{"id":282847,"date":"2026-02-09T23:12:47","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T23:12:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282847\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T23:12:47","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T23:12:47","slug":"chris-minns-defends-police-in-impossible-situation-after-accusations-of-violence-against-protesters-in-sydney-australian-police-and-policing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/282847\/","title":{"rendered":"Chris Minns defends police in \u2018impossible situation\u2019 after accusations of violence against protesters in Sydney | Australian police and policing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labor backbench and Greens MPs say the police response to a protest against the Israeli president\u2019s visit on Monday evening was \u201cwildly inappropriate\u201d \u2013 but the New South Wales<\/a> premier, Chris Minns, has defended police actions, saying they were \u201cput in an impossible situation\u201d.<\/p>\n

The state Greens MLC Abigail Boyd alleged she was \u201ctargeted and attacked\u201d by police during the rally, injuring her wrist and chin.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel quite naive, but I didn\u2019t know that this was what police could do in our state,\u201d she told ABC radio on Tuesday morning. \u201cI feel just absolutely shocked.\u201d<\/p>\n

NSW police pepper sprayed protesters<\/a> at the Sydney rally to Town Hall opposing Israeli president Isaac Herzog\u2019s visit. They arrested 27 people and said 10 officers were assaulted though none of those assaults were serious.<\/p>\n

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Minns has defended the police response as well as the controversial protest restrictions that a member of his government said had created a \u201cpressure cooker\u201d situation.<\/p>\n

He told Channel Nine\u2019s Today program on Tuesday morning that police were \u201cput in an impossible situation last night\u201d after protesters defied a protest restriction preventing them from marching to NSW parliament introduced after the Bondi attack. The protest went ahead despite a NSW supreme court case in which the Palestine Action Group failed to overturn additional sweeping powers<\/a> handed to police for the duration of Herzog\u2019s visit.<\/p>\n

Minns said police had done \u201ceverything possible to avoid that confrontation, starting last week when they begged protest organisers to have it in Hyde Park, where it was safe and a march could take place\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we can say today, what we couldn\u2019t say yesterday, is that we had 7,000 Jewish mourners in the same city at the same time, and police had to keep those two groups apart.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, said he was \u201cdevastated\u201d by the scenes but said they had \u201cundermined\u201d the protesters\u2019 cause and the Israeli president\u2019s visit was appropriate.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should be able to express their views peacefully but the police were very clear about the routes that were required if people wanted to march to go a particular route, and to ensure that this was done peacefully,\u201d he told Triple M Hobart.<\/p>\n

Josh Lees, an organiser for the Palestine Action Group, said Monday night\u2019s events were the worst he had seen after attending many pro-Palestine events in recent years. He told ABC Radio Sydney<\/a> that if police had facilitated a peaceful march, which \u201cwe called for all along\u201d, then \u201call of this could have been avoided\u201d.<\/p>\n

The Palestine Action Group plans to hold another event on Tuesday evening at NSW police\u2019s station in Surry Hills to demand all charges against protesters on Monday be dropped and to demand accountability for officers\u2019 behaviour.<\/p>\n

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, left, with the Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, during a ceremony to honour the victims of the Bondi beach terror attack. Photograph: Hollie Adams\/Reuters<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could have marched [to parliament] and then dispersed,\u201d Lees said. \u201cInstead, police kettled people into that area outside Town Hall and then charged them repeatedly. This is the worst I\u2019ver seen, where police were absolutely off the chain.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey just kept charging, pepper-spraying everyone. People who had been pepper-sprayed, who were on the ground, were then trampled by police.\u201d<\/p>\n

One incident captured in footage from the scene appeared to showed a number of men kneeling to pray before some were dragged away by police. Asked about the video on Tuesday, Minns rejected the idea it showed police were disproportionately focused on the Muslim community.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe context is incredibly important, and the context here was in the middle of what was a riotous behaviour,\u201d he said. \u201cNow I\u2019m not suggesting that those who are engaging in prayer were conducting that behaviour but police are left with a difficult situation when they\u2019ve asked people to clear the area.\u201d<\/p>\n

The NSW Greens MP and the party\u2019s justice spokesperson, Sue Higginson, said she would be referring \u201cwildly inappropriate\u201d police actions, which she alleged included police horse charges, \u201cunprovoked assault and severe police violence\u201d, to the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw with my own eyes something I had hoped to never see, but the video footage that is spreading across social media is all the evidence that any of us need to see the descent of NSW into a police state.\u201d<\/p>\n

NSW police assistant commissioner Peter McKenna vehemently defended the actions of the police, saying officers had showed restraint against protesters for more than an hour before the clashes began.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery police officer will have to justify their own actions, there\u2019s no doubt about that,\u201d McKenna told ABC Radio Sydney. \u201cBut what I\u2019ll say is what happened last night was one of the most precarious, volatile situations I have seen \u2026 The level of aggression and violence by the crowd was palpable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was asked about video footage that appears to show officers punching a man, and the video of the men praying. McKenna said people should not take \u201csnippets\u201d of footage out of context.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf their decisions were right, wrong or otherwise, I\u2019m not going to sit here and judge them this morning, because I saw what they were up against last night,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The federal minister for social services and MP for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, said videos shared on social media of the protest were \u201cvery concerning\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI expect they\u2019ll be investigated,\u201d she told the ABC. Plibersek said protesters \u201cabsolutely\u201d had the right to protest but should have heeded police advice not to seek to march to NSW parliament.<\/p>\n

Labor NSW upper house member Stephen Lawrence, one of four backbench government MPs to support or attend the rally, said the state should have facilitated a peaceful protest.<\/p>\n

He was among those who questioned the linkage of the Bondi attack and pro-Palestine protests after the extension of a public assembly restriction declaration<\/a> this month and the \u201cmajor event\u201d powers unsuccessfully challenged at the supreme court.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve removed that capacity to have those sorts of processions and protests authorised,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was a pretty much inevitable consequence of that.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t like to be right about a thing like this but it\u2019s been repeatedly said in parliament, and in different places, we\u2019re basically creating a pressure cooker and we saw that last night.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labor backbench and Greens MPs say the police response to a protest against the Israeli president\u2019s visit on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282848,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":{"0":"post-282847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282847\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}