Alex Zucco was cleaning her camera lens when a police officer hit her directly in the face with a stream of capsicum spray.
“It feels like you’re being stabbed in the eye,” the photojournalist says. As the protest she was covering roiled around her, Zucco could hear the sounds of flash-bang devices going off and screams from the crowd but she could not see for almost an hour.
Zucco was taking photos on 11 September 2024 at a rally outside the Melbourne Land Forces International Land Defence Exposition. Footage seen by Guardian Australia shows an officer spraying Zucco with foam from a police line as she looks down at her camera.
Lawyers and activists say such encounters are representative of an increasingly dangerous use of force at protests in Australia, including the deployment of largely unregulated “less lethal” police tools including oleoresin capsicum (OC) spray, baton rounds and explosive “distraction devices”.
It comes amid a national crackdown on activism, with at least 49 laws enacted by governments that have constricted the right to protest over the past 20 years. This is creating a “permissive environment” for use of force by police, some lawyers and activists argue.
Dr Ross Hendy, a criminologist at Monash University and a former New Zealand police sergeant, says the conduct of officers at protests reflects the increased militarisation of police.
“Police [officers] are trained to use minimal amounts of force and only when necessary – but they’re being pushed into situations where they’re asked to use more and more force.”
Another photographer was injured at the Land Forces protest when he was hit in the ear with a rubber bullet. Guardian Australia is aware of at least four settled cases since 2021 against Victorian police over the treatment of journalists covering public gatherings, including the use of OC spray.
There are also at least seven protesters alleging police violence who have active civil cases in the Victorian county court. According to court documents, the protesters allege a range of injuries including a dislocated shoulder and burning pain to the testicles caused by police, including through the use of OC spray or foam, and unnecessarily violent arrests.
Five of those protesters claim in the documents that police also charged them with criminal offences that were later dropped.
Kylie Martin, whose case is one of those before the Victorian county court, says she was shot by police in the leg with a projectile she believes was a baton round as she was trying to leave a protest against Covid-19 restrictions in Melbourne in 2021. She was not charged with any offence.
Baton rounds are fired from a weapon resembling a grenade launcher and are said to have an accurate range of 50 metres.
“Police were just shooting into the crowd of protesters,” Martin said in a statement. “The police call them projectiles. It looked like a bullet to me.
“I never thought being hit by a projectile would cause so much pain and lasting damage to my leg. For years after I was shot, the wound would become infected and I would have to get medical treatment.
“I now have a scar on my leg, which is a daily reminder of what happened to me.”
In New South Wales, people present at environmental protests have also successfully sued police for assault and wrongful arrest.
“The police have enormous discretion,” Simon Rice said of their treatment of protesters. The law professor won a case against NSW police for assault, battery and false imprisonment after he was thrown to the ground and arrested while observing a student protest at the University of Sydney in 2020.
“There’s no realistic way of complaining about the police overstepping the mark. They will investigate themselves.”
Use of force on the rise
After a protest, police often announce how many people were arrested – but there is no public record of how many times force was used and whether it was appropriate.
Data obtained by Guardian Australia shows that in NSW the overall number of incidents where force was used has risen from 7,853 in 2017-18 to 9,435 in 2024-25 – but this data could not be broken down by protest scenarios.
These instances could include methods such as takedowns, where police typically sweep out someone’s legs, and wrist locks, as well as the use of stun guns and police horses.
OC spray was used almost 900 times in NSW in the last financial year. There were at least 2,323 takedowns in NSW in the same year, 54% of them against people who identify as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander.
A NSW Police spokesperson said the force “recognises and supports the rights of individuals and groups to exercise their rights of free speech and peaceful assembly” but that its first priority was the safety of the wider community.
In Victoria, police data released to Guardian Australia shows there have been more than 2,700 police use of force incidents recorded at “demonstration incidents” since 2019, an average of more than 460 per year. These incidents include verbal commands, when officers warn protesters they may use force.
There were more than 2,100 incidents recorded of people using violence towards police at these events over the same period, with Victoria Police saying officers have reported being threatened, hit with objects and spat at.
“We make no apologies for officers having to use force to separate and safely disperse crowds during protests where police have been presented with an extremely volatile and violent environment,” a Victoria Police spokesperson said.
“Police do not attend protests with the aim of using force, but it is always in response to the actions of protesters.”
The data relies on police filing a “use of force” report, and is therefore not considered to be exact.
“Grab/hold/push/swarm” was the force used most by police at these incidents, recorded 640 times. There were 224 uses of OC spray or foam recorded.
Victoria police procedures state that OC aerosols should only be used where there are reasonable grounds to “believe the use is necessary and proportionate” in situations of violence or where serious physical confrontation is imminent.
Yet lawyers, legal observers and journalists in Victoria tell Guardian Australia they have seen police use OC spray against crowds indiscriminately and “as a form of coercion”, even when protesters are passively resisting. A 2024 Ibac review found some officers regarded it as a “low level” type of force and complaints were often categorised as “minor misconduct”.
Even two decades ago, there were calls for police use of OC spray to be banned at public gatherings, except in exceptional circumstances.
Photographer Michael Currie was first hit with OC spray while covering a Victorian anti-lockdown protest in 2021. “I’m on my knees in the middle of Flinders Street station and suddenly I’m completely blind,” he said. “The cops can use it willy-nilly.” He now estimates he’s been hit directly and indirectly when covering protests up to five times.
A current class action lawsuit against Victorian police alleges that the use of OC spray on protesters at a 2019 rally outside the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) was “an unreasonable, unlawful and disproportionate use of force constituting battery and assault”.
While police admit OC spray was deployed, they have argued that its use was lawful.
