NSW Police Liberally Deployed Potentially Lethal Pepper Spray at Herzog Rally

As New South Wales police confirmed to tens of thousands of civilians, during the 9 February 2026 protest against the official visit of Israeli president Isaac Herzog, its chief concern is protecting an amoral ruling class. And despite the potential lethality of crowd control weapons, police are willing to use CCWs to progress this goal, even with pepper spray being linked to recent custody deaths.

For those who have been paying attention to Australian policing developments over recent years, it will come as no surprise that the CCW of choice at the Palestine Action Group rally on Gadigal land at Sydney Town Hall on Monday night was OC (oleoresin capsicum) or pepper spray.

Officers liberally opened up on the young, the elderly and those with disabilities with the excessively painful irritant.

The casual and excessive use of pepper spray on Monday was first witnessed in a significant manner locally at the September 2024 Disrupt Land Forces rallies in Naarm-Melbourne, as VicPol officers were seen to apply the CCW like it was insect repellent and this same behaviour was then witnessed on the part of NSW police on Gadigal in Sydney during the Indo Pacific weapons expo in late 2025.

Crowd control weapon use in general is increasing in this country. Victoria police made a big splash with rubber bullets during COVID era lockdown protests, and flashbang grenades were a key feature of Disrupt Land Forces. And these developments are following a global trend in using “nonlethal” weapons that do sometimes kill, in order to crack down on unarmed civilian protesters.

In the lead up to Monday’s Herzog rally, there were suggestions that Minns government warnings about a strong police presence opposing the crowd were not unlike the US Trump administration’s threat and use of ICE officers to attack civilians on Minneapolis streets using pepper spray rifles and other CCWs.

And this comparison proved spot on, after Monday’s full-scale police brutality was unleashed.

Increasing civilian need for protection against police

“As you’ve covered before, when pepper spray was introduced, police claimed that it was an alternative to shooting,” Tom Raue anticop founder told Sydney Criminal Lawyers on Monday, prior to the Herzog rally. “Clearly, they use it far more frequently than they would use their firearms.”

“Use of force guidelines and standard operating procedures don’t do anything to stop police abusing this weapon, as we saw with the Disrupt Land Forces protests,” the police abolitionist continued. “Police hurt people when they’re impatient, not just when it’s ‘necessary’. Police simply can’t be trusted with pepper spray – it should be banned.”

Raue was present at the Herzog rally on Monday night. He was in the contingent of protesters forcibly pushed out of the Town Hall area and then chased and forcefully shoved down George Street. Raue was wearing protective googles on the night, as were many other protesters, as it has now come to the point that it is expected that law enforcement will use this weapon on protesters.

The 2023 Lethal in Disguise 2 report outlines that over the last decade the use of CCWs worldwide has been on the rise, which includes the use of “kinetic impact projectiles, chemical irritants and acoustic weapons”. Since 2015, 121,000 people had been injured or killed globally as a result of the use of these potentially deadly nonlethal weapons at time of report publication.

“Many of us disagreed with the anti-lockdown protesters, but that’s what made those protests a good testing ground for the Victorian police to try out their arsenal of crowd control weapons,” Raue made certain. “Now, inevitably, the weapons are turned on antigenocide protesters. It’s only a matter of time before somebody is killed.”

Rendering nonviolent protests potentially lethal

Clips emerging from the 2024 Disrupt Land Forces protests revealed VicPol officers marching towards protesters and blasting them in the face with OC spray, whilst scenes from last year’s Indo Pacific weapons festival showed numerous antigenocide activists on the ground with their faces scrunched up in pain, which was caused by the chemical irritant sprayed into their eyes.

The NSW Police Force assault on Sydney’s pro-Palestinians on Monday involved the liberal use of pepper spray. Not all officers were using the CCW, but those who were wandered the scene with their cannister ready in hand. When members of the crowd countered police use of the spray on the elderly and the frail, officers simply gave pesky civilians another eyeful of the irritant.

Two recent custody deaths involving Australian police reveal that officers are now applying pepper spray to assist in restraining civilians on the beat and some have died. A First Nations man died on Marlinyu Ghoorlie land in Kalgoorlie after being sprayed this month, whilst a similar incident transpired on Wangal land in Sydney’s Homebush, when a suspect was sprayed in January.

“These weapons are frequently lethal,” Raue further explained. “Rubber bullets and other varieties of baton rounds are the worst offender. The most comprehensive analysis found that 15 percent of people injured by rubber bullets were permanently disabled, and 3 percent were killed. Tasers, tear gas, stinger grenades, flashbangs and pepper spray can all kill.”

Pepper spray contains highly concentrated capsaicin, which is the chemical found in chillies. Once applied to the face, the irritant increases in severity and pain. It can cause breathing difficulties and blindness. The use of pepper spray in war zones has been banned under the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention. This CCW is being used on civilians when it is known that it could prove fatal.

“Pepper spray places strains on the metabolism, and when combined with cuffing or pinning somebody in a prone position it can be fatal,” Raue added.

Urban warfare fought with CCWs

Scenes coming out of the US state of Minnesota ever since the Trump administration deployed thousands of ICE agents to the region in order to carry out its mass deportation drive of undocumented migrants, have shown these immigration officers liberally applying CCWs to regular people like they are enemy combatants. Two civilians have so far been shot dead by ICE.

Watching ICE agents firing pepper balls out of rifles at point blank range into the heads of anti-ICE demonstrators appears like urban warfare, and the growing fear in this country is that this sort of approach could be taken to local constituents. Last Monday night was proof that the authorities are willing to rough up and brutalise civilians with political outlooks they don’t appreciate.

“Australian politicians and police take their cues from the US – so we should all be concerned,” Raue put simply.

“On a practical level, activists should familiarise themselves with these weapons, how to stop them on the street and provide first aid. We share this knowledge through anticop, and there are street medic organisations that undoubtedly have saved lives and prevented suffering.”

“But we also need a broader political awakening,” he added. “There’s a tension with crowd control weapons, where the state needs them to be maximally violent in order to crush opposition, but to appear minimally violent in order to keep public opinion on side. We can drive a wedge between these two goals.”

The social justice activist then explained that the use of these weapons is cloaked in doublespeak that hides the true nature of what these police operations represent. Raue insists terms like “nonlethal” and “riot control” being used to describe pepper spray “obscure the reality” of what could be more honestly described as a “torture device” and a “chemical weapon”.

In a video posted to social media last week, Raue mentioned that ICE agents in Minneapolis have been threatening to use a sound cannon or long-range acoustic device on civilian protesters. Raue then pointed out to Sydney Criminal Lawyers at the Monday night rally that a NSW police officer was carrying an LRAD around to potentially use on the Sydney crowd.

“Labor and Coalition governments at a state and federal level have introduced draconian antiprotest laws, restrictions on free speech and splurged on new crowd control weapons,” the anticop founder continued. “All in time to potentially hand this police state to One Nation.”

“The Black Lives Matter movement in the US tried to defund police. People tried to abolish ICE under the Democrats, but the party resisted, and now we see what Trump is doing with the police apparatus set up by his supposed opposition,” Raue said in conclusion.

“Labor is making the same mistake here.”