New South Wales Police have defended their operation on Oxford Street over the weekend, arguing they do not target communities and this is standard behaviour.
On Saturday, September 12, police conducted another “intelligence-led” operation in the Surry Hills precinct, with venues like Arq, Palms, Beresford and Kinselas targeted amongst others.
The operation to disrupt drug supply resulted in no charges or arrests, with police searching 65 people, which resulted in 28 drug detections and 12 fines issued.
The operation has been criticised by members of the community as well as industry stakeholders, who say it impacts the night-time economy.
“Nobody in the night-time economy is arguing that police should ignore serious crime or organised drug supply. Of course they shouldn’t. But there is a very important difference between intelligence-led policing and policing that simply looks intelligence-led,” said James Thorpe, Vice-Chair of the Night Time Industries Association.
“If the objective is to disrupt commercial drug supply, then police resources should be directed at commercial supply. Searching large numbers of patrons in gay venues and producing fines for low-level possession is not the same thing as dismantling the supply chain.”
However, Deputy Commissioner Peter McKenna dismissed this during a conversation with Hamish Macdonald on ABC Radio Sydney.
“If you don’t think this is inter-related you are very much mistaken… It all comes down to demand, demand equals supply, so we’ve got to target it at every level,” he said.
McKenna defended the police actions, saying they went to 14 venues in Surry Hills on the night, of which five may be considered LGBTQIA+ ones.
“People saying that we are raiding or targeting any community, or picking on anyone in particular, that’s not the case, that’s complete misinformation,” he said.
McKenna said he had reviewed the body-worn camera footage from Saturday night’s incident and found the police were polite and professional, and said there had been no strip searches.
“There were no strip searches, but someone may have been asked to remove a jacket… that’s as intrusive as it gets.”
McKenna was also party to the review of the June 13 operation, which saw the police referred to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC).
“We had one complaint from someone that was searched during the June operation; however, some people decided to refer the matter to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, citing intimidation, aggression and unlawful conduct by police,” he said.
“We reviewed those matters, and that was not found to be the case at all, the evidence did not support it.”
However the LECC disagreed with that assessment and involved statutory powers to force the misconduct investigation to be reopened.
Police conducted 220 of these types of operations in 2025, with McKenna saying Surry Hills was not the area most frequently targeted for drug operations, but did have a higher-than-average detection rate.
“Surry Hills is about ninth on the list, it’s nowhere near the most that we run,” he said.
When pressed by Macdonald on which command areas were targeted more, McKenna could not respond, nor did the police media unit when Gay Sydney Daily posed the same question to them.
McKenna was backed up by the President of the Police Association, Kevin Morton, who told 2GB that police do not discriminate.
“The underlying issue is that drugs are illegal, our police don’t discriminate,” he said.
In 2024, then-NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb apologised for the force’s handling of gay hate crimes after a report found officers were “indifferent, negligent, dismissive or hostile” over a period of 40 years.
Morton addressed comments by James Twigg, a patron at Arq on Saturday, who said people all left the venue following the arrival of police.
“You don’t leave a venue if you’ve got nothing to hide,” said Morton.
Premier Chris Minns also backed the police yesterday, telling reporters that police had a difficult job.
“I don’t accept the premise that they are picking on any particular group in our community,” he said.
Independent Sydney MP Alex Greenwich told Macdonald yesterday that he had received some complaints of inappropriate police action and was collating all evidence from the September raids to add to the current investigation.
“Thank you to everyone who shared their experience with me about police conduct on Saturday on Oxford St. I’m sorry for what you experienced,” he said.
“I’m collating this as additional evidence for the current investigation by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission that was established by my request in June.”
