
Barrister Kylie Nomchong SC told the court that the search of Meredith was “akin to sexual assault”.
She said that Meredith was told by a female police officer to remove her top and bend over, to move her breasts so she could be examined, told to remove her shorts and underwear, then instructed to turn around and bend over. The police officer inspected her vaginal and anal area and asked her if she had “inserted anything”. Meredith said she had a tampon inserted, and she was instructed by the police officer to “pull it out and show it to her”. During the search, a male police officer walked into the cubicle while Meredith was undressed.
“She was utterly shocked and degraded,” Nomchong said, pointing out that none of the safeguards implemented by the NSW Government to protect civilians (which include assurance of privacy, consent being sought, no interrogation during the search, and no cavity searches) were complied with.
“This is an extraordinary case, but not an isolated one, it is at the serious end, but not the most serious,” she said.
The case was initially expected to run over 20 days but is now expected to be shorter due to the police admissions and a reduced number of witnesses being called.
Long overdue changes
While the court can only rule on complaints relating to incidents that have happened in the past, drug harm reduction advocates are hoping it will lead to long overdue changes to NSW policing practices.
One of the recommendations from last year’s NSW Drug Summit is: “Cease the use of drug detection dogs and strip searching for suspected drug possession during the current trial of drug-checking services at music festivals, with consideration to extending this to all music festivals.”
Festival drug checking services in NSW are currently experimental — a 1-year pilot that has provided services at 2 festivals so far. There have been concerns raised that despite police assurances that they will stay away from the drug checking area and not engage in targeted surveillance of service users, the saturation policing and presence of sniffer dogs at events was a barrier to festival goers accessing the service.
However, the Drug Summit recommendations are just recommendations, and previous government inquiries have made similar recommendations. The 2020 Special Commission of Inquiry into the Drug ‘Ice’ recommended removing sniffer dogs from festivals and limiting strip searches, and the 2019 NSW coronial inquiry into festival deaths called for removing the dogs and stopping strip searches at festivals.
There has long been evidence that, far from reducing harm, drug dogs and strip searches at festivals leads to riskier drugtaking practices, such as preloading (taking all drugs before arrival) and panic overdosing (consuming all one's drugs on sight of police), which have been implicated by the NSW Coroners Court in festival deaths.
Strip searches rarely find anything
NSW Police using drug detection dogs to justify unnecessary and unlawful strip searches is not just a problem at music festivals. The dogs are regularly seen being walked through pubs and are a common sight at city, suburban and regional railway stations. Data obtained by the Redfern Legal Service, Greens MP David Shoebridge (when he was in the NSW state parliament) and others, strikingly reveals just how few searches from indication by sniffer dogs result in the discovery of any illicit contraband.
Strip searches justified by indication by a sniffer dog almost doubled from 590 in 2016 to 1,124 in 2017, according to figures obtained by Shoebridge. Given that 64% of these searches did not discover anything, it is highly questionable whether using indication by a dog as a pretext is even legal, as the law states strip searches should be a last resort.
A 2019 UNSW Law report, commissioned by RLS, found that the number of strip searches by NSW police rose from 277 searches in the 12 months prior to 30 November 2006 to 5483 searches in the 12 months to 30 June 2018 — an increase of 20 times in less than 12 years. Suspicion of drug possession was the reason for 91% of strip searches by NSW police in the 2018-19 financial year, the report found.
Only 30% of strip searches in the field in the 2017-18 financial year resulted in a criminal charge. Furthermore, of those charged, 82% were only charged for possession. Fewer than 16.5% of those charged were charged with supply — less than 5% of those stripped search. The report also found that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and youth were disproportionately targeted.
Between 2016 and 2024 almost 900 strip searches have taken place at NSW train stations, including 66 searches of children aged 10 to 17 years, according to data obtained by Redfern Legal Centre from NSW Police in 2024. This data again showed that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were disproportionately targeted.
There are 2 main ways that the use of drug detection dogs can disproportionately affect marginalised or discriminated against sections of the population. Firstly, given that 7 out of 10 dog indications are “false positives” it is likely that the dogs respond to cues (whether conscious or unconscious) from their handlers about who to indicate, and this will be impacted by the handler’s conscious or unconscious biases. Secondly, the suburban railway stations targeted tend to be in low socio-economic areas (which are already overpoliced).
The class action case and the police admissions that the search of Raya Meredith was unlawful are putting a welcome spotlight on a practice that has serious human rights implications. The justification of “supply reduction” lacks credibility when less than 1 in 20 people strip searched end up being charged with supply, and generally not for very large amounts. And the data showing that strip searches cause harm continues to mount, as do the doubts about their legality.
NUAA, the organisation that publishes Users News calls for an end to the use of drug dogs and strip searches — at festivals, railway stations and everywhere else — and calls for the decriminalisation of drugs.