The day I agreed with Miranda Devine

“The streets have been swarming with police all week, pumped up and with nothing to do” – M Devine

OMG! My immediate thought when reading Sunday’s papers? “Cripes I need my head read’. I actually agreed with Miranda Devine. Her column attacked the behaviour of the police during APEC. Specifically she wrote about this bloke.

On Friday, a “respectable, bespectacled, middle-aged accountant in a Hawaiian shirt” was forcibly arrested for simply crossing the road. It gets worse. During the arrest, the poor bugger was trying to protect his glasses and instead was set upon by a group of cops who handcuffed him, put him in a cell with an ice addict and denied him legal assistance.

This was Sydney and this bloke is a mate of Miranda. In fact, she and her husband are godparents to his daughter.

She wrote.
“Security overkill in Sydney was just a big show, designed not to protect anyone from terrorists but to stymie protestors.”

She continues…”It’s a sign of an emasculated rudderless police force, with systemic small-man syndrome, acting like bullies in an attempt to cover up weakness, and chronic dysfunction.”

I wasn’t at the APEC rally but my mate Sam was. Her text to me that Saturday morning was frantic. “Holy fuck, there r riot police, vans & helicopters everywhere. They want 2 scare people feel sick”.

On Sunday, Bondi residents were visibly irritated and in fact outraged as they couldn’t even swim in a public beach because Janet Howard and the APEC ladies were out to lunch (most of them women so I am not going to bother about political correctness).

We’ve been so complacent about the anti-terrorism laws. Who cares if Muslims get locked up or an Indian doctor gets deported without any legal case against him. APEC showed us what sweeping police powers could do to people in the age of terror. Even to bespectacled middle aged men from the North Shore.