Online creators working to disrupt the police narrative

Tom Raue doesn't want you to be a cop.

As police forces nationwide try to plug shortfalls, the former state election candidate is drawing attention by picketing recruitment drives, including those targeting teenagers interested in joining the thin blue line.

He hands out flyers with statistics about sexual assault and bullying within the force, the job's operational dangers and police brutality.

"We are trying to reach out to people that aren't necessarily that political but encounter police in their daily lives … that can happen to anybody of any demographic," Mr Raue says.

"If we can get people to think more critically about the police - how they interact with them, how we want to solve problems in society like shoplifting or drugs - that's a good thing."

Mr Raue and his education and advocacy resource site Anticop aren't always openly welcomed but the popularity of his online videos reflects deteriorating trust in law enforcement.

Perceptions of police integrity have plunged over the past decade, Productivity Commission data shows.

In 2013, 76.1 per cent of Australians totally agreed officers treated people fairly and equally.

A decade on, it had slipped to 63.6 per cent, while separate research indicates fewer than half of NSW and Victorian residents may now agree with the same statement.

A similar decline has occurred around the question of whether "police are honest".

Widely publicised instances of misconduct haven't helped.

In 2023, 95-year-old care resident Clare Nowland died after being tasered, while another officer was convicted of assaulting a 16-year-old First Nations boy injured during an arrest in 2020.

Several coronial inquiries have also been conducted into fatal police shootings of people experiencing mental health episodes.

Neither is high-profile wrongdoing a recent trend.

ABC documentary Cop It Sweet painted a damning portrait of early 1990s police culture in Redfern - then one of Sydney's most disadvantaged suburbs - as officers spouted racial slurs and aired prejudices.

Two years later, the Wood Royal Commission began exposing a litany of bribery, money laundering, evidence fabrication and more. It concluded corruption in the force was entrenched.

A turning point came in the early 2010s, says University of Newcastle criminologist Justin Ellis.

A proliferation of public space cameras meant police behaving harshly or unlawfully were no longer unseen.

Technology then coalesced with a recognition that it was permissible to film public police operations and share content online.

"In previous decades, the public may have been given footage through traditional media like Channel Seven or Channel Nine," Dr Ellis tells AAP.

"But when you upload videos directly to social media, the public plays a greater role in police accountability … and they have more and more capacity to scrutinise police conduct."

Widespread resistance to excessive force has followed.

Filmed violence against protesters at Brazilian rallies attended by hundreds of thousands of people led to greater demands for an end to police brutality.

Locally, demonstrators rallied after online footage showed an officer throw a handcuffed teenager to the ground during the 2013 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras parade, and place a foot on his back.

A year later, Eric Garner died when New York City police affected a chokehold during his arrest.

A social media video of the 43-year-old pinned to the sidewalk repeatedly pleading "I can't breathe" spurred international Black Lives Matter protests.

At the same time, improved understanding of mental health has brought attention to excessive force during police welfare checks.

It all helped usher a new wave of more general analysis and condemnation of law enforcement systems.

Anticop was born in February 2025 from frustration with the policing of pro-Palestine rallies.

"The state has done everything it can to shut that movement down, to allow the genocide to continue, and the police are a key component," Mr Raue says.

Mainly addressing activists, his website has published multiple guides on police weapons, crowd control strategies and arrest scenarios.

Still, he wanted to reach a wider audience.

Despite the difficulties of encouraging people to delve deeper than TikTok, Mr Raue began posting his recruitment picketing stunts on social media.

"If that's where people are spending their time, that's where we need to be," he says.

Elsewhere, broader online scrutiny of the justice system is garnering attention too.

Melburnian Mark Yin has pivoted on TikTok from slice-of-life content around his criminology PhD to analysis of justice models in Australia and overseas.

"The way these topics are talked about in Australia is often not very empathetic to people who have been criminalised and had very different life experiences to the general public," says the Cambridge University student.

"(But) people do have the sense there's something wrong with the way we administer justice ... with concentrating power in the hands of very specific people who do relatively light training and are handed lethal weapons.

"It's about making people feel okay to ask those kinds of questions, and we should ask them in a healthy democracy."

Yet the politics of tough-on-crime seemingly hasn't caught up with declining views about police integrity.

Victoria and Queensland passed laws subjecting child offenders to adult sentences for the worst offences, while the Northern Territory has lowered the age of criminal responsibility to 10.

NSW has given its police commissioner more powers to restrict protests and take action against participants.

According to the force, trust and confidence in policing is "extremely important" in ensuring the community feels and remains safe.

Though diminishing numbers of Australians consider police honest or fair, measures of satisfaction with them have remained relatively stable.

Productivity Commission data shows 77.5 per cent of us were totally satisfied with services provided by police in 2014/15 compared to 73.9 per cent in 2022/23.

"Policing is both a challenging and rewarding job," says a NSW Police spokesperson.

"Our officers always strive to do that job well, working tirelessly to drive down crime and keep communities across NSW safe.

"Our role and purpose are to always treat everyone with fairness, respect, and courtesy."

The force says factors including the role policing plays during global scenarios like the coronavirus pandemic should be considered when examining public attitudes.

Notably, an International Journal of Research and Policy article last year concluded some incidents where officers are compelled to act but fail to properly, can shift blame towards political authorities rather than them.

In cases like terrorist attacks, they can even benefit when perceived as having a protector's role despite their limitations, researchers found.

The impact of December's massacre in Bondi isn't yet reflected in such research but commentary in the immediate aftermath went both ways.

For some, it was a reminder of the challenges police face.

Probationary constable Jack Hibbert was shot and lost vision in an eye as the gunmen killed 15 others.

Images of officers more generally performing their roles at the scene would also have reassured the public, Dr Ellis says.

Yet the rise of mis- and disinformation in the 2020s has created still more issues.

Days after Bondi, social media users falsely claimed officers "stood down" for 20 minutes as part of a "false flag event".

An image of two policewomen responding to the attack circulated with the claim they were "freezing", while an AI-generated clip of the Australian Federal Police commissioner announcing more arrests also did the rounds.

"Their image and the way it's circulating through digital platforms is going to be picked up by different people and used in different ways," Dr Ellis says.

"AI adds a whole new dimension to how myths and disinformation might be generated."

Since December, NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon has wielded controversial powers to restrict protests for up to three months after a declared terror event, while his officers have been accused of over-policing certain communities.

When "good cop = dead cop" and "ACAB (all cops are bastards)" was sprayed on a Victorian police memorial in December, Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said such rhetoric was "part of policing."

"There have always been people who don't like the police," he reasoned.

The public "ought to accept that we exist because bad guys exist in our community," he added.

"But ... without the work we do, there'd be more of them and they'd be more active", even though progressive justice experts and activists note police exacerbate harm against marginalised communities.