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We want your help to stop the Criminal Investigation Amendment Bill 2009. This Bill is currently under review in the Legislation Committee, and will be brought before parliament in early 2010.
If passed, these “stop and search” laws will remove one of your basic civil rights. Currently if a cop wants to search you, the police officer must be able to show they had ‘reasonable suspicion’ that you may be concealing objects pertaining to a crime.
This legislation proposes to remove the requirement of reasonable suspicion.
Removing the need for reasonable suspicion opens the door for unreasonable searches.
If this law passes, you can be searched in whatever area the police commissioner decides needs to be targeted.
There will be no parliamentary overview - and no legal defence for victims. Perth, Northbridge, Fremantle and wherever else the Commissioner decides will turn into police-run zones where you can be stopped, searched, stripped and scrutinised at the whim of whoever is on patrol.
We respect police, and we understand that they have a difficult job. However, these laws will not increase safety.
Instead they will push the problem into different areas, decrease respect for police, and find nothing that the police do not already have the powers to find.
Are you ready to have your rights sacrificed for nothing?
You can help to stop this legislation!
- Write letters and emails to the Premier Colin Barnett, the Police Minister Rob Johnson or to your local MP. Click on the VOICE YOUR VIEWS link to see the addresses you can send your email to, or if you’re in a hurry send our form letter.
- Draft a submission to the Legislation Committee. Click LEGISLATION COMMITTEE to see how you can do this, and a draft of the submission on behalf of Search For Your Rights.
- Be informed about your legal rights and opposition to the bill. Click YOUR RIGHTS in the menu for links to Legal Services Australia, and WORK TOGETHER for other groups who oppose this legislation.
- STAY POSTED for future actions, protests and movements.
Search for your rights!
Random body searches go too far: Hockey
A senior Federal Liberal MP has criticised a push by state and territory governments to increase police powers, saying it threatens individual liberty.
Joe Hockey used a speech to the Grattan Institute in Melbourne last night to take aim at state governments trying to crack down on crime by granting police the power to conduct random searches.
“Surely Australian interpretation of liberty extends to the right of an individual to go about their daily business without being subject to a random body search by police,” he said.
“The police do not have to declare a reason for the body search. In my view this goes too far.”
A spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Tom Percy QC, says WA should drop the proposed laws in wake of the criticism.
Mr Percy says the Police Minister Rob Johnson should reconsider a push to introduce the laws.
“Anyone who knows anything about law and order, crime and punishment realises that harsher measures and increased police measures are not the answer.”
“I think Rob Johnson really needs to discover that there is no linear relationship between harsher measures and increased police powers and reducing crime.”
The Police Minister has dismissed criticism of the state’s proposed stop and search powers.
Rob Johnson says Mr Hockey has no idea of the problems confronting police in Western Australia.
“It’s very easy for some of the federal politicians, especially from the leafy western suburbs of Sydney to stand up and espouse their values and their thoughts but at the end of the day it is the authority of the state to bring in legislation that they believe will care for the safety of their citizens.”
From ABC News, click here for the original.