Victoria police enforcement of Covid-19 lockdown risks harming vulnerable communities

Low socio-economic groups can least afford fines and an overt police presence could reignite past traumas, advocacy groups say

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For the first time in the Covid-19 pandemic, Victoria police are using number plate recognition to monitor and control community movements in suburbs under lockdown, in a move that has concerned those working with vulnerable, and culturally and linguistically diverse, communities.

Daniel Nguyn, the advocacy coordinator of the Police Accountability Project, a public interest legal project that monitors human rights abuses by police and represents victims, said they were seeing an intensification of police resources to surveil lockdown postcodes including the deployment of public order units, mounted officers and remote drones.