Never let the truth get in the way of collective outrage.
And boy, did the ole’ online realms have a good, old fashioned rage over the weekend.
A photo, posted to Instagram by an unnamed user, seemingly featured police leading a drug sniffing dog on a search of patrons lounging around the side of the Andrew ‘Boy’ Charlton Pool that flanks the shoreline of Sydney‘s Woolloomooloo Bay.
The subsequent pile-on bought straight into the currently on-going dominant narrative surrounding Sydney’s highly contentious lockout laws and Premier Mike Baird‘s finger-in-ears insistence that the city’s nightlife remains thriving, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Multiple other media outlets leapt onto it and reported the photo and caption as alleged fact.
But, as it turns out, the photo is not quite as it seems.
Rather than being a drug dog, the patrolling pooch in question is actually a bomb detecting dog. Other than being a punnily ironic critter to be at a pool, the furry little mate was being used by police to do a routine sweep of the facility, ahead of an official visit to the pool by a foreign delegation.
The photo was snapped back in 2014, during the G20 Summit.
NSW Police stated that no drug dog or drug detection operations were undertaken at the pool.
Don’t get us wrong, Sydney is still turning into a dank, dystopian wasteland where fun is outlawed and everything’s basically the town from Footloose.
But they’re not out to stop you ripping bongs and doing bombs juuuuuuuust yet.
Source: SBS News.
