By Louise Boon-Kuo
SYDNEY — The Olympic Games represent a boom for business, but what do they mean for us? The image of an unruly, crime-ridden population, or a dramatic terrorist stand-off, televised to the world, would jeopardise Sydney's "Olympic glamour" and inhibit the attraction of tourists and capitalist development dollars. Strategies to maximise the economic benefits of the massive international exposure focus on making the city look safe, and society appear stable and free from tension.
Since Sydney won the bid for the 2000 games, there has been a profusion of legislation proposed and enacted directed at the regulation of the population's behaviour. This has included the expansion of police powers to search, move on and disperse people, as well as the power to demand identification.
Simultaneously, police have been equipped with more weapons — the Glock automatic 15-shot pistol, capsicum spray, metal detectors, surveillance camera and database catalogues containing offenders' facial features and distinctive characteristics.
The experience of other cities where the Olympics have been held foreshadows problems which may emerge in Sydney.
"Street sweeps" occurred in Los Angeles, Barcelona and Atlanta. In Atlanta, city ordinances passed just before the 1996 Olympics targeted loitering in downtown parking lots. It became illegal to be in a parking lot if you didn't have car in the lot. Police could arrest anyone seen trying door handles of cars, attempting to conceal themselves, carrying tools used to break into vehicles or running away from a police officer.
Anita Beaty from the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, when she visited Sydney in August, pointed out that as the games approached, "Folks were being arrested routinely, just for being on the street. That oppression built up and reached fever pitch a year away from the games. One of the central city parks, which was a place where homeless people gathered, was closed.
"We wound up having curfews so that, after 11pm, no public parks could be occupied. The only people there after 11pm were homeless people. The crackdown on homeless people is graphically illustrated by the fact that 10,000 homeless people were arrested in downtown Atlanta between July 1995 and July 1996 — more than four times the usual number — and the arrest of homeless people skyrocketed in the week leading up to the games."
The director of a new pre-trial detention centre in Atlanta described the prison as "the first Olympic venue to be completed on time". Many community groups believed that this prison was designed to house homeless people over the period of the Olympics.
Whereas in Atlanta, new laws were required to carry out the task of "cleaning up" the streets for the Olympic Games, police in NSW already have these powers, through the Police and Public Safety Act, the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act and other laws which give police wide discretionary powers.
Urban redevelopment, spurred on by the Olympics, has consistent, predictable consequences. Pressure on the private rental market leads to rent hikes, the transformation of boarding houses into tourist accommodation and a reduction of housing for people with low incomes. This leads to an increase in homelessness. With a simultaneous interest in sprucing up the city, this leads to trouble for society's "undesirables".
Populist law and order campaigns pose the solution to the "crime crisis" as the strengthening of the criminal justice system. This means more police, with greater powers, heavier penalties for offenders, and the undermining of procedures which protect the principle that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
The Olympics, building on the ancient Roman tradition of "bread and festivals" to soothe the restless plebeians, is a tool to win the hearts and minds of a fragmented society. Paradoxically, hosting the games may force a recognition and solidification of social divisions by the discriminatory use of the discretionary powers available for policing public space.
[From Framed (issue #35), magazine of Justice Action (<http://www.justiceaction.org.au>). Louise Boon-Kuo is an activist in the Copwatch organisation. Phone 9514 2915.]