At a hearing, police sergeant Nicholas Bolzonello told the court he had deployed OC spray multiple times while “in a stalemate” with protest groups when trying to arrest people climbing poles outside the exhibition centre.
Bolzonello called it “an effective crowd dispersal tool that allows us to move through crowds”, according to the court transcript, but the lead plaintiff’s barrister, Stella Gold, suggested to the officer that there was nothing in the police OC manual that described such use. Bolzonello later clarified that his understanding came from training and how it was referred to “internally”.
The court was told that Jordan Brown, the lead plaintiff, was unarmed when he was sprayed twice by two police officers – including once while he was trying to run away.
“It’s the most excruciating pain that I’ve ever experienced,” Brown said in the proceedings. “I checked out of my body for long periods of time.” Judgment is reserved in the case.
Separately in April, police settled for $90,000 another case with a climate protester who alleged their head was repeatedly slammed by members of Victoria police’s riot squad at the 2019 IMARC protest.
Deadly at close range
When Australian police were first considering the use of capsicum spray in the mid-1990s, it was described as “a new police wonder weapon”.
Nationally, and in Victoria, media reports suggested it would be used only to “subdue dangerous offenders” – with no mention of protests – and “as an alternative to firearms”.
“I argued that … they would instead be used in situations where firearms would never be used,” says Jude McCulloch, an emeritus professor of criminology at Monash University. “I said that it would also be used against protesters … And once it’s introduced, of course, it becomes normalised.”
McCulloch says there is an emerging body of evidence that OC spray, which many police regard as part of every day policing, can have long-lasting effects, including injuries to eyes and skin and respiratory problems, as well as psychological harm.
Many of the devices used by police at protests have their origins in conflict zones – rubber bullets, for example, were used by the British military in Northern Ireland. For decades, companies that make weapons have pursued a side trade in so-called “less lethal” tools.
NSW parliament documents show that CS launchers used by police are made by Germany’s largest arms manufacturer, Rheinmetall, which also makes devices that produce “a blinding flash and deafening noise level to daze and disorient the intended target”.
One woman who was present at the Land Forces protest says she suffered a head injury after a device by an unknown manufacturer designed to make a loud noise went off nearby. A doctor’s letter seen by Guardian Australia says she had concussion symptoms dating from 11 September.
Other activists and legal observers say these tools induce sudden panic in crowds – especially risky when used in crowded spaces.
Spencer Fomby, a retired captain with the Berkeley police department in California who now educates police in crowd control, says he has seen an uptick in the use of distraction devices at US protests. Some versions are “technically explosives”, bringing serious risks including shrapnel and provoking crowd crushes.
“I see a lot of people that use them in the field who don’t really know what they’re doing,” he says.
At the Land Forces protest, a Melbourne Activist Legal Support’s report found that police had deployed OC foam, VKS Pepperball guns, disorientation devices and baton rounds against demonstrators, some of whom police said had thrown “eggs and liquid irritants”. VKS Pepperballs are described as a non-lethal gun, fitted with a marking round, which allows officers to identify certain protesters, or a Pava round, which is a chemical gas.
Projectiles used by Australian police can be deadly at close range. A report by the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations and Physicians for Human Rights found that, even when shot from afar, these weapons “are inaccurate and can strike vulnerable body parts and cause unintended injuries”.
The research details global reports of permanent blindness and brain damage caused by kinetic impact projectiles at protests, as well as respiratory, skin and eye injuries from chemicals and burns from stun grenades.
Mahir*, the Melbourne photographer who was hit by a rubber bullet at the Land Forces protest, says he was far from the police line when he heard an “incredible noise”. “It was like I got hit by a truck. I didn’t understand what happened. Then I put my hand over my ear.”
Video shows him on the ground with blood in his ear. He required stitches and says he now has mild hearing loss. “If I didn’t turn my head it could have been my eye. Rubber bullets are not supposed to be shot on head level.”
Growing concern amid ‘public demonisation’
When Suzanne* heard that one of her children was “locking on” to a harvester to stop forest logging on the mid-north coast of NSW, she drove straight there to intervene. The child was under 18 and she was worried about how “cowboy” forestry workers would react to the protest.
Suzanne says she was thrown to the ground, getting badly bruised and cut by the rocky ground. She was arrested and charged with resisting police but the charge was later dropped.
Outraged by her treatment as a bystander, Suzanne felt her only option was to sue the police alleging wrongful arrest and assault. The case was settled.
Lawyers and protesters say it is difficult to hold police accountable for how force is used at protests without taking legal action.
Rice says he decided to bring his case against NSW police in 2020 due to the inadequacy of the complaints process. The ombudsman cannot investigate police misconduct and the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission typically examines only serious or systemic misconduct.
“[The police] investigated themselves and said nothing to look at here,” he says.
Guardian Australia asked every police force in the country a range of questions about the response of their officers to protests since 2020, including how many use-of-force incidents had been recorded, how many of these were found to relate to inappropriate uses of force, how many officers had been injured at protests and whether they had publicly available guidelines for how police can lawfully respond.
Most forces said they were unable to provide the data and others referred to websites which contained general information about guidelines rather than specifically answering questions about protests.
As some states consider further legal crackdowns on protests, there are growing concerns that the “public demonisation” of them is reflected in how these events are policed.
“If we continue to see … the passage of anti-protest laws, then we will continue to see escalating use of police force against protesters and escalating serious injuries,” says Sarah Schwartz, a legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre. “It’s only really a matter of time.”
* Names have been changed
Do you know more? Contact ariel.bogle@theguardian.com and nino.bucci@theguardian.com
