Cops Who Pepper Sprayed Elderly Anti-Lockdown Protester in Face as She Lay on Ground Investigated

Members of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism get sprayed with pepper spray as they c
MAL FAIRCLOUGH/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The police officers who pepper sprayed an elderly woman in the face while she was lying on the ground are under investigation, Australian police have confirmed.

During an anti-lockdown protest in Melbourne on September 18th, Victoria Police made over 200 arrests and widely used pepper spray as demonstrators refused to abide by the city’s stay-at-home orders, ultimately breaking through a police line.

In footage shared on social media, a woman in her seventiess was seen being pushed to the ground by officers, who then sprayed her directly in the face with aerosolised capsicum as she lay on her back.

The apparent instance of police brutality has come to symbolise Australia’s strict lockdown policies during the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

While the woman has so far refused to cooperate with the investigation, the local force told Daily Mail Australia that a professional standards command inquiry is underway and will examine whether the officers involved should face any disciplinary action.

The Mail also reported that several other instances of alleged police violence during anti-lockdown protests are also under investigation.

Three days after the protest in which the elderly woman was pepper sprayed, a series of union worker-led protests emerged in Melbourne, after vaccine mandates were proposed for construction sites.

Following the protest — which once again saw violent altercations between police and protesters — Victoria Police’s Chief Commissioner Shane Patton justified the use of pepper spray and rubber bullets as the police “can’t allow this kind of conduct to go on.”

In an exclusive interview with Breitbart London last week, the influential chairman of the 1922 Committee of all Tory backbench MPs in the United Kingdom, Sir Graham Brady, said that Australia’s “heavy-handed” lockdown regime is not working.

“We need to learn to live with [the coronavirus], making sensible precautions — but locking down for longer and closing international borders doesn’t work,” Brady said.

“We’ve seen that Australia effectively was closed for 18 months to international travel, and they got the Delta variant too. So I think it just illustrates the common sense that we need to find a different way of dealing with Covid,” he added.

Melbourne, which remains under strict stay-at-home lockdown, has seen more days in lockdown than in any other city in the world during the Chinese coronavirus crisis.

Aside from lockdowns, Australian citizens have been subjected to curfews, quarantine camps, and even the government placing limits on the amount of alcohol people can have delivered to their own homes.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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