‘Like a pack of wild dogs’: Protester injured in Town Hall clashes calls for officers to be charged

Jann Alhafny said she will never again turn to police for help after an officer allegedly shoved her during Monday’s pro-Palestine rally, breaking her spine in four places.

The 69-year-old grandmother is a regular attendee of Palestine Action Group Sydney events, and was demonstrating at Town Hall against Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s visit and the war in Gaza. The issue is personal for Alhafny; her late husband was Palestinian, with a planned trip to his homeland derailed by the October 7 Hamas terrorist attack.

Alhafny alleged “no one was spared” during the protest. “It was horrible, and it was brutal and unnecessary, and they were like a pack of wild dogs.”

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon has committed to reviewing the actions of officers at the Town Hall rally on Monday night, pledging that each officer would be held “responsible for their own actions”.

Alhafny described the evening as peaceful until police began ordering the crowd to disperse. However, she claims the group was surrounded with no clear exit when, suddenly, the police line charged.

“One policeman shoved me really hard in the chest, and I went down onto the concrete. I knew straight away something had happened,” she said.

“Then everyone was tumbling on top of me … it was like a stampede. I thought I was going to get suffocated.”

She said an officer then “yanked” her to her feet and shoved her.

She faces a week in a Sydney hospital followed by a month in a rehabilitation hospital. It will be months before she is fully recovered, she said.

“This has impacted every aspect of my life,” she said.

“The police are supposed to protect us … not to abuse us and brutalise us.”

Alhafny is calling for Premier Chris Minns and the police involved to meet with the victims and for charges to be laid against individual officers. NSW Police visited Alhafny in hospital on Wednesday.

Filmmaker and journalist James Ricketson was arrested at the protest and accused of assaulting a police officer, though he was released without charge after spending most of the night in a cell.

The 76-year-old made headlines in 2017 when he was arrested and charged with espionage in Cambodia after flying a drone over an anti-government rally. He was pardoned and released after spending 15 months in a Phnom Penh prison.

Monday’s events left Ricketson “shaken” and disturbed.

He said he was walking to Town Hall station to go home when officers told him to turn around. Tired, he instead sat against a wall, watching others grow confused and annoyed by the blockade.

“Some order came through. They linked their arms and started acting like a battering ram, pushing the people south into the people who were trying to walk north, creating a pressure cooker,” he said.

He said as a scuffle broke out in front of him, an officer next to him pushed him. He pushed back. “Next thing I know, I’m on the ground,” he said.

Ricketson said he spent five hours in custody, where he alleged an officer assaulted him, grabbing him by his shirt so roughly that it tore while walking him to his cell.

He was released without charge after the police reviewed body-worn footage.

“I’ve got lots of bruises, bloody elbows, a sore knee, and I’ve got to go and have an X-ray and get some radiology tests,” he said.

“In Australia, the police have all the power … They don’t just arrest you. They do it in the roughest possible manner because they want to inflict as much physical pain as they possibly can.”

Ricketson wants some form of a roundtable between police and protesters to discuss police protocol and de-escalation strategies.

Meanwhile, images have emerged appearing to show an officer’s badly bleeding thumb after protester Jace Turner allegedly bit him during an arrest.

Viral footage of the incident showed an officer punching Turner in the ribs while he was pinned to light rail tracks on George Street on Monday evening by two officers.

Police maintain the strikes were necessary as Turner was actively biting an officer’s colleague.

Turner was charged with assaulting an officer, causing actual bodily harm, and released on bail by a magistrate in the local court.

On Tuesday evening, hundreds of protesters gathered at Surry Hills police station to demonstrate against Herzog’s visit and the alleged brutality of officers at the Town Hall rally.

Tensions escalated towards the end of the protest as demonstrators chanted anti-police slogans while officers formed a line to safeguard the building. Rally organisers worked to distance protesters from police and urged the crowd to disperse after calling for a peaceful end to the demonstration.

An 18-year-old man was arrested for allegedly shining a torch in the face of an officer. He was charged with three counts of assaulting a police officer and possessing a knife in a public place.

In court, the prosecution opposed bail, arguing Duke Austin’s behaviour was intentionally antagonistic and that his release would endanger police officers.

Austin’s solicitor Wilson Tighe called the opposition “astounding”.

“There’s a legitimate argument on foot that the flashing of a torch at a police officer makes out an assault … There’s a live argument in the way it’s been charged,” Tighe told the court.

Austin was asked by reporters if he assaulted police as he walked out of the Sydney Police Centre on Wednesday afternoon after being granted bail.

“Not really,” he responded, adding that he felt “a bit drowsy” after spending a night in the cells.

Lanyon praised the conduct of officers on Tuesday as they responded to demonstrators who “really wanted to agitate the police, call the police out and obviously remonstrate”. He described anti-police chants heard at the rally as unacceptable.

“This is a time for calm, and I find it incredibly offensive that people would go there deliberately trying to incite police,” Lanyon told 2GB on Wednesday morning.

“People don’t always support what the police do, but we have a role to protect the community. We prevent crime, we protect the community. We take that job seriously.”

He reiterated the difficulty police faced at Town Hall as they desperately sought to separate the protesters from the audience gathered for Herzog’s address at the nearby International Convention Centre (ICC).

The Israeli president is in Canberra on Wednesday, where his visit has also been met by protest.

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