Police powers to search in New South Wales

NSW Police have removed their contentious target system for carrying out personal searches and move-on orders, following controversy and heightened scrutiny.

Previously, the use of numerical goals to monitor performance across police area commands attracted criticism from various legal bodies and activists as enabling abuses of powers.

In the 2020-21 period, officers had quotas to conduct more than 240,000 personal searches, issue nearly 110,000 move-on directions and detect 305,000 crimes.

This was despite a fall in crime rates across most categories between 2019 and 2021.

Furthermore, even despite the pandemic, police persisted with the quota strategy despite crime rates dipping to historical lows in some categories and remaining largely stable in others.