A festival-goer has obtained footage during a music festival in Sydney at the weekend that has sparked a lot of conversation.
The video shows a New South Wales police officer holding a sniffer dog near a person at an event at the Sydney Showgrounds.
People who have seen the vision have accused the cop of forcing the dog to sit, which usually means the animal has detected drugs.
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The video was first uploaded to Facebook before it was reposted by Sniff Off, an online group spearheaded by Greens MP David Shoebridge that criticises the use of these types of drug detection dogs.
The post reads: "Here is a video of police physically forcing a drug dog to sit and indicate a person for drugs last night at Sydney Showground. The dog refuses to sit.
"This is evidence the drug dog program is essentially an excuse for police to target certain people.
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"As we can see, a drug dog indication is often manufactured or coerced by police, and is used to justify detaining, questioning, and strip searching anyone police don't like the look of. If that isn't the definition of a 'police state', then we don't know what is.
"This despicable abuse of police powers shows just how desperate NSW Police are to harass and humiliate people at all costs. Gladys Berejiklian needs to scrap the drug dog program NOW.
"We can't allow the Liberals to continue wasting millions of dollars every year on giving police free rein to intimidate whoever they please.
"We will be taking this to the Police Minister and the LECC and we urge anyone with footage documenting abuse of police powers to message us."
The original post has racked up tens of thousands of views and attracted loads of comments.
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There are some people questioning whether the officer was trying to force the dog to sit down or whether they were just guiding it.
New South Wales Police have released a statement to LADbible, which leans heavily on the latter option.
"About 10pm on Saturday (14 December 2019), a police dog led its handler toward a 20-year-old man at the Epik music festival at Sydney Olympic Park," the statement said.
"In order to speak with the man, the handler attempted to put the dog in a controlled position. This was not used as part of justification to conduct the subsequent person search.
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"Nothing of interest was located; however, as a result of inquiries, the man was ejected from the venue."
An ABC fact check found that sniffer dogs are correct 24 per cent of the time they sit down to indicate the presence of drugs.
Featured Image Credit: Harrison Ingles/Sniff Off