NSW Police Are Raiding, Arresting and Charging the Herzog Protesters They Assaulted

Eight New South Wales police officers smashed in the door of a Burwood apartment to arrest a 42-year-old woman sleeping inside the place located on Dharug land at 5 am on Thursday, 26 March 2026. She was then taken to the police station and charged with offences relating to her acts at a recent protest that was notable as it featured state law enforcement brutalising the crowd en masse.

The eight Operations Support Group officers dressed in riot gear and wearing helmets used force to apprehend the woman, who participated in the 9 February 2026 protest against the visit of Israeli president Issac Herzog, as she’d allegedly thrown a water bottle at police and threatened an officer with force if he touched her. And she is the 17th protester police have hunted down after the fact.

The Burwood woman was detained after two other women were raided the day prior. All three have been tracked down by Strike Force Laine, which is an investigation that has been established to apprehend 9 February Herzog demonstrators alleged to have partaken in wrongdoing. But the affront is that it was the NSW police that assaulted protesters, and there are reels of footage that show this.

Not only has the NSW Police Force launched an official investigation into the protesters that 3,000-odd officers on duty that night set upon, but NSW authorities did not actively move to investigate or even reduce the fallout from the incident, but rather the premier, the police minister and the police commissioner all refused to apologise for the police violence and instead, praised officer actions.

The NSW police watchdog, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission, launched an investigation into “incidents of alleged misconduct by members” of the NSW police on 17 February. But despite the LECC having found there is enough plausible evidence available to undertake an inquiry, the state and its law enforcement arm appear to be determined to pin the blame on the public.

Over the top, to say the least

“They smashed the door open at about 5 am and barged into her home as she was still asleep and half naked,” said criminal defence lawyer Nicolas Hanna in a post, after he’d provided the Burwood woman with some advice post her arrest. “Some officers grabbed her and took her to the station, while the rest of the officers raided her place and went through her belongings.”

“They seized her phone and required her to provide her passcode pursuant to a digital evidence access order, so they could download it and go through its contents,” the lawyer added.

Hanna then made clear that this was all in respect to her alleged behaviour at the 9 February Herzog protest and specifically, “that she threw a water bottle at an officer and then threatened to assault another officer if he touched her”. The lawyer added that the woman who was taken into custody that morning has no criminal record and there was no suggestion that she posed any further threat.

The NSW Police News articles relating to the raids on protesters last week, further noted that Strike Force Lane has so far tracked down 17 demonstrators to arrest them, while on the actual night, 27 people were arrested and nine were subsequently charged, which ties in with suggestions that officers were simply arresting and roughing up protesters without meaning to lay any charges.

“What’s terrifying is things are only going to get worse,” Hanna added in his 26 March post, and his assertion sounds about right in the present political climate, as over the last 30 months that the Israeli state has been perpetrating a genocide in the Gaza Strip, the law enforcement situation in this state has become increasingly brutal and belligerent, because of the outcry over Tel Aviv’s atrocities.

Shifting the blame

The spectre of the brutality the NSW police meted out against the first Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, which was a street march held on 24 June 1978, has loomed over Sydney ever since. The 78ers, or the original Mardi Gras marchers, who were present at the anti-Herzog rally were instantly reminded of that night almost 50 years ago, whilst those too young to remember learnt why it’s so notorious.

Having the state set law enforcement officers upon its constituents with unbridled force, when those civilians weren’t posing a real threat is confronting. The NSW police effectively committed a ‘gay bashing’ imbued with prejudice against the first Mardi Gras parade, whilst at the Herzog rally, officers were seen to shove, punch, push, wrestle with and pepper spray pro-Palestinians.

NSW Greens MPs have been attempting to extract an apology from NSW ministers responsible for what happened and instead, they’ve doubled down on justifying the police actions, which means there has been a huge breach of trust between the state and its law enforcement arm and the people, and this goes beyond the 20,000-odd civilians protesting on the night.

So, to be out hunting down protesters for crimes such as throwing a water bottle or threatening an aggressive officer not to touch them, appears to be a further attempt to criminalise and demonise pro-Palestinian activists, along with being an exercise in shifting the idea of who might be warranting punishment following all the footage of the police assaulting constituents.

Old scores

The NSW police further arrested a 27-year-old woman from Potts Point and charged her with assaulting a police officer and other offences, whilst a 31-year-old woman from Kellyville was taken in by police on that same day and charged with affray, amongst other charges. Strike Force Laine, which is comprised of officers from the Central Metropolitan Region, is set to continue its inquires.

The Herzog rally had heightened tensions because it involved around 20,000 pro-Palestinians demonstrating against the official visit of the Israeli president, who has been charged by the UN with inciting genocide, and NSW premier Chris Minns and other ministers have long been at loggerheads with the local Palestine solidarity movement ever since it sprung up in October 2023.

But what was most confronting last week was the fact that eight police officers in riot gear rammed open the front door of a woman asleep in bed in her home and carted her off to the police station to charge her with intimidating a police officer weeks after she’d attended a protest.

Sydney Criminal Lawyers this week spoke to a WACA activist who was speaking on behalf of eight women who have all been raided over the past week in Naarm-Melbourne, similarly by groups of police, who threatened to bash their doors down if they did not immediately answer, all for protesting beside a statue and weeks after the demonstration that caused no damage had occurred.

So, whilst all women in these two southeastern cities have been raided by police early morning and ultimately over the crime of venting their dissent in public, these unconnected policing incidents that share the same hallmarks certainly do suggest that a hardening of law enforcement tactics are underway in both jurisdictions.