Police can use force to move body parts during strip-searches, NSW argues in appeal court
NSW police are appealing a ruling that limits their ability to use force during strip-searches. The appeal follows a class action loss regarding unlawful searches conducted at music festivals between 2018 and 2022. The state argues that police should have the power to move body parts to facilitate searches, despite a previous ruling stating otherwise.
- ▪NSW police lost a class action over unlawful strip-searches conducted at music festivals.
- ▪The state admitted to unlawfully strip-searching lead plaintiff Raya Meredith in May 2025.
- ▪Justice Dina Yehia ruled that police do not have the express power to use reasonable force during strip-searches.
The Guardian — World publishes from United Kingdom and files mainly under world. We currently carry 2,570 of its stories.
Story provenance
Source · retrieval · rights · ranking — open for full record
inspect →
Story provenance
Attribution is not the same as permission. This drawer separates discovery metadata, excerpts, WeSearch-generated summaries, reuse status, and whether the publisher receives the visit. Nothing here claims a legal grant the publisher has not made.
Record
| Original publisher | the Guardian |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/04/nsw-police-strip-search-powers-court-appeal-using-force-to-move-body-parts |
| Publication time | Thu, 04 Jun 2026 06:02:37 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-04T07:17:39.902Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-04T07:17:39.902Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | FooSND_4FjhZ |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
A crowd at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay in 2018. NSW police lost a class action over unlawful strip-searches between then and 2022. Photograph: Zak Kaczmarek/WireImageView image in fullscreenA crowd at Splendour in the Grass in Byron Bay in 2018. NSW police lost a class action over unlawful strip-searches between then and 2022. Photograph: Zak Kaczmarek/WireImageAustralian police and policingPolice can use force to move body parts during strip-searches, NSW argues in appeal courtNSW police appeal after comprehensive class action loss in 2025 when force admitted music festival search of Raya Meredith was unlawful and unjustified Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Jordyn BeazleyThu 4 Jun 2026 02.02…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at the Guardian.
Discussion
0 commentsMore from the Guardian
