The CSG is not legally police. Yet NSW Premier Chris Minns wants its armed guards patrolling public events despite senior police warning of favouritism and social fracture. One question exposes it all: would he ever permit an armed Muslim security force? Andrew Brown reports.

NSW Police examined this proposal and warned the Premier it would fracture the state. Chris Minns is doing it anyway.

An armed Jewish police force? Minns defies police and opens the door

by Andrew Brown

He is backing armed members of a private organisation formed to protect one community patrolling public events. He calls it a trial. In public, it would resemble an armed Jewish police force.

Apply one test. Imagine armed private guards, trained overseas on a foreign government’s money, patrolling Eid prayers at Lakemba. How many minutes does that proposal survive? It would be denounced as sectarian militia building and killed before lunch.

And that rejection would be correct. A privilege unthinkable for any other community is not security policy. It is favouritism with a firearms licence, the state deciding whose fear earns guns and whose fear earns batons.

The Community Security Group is not legally a police force and would not acquire general police powers. That, precisely, is the problem. Minns proposes putting armed private guards into public space without the command, accountability, discipline or universal duty owed by NSW Police.

CSG operates under the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, combining security professionals and volunteers to protect Jewish life, institutions and events. Its licensed guards already carry firearms at approved Jewish schools and synagogues. 

Extending that into public gatherings crosses the line between guarding private premises and wielding armed power among the public.

NSW Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson was unambiguous. Protecting every member of the community is the job of police. Granting one part of society exceptional armed privileges, he warned, would appear favouritism, fracture tenuous relationships and create friction between groups.

Police Association president Kevin Morton was blunter. Only NSW Police are charged with protecting the people of NSW. If one private organisation is allowed to arm in public, where does it stop?

Minns’s answer is: wherever the lobby demands.

Minns joined AIJAC’s inaugural Rambam Israel Fellowship in 2003, later celebrated as a “strong friend” by the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies. He entrenched Operation Shelter and rushed through protest restrictions later unanimously struck down by the Court of Appeal.

The double standard already played out on Sydney’s streets. Before peaceful protesters gathered to oppose Israeli President Isaac Herzog, Minns restricted protest, declared the visit a major event and mobilised more than 3,000 police shifts, 500 at the demonstration.

His police kettled, punched, pepper sprayed and dragged protesters. They sprayed Muslims as they knelt in prayer.

They broke a 69 year old woman’s back in four places.

Human Rights Watch found apparent excessive force. The LECC is investigating. MWM understands civil claims are being prepared, with taxpayers facing potentially enormous damages.

The community whose worshippers his police pepper sprayed would never be handed its own armed guards. The community whose lobby cultivated the Premier for two decades is offered them. That is not equal citizenship. It is a hierarchy, and Minns built it.

A former Sydney CSG volunteer and Army officer lost his security clearance after a tribunal upheld ASIO’s assessment that he placed loyalty to Israel above Australia and was vulnerable to exploitation by Israeli intelligence. His CSG training in Israel, financed by the Israeli government, involved tactical planning and firearms.

That case does not implicate every CSG member. It makes blind political trust grotesquely irresponsible. A competent government would examine the group’s governance, overseas training, intelligence links and command before expanding its armed reach. Minns asked for none of it.

Then the operational nightmare. Police responding to an attack could confront multiple armed private guards. Who commands them? How do police tell defenders from attackers in seconds? Who answers when a bystander dies?

Royal Commissioner Virginia Bell questioned the fantasy that guns create safety. 

Australia rejected that fantasy after Port Arthur.

NSW already has 250 armed response officers. If a Jewish event faces a credible armed threat, deploy them. Jewish Australians deserve the full protection of the state, as every Australian does. What they do not need is a Premier handing them guns no other community would ever be allowed, and the isolation that comes with them.

Minns is not protecting equality. He is letting lobby power decide who may carry arms in public and who gets batons for praying.

This is political capture wearing a gun belt.

https://michaelwest.com.au/an-armed-jewish-police-force-minns-defies-police-and-opens-the-door/

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