An afternoon stroll at the park turned into an arrest for an Australian man who was walking maskless with his toddler daughter in Sydney suburbs.
A 31-year-old father was handcuffed by police in Garrison Point Reserve Park in George’s Hall, a suburb of local government area (LGA) City of Canterbury-Bankstown, which is located 14.9 miles southwest of Sydney in the state of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.
Video footage of the incident was obtained by the Daily Mail.
The video shows an agitated man sitting on the ground, his hands handcuffed behind his back, as a little child — his two-year-old daughter, reportedly — is being lightly held by a woman, possibly a bystander. A stroller is seen nearby. Two police officers are arguing with the man and telling him to calm down.
“Come on, guys. Come on, man, be fair a little bit,” an operator filming a commotion told the officers, “He’s got a daughter here. She is by herself. Look, the little girl is scared, man.” He added that such behavior of the officers would traumatize a girl. One of the officers told the filming man that the man had “committed an offense.” “He hasn’t committed an offense,” the bystander replied, “I walked past and saw everything.” As he got closer to the officers, arguing with them loudly and seemingly trying to interrupt the arrest, an officer warned he was hindering the police, so the man backed and continued filming from a distance.
The father then demanded the police bring his daughter back to him as a prerequisite for him talking. As the child was called and gestured to “go to daddy” and sat on his lap, the man repeated his story that he was taking his child to his sister-in-law’s for babysitting so he could exercise at the park. “Tell me what I did wrong,” he asked, to which an officer replied, “You were arrested because you committed an offense. We asked you to get a mask.” The father insisted that he was going to jog after he dropped off his daughter, for which he would not have to wear a mask. The officer insisted it was an “offense,” and that the father would have to leave.
As the dad calmed down, one of the officers took the handcuffs off him, allowing him to hug his young daughter. The Daily Mail reports the man was slapped with a fine for failing to wear a face mask, with no further action anticipated.
The police also explained to the paper the man “became verbally abusive and aggressive toward the officers when they spoke to him about not wearing a mask,” and that he was asked politely a couple of times to comply — which he refused to do — before the officers had to restrain him.
Under NSW’s statewide lockdown rules, when not at home, residents must wear facemasks in all indoor and outdoor settings, with limited exceptions. Those over 18 who do not wear or carry a mask can face a $500 fine (367.62 USD), and younger Australians would have to pay a $40 (29.41 USD)-$80 (58.82 USD) penalty for noncompliance.
Also, since most of the movement outside of one’s home is strictly limited, and a person may only leave home when he has a “reasonable excuse,” police check-ups have become commonplace in NSW. One must be ready to provide the police with his address and vaccination status.
Generally, residents of NSW are allowed to exercise outdoors within five km (3.1 miles) from home or within one’s LGA, but one may only have one companion to do so.
Last week, the NSW government expanded the freedoms of those fully vaccinated Australians. In addition to being able to exercise outdoors for one extra hour, Aussies now may congregate together outdoors if their group is fewer than five fully vaccinated persons, and the duration of the gathering does not exceed one hour.
Australian news outlet Mirage reported on Wednesday that police in NSW are often being spotted using excessive and undue force while arresting people for alleged lockdown breaches, which erodes the public trust in law enforcement. On top of that, people are growing restless under the draconian lockdown rules, which are aimed at curbing the spread of the virus but accomplish little other than impairing people’s lives.
Per the paper:
Anger, desperation and frustration are mounting across Australia as protesters say they are growing tired of “politically-motivated” lockdowns that have so far failed to curb surging Covid-19 cases.
Despite the risks posed by such protests, many across the state choose to attend protests to express their frustration over the ongoing restrictions that they believe are mistargeted and cause unnecessary harm to lives and livelihoods.
The outlet compiled a list of videos showing police mercilessly detaining maskless protestors. While acknowledging the importance of the role of law enforcement, the paper quips that “it is hard to justify the use of unnecessary and excessive force against fellow Australians in these cases, especially where, as seen in many videos online, there are no threats or resistance against police.”
In the beginning of August, NSW bulked up the police presence in the Greater Sydney area and some of the other “LGAs of concern” and deployed the military to suppress the anti-lockdown protests and force people to comply with harsh rules.
