If Morgan Fletcher could jump into a time machine and be back at Above & Beyond Festival, she would change one thing.
She wouldn’t have handed her boyfriend a $50 note.
At the event, in the state of New South Wales, that was apparently grounds for immediate expulsion and an invasive search.
The part-time Woolworths employee had every right to be nervous heading into the Sydney Olympic Park event.
In the week prior to the event, NSW police announced a policy change that meant anybody who had a drug dog sit next to them would have their ticket ripped up, regardless of whether or not drugs were found.
This, despite persistent evidence suggesting police dogs’ failure rate in Australia is up to 75%. Which is to say, out of every five people who have a sniffer dog indicate the possible presence of drugs on their person, only one actually does.
Ultimately, the policy resulted in five ticket holders being denied entry to the festival. They all received ban notices from NSW Police acting on behalf of the Sydney Olympic Park Authority.
Just like Morgan, not one of them was found to be in possession, or under the influence, of drugs.
In a previously-unannounced twist, the five ban notices served will prevent recipients from entering the grounds for six months – which means they cannot attend any events slated for venues in the Park, including ANZ Stadium, Spotless Stadium, or Qudos Bank Arena.
That means no State of Origin, Supanova, GWS Giants home games, netball, International Hockey, NRL Grand Final, Katy Perry or Kendrick Lamar.
Comparatively, Morgan got off lightly… sort of. She was in tears most of the time; had to submit to a nude ‘bend and squat’ strip search; had her phone seized and searched; and suffered the humiliation of being falsely accused of drug supply.
Morgan — who says she consumed two vodka Red Bulls prior to entry, and one inside the event — got to experience it for “about an hour, an hour and a half”.
Then after she handed her boyfriend $50 to buy drinks, she was approached by “four or five” police officers.
“They just said ‘We can’t speak to you here, put your hands in a fist behind your back, come outside and we will explain everything.’”
Aaand here is the best view of a dog we're able to get. pic.twitter.com/PzKciuWk5y
— Jamie McKinnell (@jamie86) June 9, 2018
No explanations were immediately forthcoming outside of the festival grounds:
“They took my bag and everything off me [including my phone] and sent me straight to a booth to be searched,” she says. “I’d already asked multiple times ‘Why am I here, what’s going on? But [the female officer performing the search] kept saying ‘Not sure, I wasn’t in there’.”
The initial search was escalated to a strip search after a male officer entered the booth and asked to have a word with his colleague outside.
“She comes back in and says ‘It’s been reported that you were involved in a drug deal,” Morgan says.
“I said to her in there… ‘Drugs? What the hell? I handed money to my boyfriend to go to the bar about five minutes before this, so maybe it’s just a misunderstanding?’
There was no reply, so Morgan had to squat to prove she was not transporting drugs on her person.
“I honestly felt so uncomfortable, and absolutely violated – which she could see – so she then made the comment ‘It’s more uncomfortable for me, don’t worry!’”
The next officer she spoke to demanded the passcode to her phone, “which I gave him, but he never asked if he could even go through it!”
“I kept saying ‘I don’t do this. This isn’t me! I’m not a drug user, I don’t sell drugs! I’m here for my boyfriend’s birthday!’” Morgan recalls.
“Next, another officer approached me and said “Hi, how much have you had to drink tonight?”
“I replied very clearly ‘I’ve had two vodka Red Bulls here, and one drink at home before we left.’
“And he says ‘Oh yuck, why would you drink that?’”
She remembers the officer’s next words vividly:
“Yeah, look. You won’t be going back in. I’ve been doing this a long time and when someone says they had 2-3 drinks they’ve usually had a lot more.”
Morgan was never given the option of undergoing a breath test.
Morgan’s post after the event.
Defence lawyer Adam Ly told GOAT Morgan’s detainment almost certainly constituted an arrest.
“Being under arrest isn’t being read your rights or being placed in handcuffs, it’s a factual thing. Put it this way: If she had run [from the search booth] and police chased after her, she was under arrest.”
Placing Morgan under arrest would have required police to have reasonable suspicion she had committed, or was in the process of committing a crime.
“In my opinion, police simply observing her handing money to a man is not enough [for police to have formed reasonable suspicion].”
“If that’s all police saw, and they hadn’t followed her around, observed her acting suspiciously or holding something like a little bag, Morgan might have some grounds to sue police for false imprisonment or unlawful [detainment] – if she’s got witnesses.”
On Tuesday, Greens MP and Sniff Off Founder David Shoebridge described Morgan’s experience as “a serious abuse of police powers.”
“We’ll be challenging this in public, in parliament and in the courts.”
Tom Raue (second from the right) at court.
The day before the event, Sniff Off volunteer Tom Raue had challenged the NSW Police announcement in court, hoping to protect people like Morgan’s right to attend the ticketed event even if they were targeted by the dogs.
The case was ultimately dismissed in the Supreme Court by Justice Michael Pembroke, who said the court didn’t work on the basis of “hypotheticals.”
“They’re fighting a war on drugs that doesn’t make sense. But they need it to make sense, otherwise what they’ve been doing for the last 50 years has been a waste, and that’s hard to face,” Raue tells GOAT.
Adam, the defence lawyer GOAT spoke to, says he personally believes the Above & Beyond policy infringes upon “basic civil liberties.”
Adam thinks NSW police enacted the policy due to a rise he’s noticed in clients retaining his services after attempting to transport drugs in body cavities.
“Police aren’t allowed to perform cavity searches, so with this policy, they think they’re preventing people potentially transporting drugs into the festival.”
Tom thinks the end of the drug dog program is inevitable, but believes things will get worse before they get better.
Still, he sees the drug dog operation as a final, desperate gasp of a failed operation: “The death rattle of the war on drugs.”
Drug dogs at Above and Beyond LIVE
Posted by Sniff Off on Saturday, 9 June 2018
Sniff off volunteers at the event.
“Look, if police want legitimacy and they want the community to work with them, then the onus is on them to actually stop picking on people,” Tom said “Stop over-policing Redfern and over-policing music festivals, and actually earn that trust.
“If they don’t earn it, people should stand up to them.”