Plainclothed police officer threatens student and staff
Jason Todd
In a truly shocking incident last week, a staff member and a student in the Fisher Library were threatened with a holstered firearm by an unidentified man, who was later determined to be a plainclothed police officer. Protective Services have declined to take any further action, and appear to consider such reckless disregard for staff and student safety by the police to be acceptable.
The NTEU has written to management demanding serious action on this matter. It is utterly unacceptable that NSW Police feel entitled to freely waltz in armed and unidentified and use this campus as their personal offices, and to casually threaten staff and students in this manner.
The Vice-Chancellor purports to consider personal safety on campus such a priority that it requires crackdowns on fundamental freedom of speech, and restrictions on such dangerous items as posters and megaphones, and yet for almost a week we have heard crickets after an unidentified man threatened staff with a gun in their workplace.
The University has previously raised complaints when police have acted appallingly on campus, will the University act here?
Last Monday, a library staff member was showing a student the directions to a study room that they had booked, and when the staff member tapped on the glass of the room to get the attention of the two occupants and request that they vacate for the student with the booking, the plainclothed man inside stood up, turned towards the staff member and pulled back his jacket to reveal a holstered gun.
The visibly and audibly shaken staff member and student understandably decided that a room booking was not worth being threatened by an unknown man with a gun.
When University Security later came to question the armed man, who had at no stage identified himself as police, his ID was now on the table and he indicated that he was there interviewing a student. He stated that it would have been an inconvenience to get his ID out of his bag earlier, so he decided to flash a gun at a staff member instead, stating “it may not be common in your world, but in my world a gun isn’t that unusual”. Apparently study rooms at a University library should be considered part of “his world” where a firearm is a totally commonplace item to carry as a form of identification.
In response to the staff member’s very justified ongoing concerns, the Protective Services team responded that while the police officer’s conduct “may not have met expectations”, the police officer apologising apparently should have been the end of the matter, that they had no obligation or intention to raise the matter with NSW Police, and that the library was open for students or staff to meet with police officers for personal matters. They suggested that the staff member could raise a complaint with the police himself if he liked. Protective Services even noted that “On a positive note, it’s encouraging to see that the student views the library as a safe place for this conversation to occur”, with a shocking disregard for whether the library is now a safe space for the staff and student who had a gun flashed at them.
An unidentified man with a gun walked into the library in the heart of main campus totally unannounced, then flashed his gun threateningly at staff and a student, and this is seriously the response?
This is not even the first time that this has occurred. Staff may recall that during the NTEU strikes last year, undercover police disguised as students also flashed guns at staff on the picket lines. Unsurprisingly, the University took no action then either. NSW Police also have a sorry history of inappropriate action on campus (sometimes with the active collusion of the University), and of course of extreme violence against staff and students taking part in off-campus protest action.
Having a gun suddenly flashed at you by an unidentified person in the course of doing your job on campus is a deeply unsettling experience that I think would seriously affect any of us, and particularly in light of the recent stabbing on campus. But even more than that, fatal police shootings are at an all-time high, and the NSW Police force have shown themselves to be exceptionally cavalier with the use of firearms. I share the links below (content warning: descriptions of violence and self-harm) to illustrate that it is not an exaggeration to say that armed police on campus pose a legitimate risk of deadly violence towards staff or students. A hooligan with a badge so drunk on his own power that he thinks it’s okay to flash a gun at library staff to “identify” himself is absolutely a safety risk to everyone on campus, much more so than any students in tents ever were.
Links:
Rank-And-File Action USYD 