The Premier of NSW has met privately with key multicultural leaders from Sydney's south-west following the announcement of a major police operation which has drawn criticism.
Key points:
- This is the first COVID-19 police operation of such magnitude to target a specific area in Sydney
- Lakemba MP Jihad Dib said strong-arming the community wasn't the answer
- The Lebanese Muslim Association president said this "disproportionate" response could have harmful results
At 7:00am on Friday, more than 100 extra police officers will be deployed around south-western Sydney to ensure compliance with health orders as COVID-19 spreads through several suburbs in the area.
Health authorities are most worried about the local government areas (LGAs) of Liverpool, Fairfield and Canterbury-Bankstown, where almost 1 million people live.
When announcing the operation on Thursday afternoon, Assistant Commissioner Tony Cooke said there were still too many people leaving their homes without a valid reason.
Around 90 minutes after this announcement, the Premier held an online meeting with about 250 community leaders and frontline workers from Sydney's south-west.
The media were initially invited to the meeting but were later told they could not attend.
Western Sydney Migrant Resource Centre CEO Kamalle Dabboussy told the ABC it was a constructive meeting, with questions around policing, vaccine supplies and testing rates.
He said concerns were raised about the intensified police presence but assurances were given that police would work with the community.
Mr Dabboussy also said testing rates in Sydney’s south-west were not high enough — about 15 per cent of the testing rate in Sydney's east — and the message for people to get tested and isolate needed to be clearer.
“Questions were raised about where those facilities are, how accessible they could be and whether or not there is enough knowledge as to where the testing sites exactly are," he said.
The optics of the police operation have been criticised by some for targeting one of the most multicultural areas in Australia with a more heavy-handed approach than used in other areas during the pandemic.
Although extra police were deployed to enforce restrictions during the northern beaches outbreak over Christmas, and there was an increased presence in Bondi over summer, this is the first area-focused operation of such magnitude.
Lakemba MP Jihad Dib said the situation was fragile and strong-arming was not the answer as it could lead to angst and stigmatism.
"While it's important to have compliance … what we need to do is make sure we don't create it in a way that instils panic or fear," he said.
"If this is about putting a whole heap of police there because we don't trust the community, then I worry about that."
ABC News
)Mr Dib said the focus should be on communication not fines as the first task at hand is to make sure everyone understands clearly what they can and can't do.
"People will be compliant when you give them reasons why they need to be and make it clear.
"Remember, if we're all in this together, we're all in it together not one group separate to the other."
Mr Dib said the optics matter and could even jeopardise the good relationship between the community and the police.
"If some people feel that it's the police against them, it undermines an incredible amount of hard work that's happened between the community and the police over many, many years.
"I imagine people would be quite concerned that it might mean somebody could go into their house and do a check on their house or something."
Assistant Commissioner Tony Cooke said multicultural liaison officers were deployed in the area weeks ago and police will endeavour to be as fair as possible.
"This is about us working together to comply with these orders and about police supporting [the community]. Where we don't get that compliance, however, we will enforce."
Lebanese Muslim Association president Samier Dandan said the police hadn't cracked down as hard on other areas in the past and this "disproportionate" response would have harmful impacts.
ABC News
)"This is highly problematic and reinforces the experience of this community being over-policed and continues to create heightened sensitivities around the over-scrutinisation of these communities," Mr Dandan said.
"We would have appreciated a much more balanced response and something that is more in line with their response to communities elsewhere who had similar clusters.”
Epidemiologist Nancy Baxter from the University of Melbourne said "fingers were being pointed" at this area of Sydney where a lot of essential workers live.
She said the lockdown of public housing towers in Melbourne had demonstrated there is inequity in how police treat certain communities.
"It's not that people in these LGAs are necessarily not behaving as well as people in other LGAs, the issue is there are a lot of essential workers there so they're going to work, picking up the virus and they're bringing it home," she said.
"It isn't spreading because there's more bad behaviour in those communities."
Professor Baxter said there needed to be much greater restriction in movement or there will be a fourth week of lockdown.
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2021-07-08 09:37:13Z
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