Officers with the newly established Strike Force Tuohy are under fire after a controversial raid on the Hunter Community Environment Centre on Friday afternoon.
Police searched the organisation's Hamilton North office following almost two weeks of anti-coal protests, seizing banners and corflutes from the address.
But the Environment Centre maintains it has no affiliation with Blockade Australia or the activists who are living in a sharehouse at the property.
Centre Coordinator Jo Lynch says they're hoping to come to a resolution with police.
"The Hunter Community Environment Centre doesn't have anything to do with those protests, and we're hoping that the police can discover that," Ms Lynch said.
"Unfortunately, with the search warrant, they took a lot of our gear and seized a lot of our stuff as evidence."
Shadow Minister for Climate Change Pat Conroy spoke to reporters earlier on Friday, condemning the protests across the Hunter.
But Ms Lynch says police are approaching things the wrong way.
"It's a bit of mistake on the police's behalf, a bit of an overreach," Ms Lynch said.
"And an assumption on their behalf that a lot of people have described as pretty shocking and unfair, and a little, an overreaction, certainly an overreaction."
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| Image credit: hcec.org.au |
