{"id":80473,"date":"2026-08-26T03:00:28","date_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/80473\/"},"modified":"2026-08-26T03:00:28","modified_gmt":"2026-08-26T03:00:28","slug":"statistics-show-who-queensland-police-have-searched-for-weapons-or-wanded-without-warrant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/80473\/","title":{"rendered":"Statistics show who Queensland police have searched for weapons, or wanded, without warrant"},"content":{"rendered":"

More than one in 10 people searched for weapons in Queensland under expanded police powers identified as First Nations, statistics show.<\/p>\n

Advocates have expressed concern about those numbers, but police say scanning operations are based on “identified risks”, not demographic characteristics.<\/p>\n

Data shows during the period of 18 July 2025 \u2014 when wanding powers were expanded \u2014 to 30 June 2026, police conducted a total of 160,997 scans.<\/p>\n

Of these, 17,909, or 11 per cent of people scanned, identified as First Nations while 49 per cent identified as non-Indigenous.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

From when the laws were introduced to June 30, police conducted a total of 160,997 scans.\u00a0 (ABC News: Lucas Hill)<\/p>\n

Thirty-nine per cent did not state their Indigenous status or it was not recorded.<\/p>\n

The data captures people who may have been wanded more than once.<\/p>\n

In Queensland, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people represent 4.6 per cent of the population, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"a<\/p>\n

Greg Shadbolt is the principal legal officer of ATSILS Queensland. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Greg Shadbolt, who is the principal legal officer of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) for Queensland, was concerned by the figures.<\/p>\n

“Those percentage figures \u2026 about two and a half times what you’d expect, are certainly concerning,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It really does come down to training and so on and addressing the potential for cultural stereotyping.”<\/p>\n

Mr Shadbolt said ATSILS was concerned wanding fit into the broader issue of the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the criminal justice system.<\/p>\n

“That’s contrary to the Closing the Gap targets for trying to reduce the numbers of First Nation Australians in prisons,” he said.<\/p>\n

“So that’s a real concern.”<\/p>\n

Mr Shadbolt said the organisation never opposed measures to reduce knife violence.<\/p>\n

When police previously provided these statistics <\/a>\u2013 for the period of 2 April 2023 to 24 February 2025 \u2014 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders as a percentage of the total were 6.92 per cent.<\/p>\n

\"Police<\/p>\n

Queensland police have the powers to randomly search or wand people for a weapon without a warrant in a public place. (ABC News: Lucas Hill)<\/p>\n

George Newhouse, who is the chief executive of human rights law firm National Justice Project, was equally as concerned as Mr Shadbolt by the “significant disparity”.<\/p>\n

“As lawyers working with First Nations communities, we know that interactions with police are not happening in a vacuum,” he said.<\/p>\n

“First Nations people are already disproportionately represented throughout the criminal justice system.”<\/p>\n

Mr Newhouse said there were questions to be asked.<\/p>\n

“Either they’re exercising their discretion in a way that is kind of vacuuming up Aboriginal people into this system, or they’re specifically targeting Aboriginal areas,” he said.<\/p>\n

‘Either way, you have to ask why.”<\/p>\n

He called for the reintroduction of a “threshold” before someone could be stopped and wanded by police.<\/p>\n

\"Jack<\/p>\n

Wanding laws were passed after Jack Beasley was stabbed and killed on the Gold Coast in 2019 while on a night out with friends. (Supplied)<\/p>\n

Jack’s Law<\/p>\n

Known in Queensland as Jack’s Law, the legislation means police have the powers to randomly search or wand people for a weapon without a warrant in a public place.<\/p>\n

Queensland makes Jack’s Law permanent<\/a><\/p>\n

Police powers to randomly search people for a weapon without a warrant in a public place have been made permanent in Queensland.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It was named in honour of 17-year-old Jack Beasley, who was stabbed and killed on the Gold Coast in 2019 while on a night out with friends.<\/p>\n

In June last year, the government passed legislation making those powers permanent. Since then, police have also been able to designate areas like shopping centres, public transport station or licensed premises as a “relevant” place without seeking authorisation from a senior officer.<\/p>\n

Data from the Queensland Police Service shows since those changes came into effect, 2,497 people have been charged with almost 5,000 offences as a result of wanding.<\/p>\n

QPS says 1,270 weapons have been located across the state as a result of those searches.<\/p>\n

\"police<\/p>\n

Police have seized 1,270 weapons since the introduction of Jack’s Law. (Supplied: Queensland Police)<\/p>\n

Voice for Victims co-founder Ben Cannon, who became an advocate after he intervened to assist his neighbours during a violent home invasion, said the laws had come about because of “some really tragic incidents” and concerns about knives on the streets.<\/p>\n

When asked about concerns around who was being wanded, he said it was a “fine line”.<\/p>\n

“There’s certainly going to be individuals that say they don’t want to be [wanded], but I do say this, if we can get these weapons off people as they move around our community, the tragedies that they can cause are worth some of that effort and that frustration.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Ben Cannon says he is heartened to see youth crime rates go down, but in his view it’s still not good enough.\u00a0 (ABC Radio Brisbane: Kenji Sato)<\/p>\n

Decisions based on ‘operational intelligence’<\/p>\n

In a statement, a spokesperson for Queensland Police said handheld scanning operations were “intelligence-led” and based on “identified risks including previous weapons offences or violence offending at particular locations”.<\/p>\n

“Decisions about where and when these operations are conducted are based on operational intelligence and community safety considerations, not the demographic characteristics of individuals,” police said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Police Minister Dan Purdie says Jack’s Law is a response to community feedback. (ABC News: Curtis Rodda)<\/p>\n

In response to questions about the statistics, Queensland Police Minister Dan Purdie said the government had listened to the community and frontline police by expanding Jack’s Law and making it permanent.<\/p>\n

Speaking to reporters today, Mr Purdie said there were safeguards around wanding in place, including senior officer approval.<\/p>\n

“The last time I had a briefing, out of the hundreds of thousands of wandings the police have done \u2026 there’s been minimal complaints about the police exercising that power,” he said.<\/p>\n

“We trust our police with this law. It’s important law. And \u2026 I think they’re using it appropriately.”\"A<\/p>\n

Griffith University criminologist Nadine Connell was part of the team tasked with completing an evaluation of a wanding trial on the Gold Coast. (ABC News: Glenn Mullane)<\/p>\n

Griffith University criminologist Nadine Connell, who worked on an evaluation of wanding when it was in its trial phase on the Gold Coast, said gathering statistics about cultural identity or ethnicity was never an exact science.<\/p>\n

She explained this was because it relied on people self-identifying or providing their details to police.<\/p>\n

“I think it’s really important to say that the police are not trying to target any particular group with this legislation,” she said.<\/p>\n

But she said there was an over-representation in the data police had provided \u2014 including when it came to young people \u2014 and some of this could be explained when looking at the areas in which police focused their wanding operations.<\/p>\n

“It’s important to point out that in any kind of enforcement we always have to be aware of unrecognised biases.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than one in 10 people searched for weapons in Queensland under expanded police powers identified as First…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80474,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22,21,125677,99,36207,125679,125678,125675,11383,1047,41150,211,212,125673,125676,125674,29616,18194],"class_list":["post-80473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-ben-cannon","tag-brisbane","tag-dan-purdie","tag-greg-shadbolt","tag-jack-beasley","tag-jacks-law","tag-knives","tag-police","tag-powers","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-queensland-police-service-qps","tag-voice-for-victims","tag-wanding","tag-warrant","tag-weapons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80473","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}