Specialist police armed with long-arm semiautomatic rifles will be deployed to the MCG for the Boxing Day Test in an escalation of security measures for the event.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police said officers from the Critical Incident Response Team would patrol outside the MCG as an additional safeguard.<\/p>\n
Police said the move was a proactive step based on the current threat environment and not related to any specific new threat.<\/p>\n
Victoria Police said it had been working with Cricket Australia and the Melbourne Cricket Club, which were supportive of the move.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Victoria Police says there is no specific new threat to the Boxing Day Test. (AAP: James Ross)<\/p>\n
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said the increased police presence should reassure attendees that the event was safe.<\/p>\n
“This overt presence is about adding another layer of protection to make sure cricket fans feel safe,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We know it’s unusual to see police with these weapons outside the MCG, but I want to assure everyone this is about greater safety and providing reassurance to the community.”<\/p>\n
The specialist police will patrol around the MCG concourse and approaches to the ground, including Birrarung Marr, Jolimont Railway Station and Yarra Park.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Critical Incident Response Team is trained to respond to major incidents and was used in the search for Dezi Freeman. (ABC News: Tara Whitchurch)<\/p>\n
General duties police and officers from the Mounted Branch and the Public Order Response Team will attend, as is normally the case for the Boxing Day Test.<\/p>\n
“These deployments are part of our usual, broader effort which sees police and MCC security working in and outside the ground,” Commissioner Bush said.<\/p>\n
“Be it at the cricket or anywhere else people are spending the summer, Victoria Police is here for all Victorians.<\/p>\n
“As a modern, forward-thinking police force, we should always be looking for new and different ways to be there for our communities.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Specialist police armed with long-arm semiautomatic rifles will be deployed to the MCG for the Boxing Day Test…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[53166,740,4634,43,18021,44,1158,4206,41,39,42,40,15466],"class_list":["post-363433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-boxing-day-test","tag-cricket","tag-guns","tag-headlines","tag-mcg","tag-news","tag-police","tag-security","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}