Review of the Police Powers (Drug Detection Trial) Act 2003 - NSW ...

Case study 14
Delayed by search 457
A 25-year-old man was on his way to a job interview when he was detained. He told us that a friend was
driving him to the interview when they were pulled into the check point. They were detained for about 40
minutes and the vehicle, passengers and driver were searched. No drugs were seized.
As a result of being detained the man was late for the job interview. He said he felt he couldn’t tell the
prospective employers why he was late and instead told them that he had car trouble. He didn’t get the
job and didn’t know if the reason was his lateness for the interview.
5.7.4. Additional policing activities during operations
In addition to screening vehicles with a drug detection dog, police conducted a range of other activities during drug
detection operations. For example, police regularly conducted random breath testing as well as licence, registration,
log-book and heavy vehicle compliance checking.
As noted above (at paragraph 3.4.2), police laid at least 12 drink driving charges and issued in excess of 110 traffic
infringement notices. A number of other non drug-related offences were also detected during operations.
One senior officer we interviewed noted:
I think if [drug detection operations] don’t do anything else it certainly shows that the NSW Police Force are out
and about and they’ve got these massive operations going and they go ‘What’s going on here?’. … [However],
you can do that without this legislation, you can show there’s 100 police doing roadside breath tests. 458
The NSW Police Force noted the following: 459
A number of non-indictable drug offences, including traffic infringements, minor drug possessions,
cannabis cautions and intelligence reports, have also been detected/generated during [drug detection
trial] operations. And any large-scale operations have the potential for reducing road trauma due to a
visible police presence.
Whilst the true measure of this specific legislation is the identification and removal from the road of
vehicles carrying indictable quantity of prohibited drugs/plants, the inclusion of other benefits, including
those described above, in any discussion of the overall effectiveness of these operations enhances their
perceived success. However, it is noted that these additional benefits may just as well as have been derived
from non-[drug detection trial] related operations.
There is little doubt that any police activity has the potential to detect offences unrelated to the primary purpose of
the operation. However, as the NSW Police Force observed, the unplanned peripheral benefits achieved during drug
detection trial operations could also have been achieved during other operations, which would have been cheaper
and far less resource intensive to conduct.
In addition, high visibility policing activities during drug detection operations have the potential to adversely impact on
the primary purpose of the operation given the fact that generally well-organised and sophisticated drug couriers may
take evasive action upon seeing or hearing about a highly visible operation (see paragraphs 5.5.1 and 5.5.2 above).
In our view, while noteworthy, the peripheral benefits associated with drug detection operations should be afforded
little or no weight in any assessment of extensively planned, cost and resource intensive operations aimed at
detecting persons involved in the trafficking of indictable quantities of prohibited drugs given that these benefits
could just as easily have been achieved by police conducting ordinary duties such as patrolling highways.
For example, during one mobile operation, conducted over two nights involving 19 police officers and two drug
detection dogs at a total cost in excess of $10,000, police did not seize any prohibited drugs. However, police did
detect two persons drink driving and issued two traffic infringement notices.
It is arguable that a highway patrol officer, deployed for the same period of time in the same location may well have
achieved the same result without the attendant cost and resource impost. That it to say, it is usually a matter of good
luck, rather than detailed planning and execution, that persons were detected committing drink driving and traffic
offences during drug detection operations.
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NSW Ombudsman
Review of the Police Powers (Drug Detection Trial) Act 2003