New target in push for greater wanding powers

Senior police want knife “wanding” powers expanded to

shopping centres as they mark the first anniversary of the historic Jack’s Law with a huge haul of illegal weapons.

Officers hailed the success of the one-year-old legislation, named after Gold Coast teen Jack Beasley, who was stabbed to death in Surfers Paradise in December 2019. Parents Brett and Belinda launched the Jack Beasley Foundation to lobby for police to be equipped with metal detectors to crack down on knife crime.

Police said since Jack’s Law in March last year, 508 weapons from box cutters and screwdrivers to tomahawks, butcher’s knives and machetes had been taken off streets.

More than 50,000 people have been scanned on public transport and in the state’s safe night precincts, with almost 1400 charged with 2469 offences.

Police Youth Crime Taskforce acting assistant commissioner Andrew Massingham said Jack’s Law had been a major success and police were keen to see it widened to allow scanning of people in shopping centres.

He said police had made a submission to state cabinet and were hopeful of the increased powers “in the near future”.

“This is a very powerful way of ensuring our community is safe,” he said. “For more than 500 weapons to be taken off the streets in a year, that’s 500 potential acts of violence disrupted, and people protected.”

Some frontline police are concerned expanded Jack’s Law powers will place further strain on already stretched resources and risk a civil liberties backlash.

But Mr Massingham said wanding operations could only be authorised in response to serious crimes in an area and would not take precedence over high-priority police jobs.

He could “count on one hand” the number of complaints police had received about the wanding operations, which do not require search warrants, he said.

Police wanted the extra powers because armed robberies and other crimes were at shopping centres.

Mrs Beasley said she and her husband were “gobsmacked” at the amount of weapons seized and would like every state police officer to have a metal detector.