Review of the Police Powers (Drug Premises) Act 2001 - NSW ...

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For example, a move-on incident created under the original move-on powers because a person was obstructing traffic, in which the person was also drug affected, might be recorded with “drug related” as an associated factor. The statistics included in this report represent the number of move-ons in which drugs were a related factor, and not the total number of drug move-ons. The reasons for our use of the “drug related” classification to calculate statistics are discussed below. In our audit of the use of the drug move-on powers in Cabramatta LAC during the first year of the review period, those incidents that did not appear to have involved a use of the drug move-on powers were not included in our count or analysis of directions issued under these powers. 56 Of the 198 drug related obey move-on incidents that we examined in the Cabramatta LAC, 179 appeared to have been issued under the drug move-on powers. Most of the records that were removed from the Cabramatta audit were instances in which police moved a person on because it was suspected that they were involved in street prostitution. The following extract from an event narrative is an example of such an incident: Police believe that they were using the lane for prostitution. Police identified themselves, gave [them] a direction to leave the … area and informed them that failure to comply would be an offence. 57 Instances in which the direction appears to have been issued under both the original move-on powers, and the drug move-on powers, were included in our count of directions issued under the drug move-on powers. Lack of detail in many event narratives examined in our State-wide audit of drug related directions made it more difficult to discern which move-on powers the direction had been issued, so we did not exclude any records from the audit on this basis. However, two records were excluded from the State-wide audit because our analysis of the event narratives clearly indicated that they were not move-on incidents. 58 2.4.10. Changes in the recording procedures for drug move-ons In late May 2002, about 11 months after the drug move-on provisions commenced and roughly half way through the review period, NSW Police introduced a new method of recording move-ons. This change required that police classify an incident as a “comply direction drug related” (the other option is “not drug related”) or “refuse direction - drug related” (or “not drug related”). Two new “additional factors” were added to COPS enabling police to further classify the drug related move-on as buying or selling. If, for example, police concluded that a person was purchasing drugs and consequently moved them on, under the new recording method the incident might have been recorded as follows: Event number Incident Type Incident further classification Associated Factor Additional factor 12345678 Actual street offence Comply direction – drug related Drug related Other This change to the procedures for recording move-ons was explained to police on the NSW Police Intranet, as follows: The Street Offence Incident Type in COPS has been expanded to allow recording of directions to move-on when people are reasonably suspected of loitering for the purposes of buying or selling drugs. 59 It is likely that this change affected the number of drug move-ons correctly recorded by police while police adjusted to the new system. For example, it is possible that police officers were not aware of this new method of recording move-ons and continued for a period to record drug move-ons using the old method. 56 Of the 198 drug related move-on incidents that we examined in the Cabramatta LAC, 179 appeared to have been issued under the drug move-on powers. 57 COPS event narrative, Drug Move-on incident 190. 58 A further four records were excluded because they were either duplicate records, or their unique identifier no longer existed on COPS. 59 NSW Police, Police Intranet, “Street Offences Move-on Directions”. 22 NSW Ombudsman Review of the Police Powers (Drug Premises) Act 2001
NSW Police advised us that calculating the number of move-ons issued by using the “additional factor”, as opposed to the associated factor of “drug related”, may double or triple the count of the number of directions issued. 60 This is because police are able to record more than one additional factor in relation to a single move-on incident. For this reason, we used the number of “drug related” move-ons for our statistics and not a count of the number of move-ons based on the “additional factor” categories. Is it noted that a further change to the method of recording move-ons occurred after the review period ended and this is discussed below. 61 2.4.11. The Cabramatta Audit For the first year of the operation of the Act (1 July 2001 – 30 June 2002), our auditing was confined to “drug related” move-ons issued in Cabramatta. We focused on Cabramatta because of the government’s focus on Cabramatta when introducing this legislation. In addition, Cabramatta police were overwhelmingly the highest recorded users of move-ons during this period, comprising 49.84% of the total number of move-ons issued in the first year. There were 2,375 move-on events recorded on COPS by Cabramatta police for the first year of the operation of the Act. We analysed 230 (approximately 10%) of these records. We also audited a small sample of drug move-ons in Cabramatta in the second year as part of the State-wide Audit. 2.4.12. The State-wide Audit To examine the use of the drug move-on powers in other locations we audited the use of drug move-ons from 17 LACs across NSW, for the second year of the operation of the Act (1 July 2002 till 30 June 2003). Generally, LACs were chosen to represent metropolitan, regional and rural areas. However, some LACs were chosen for other reasons, including: • the use of the drug premises provisions was significant and we sought to investigate if there were any links in the use of the two aspects of the legislation • the active street-level drug trade in the area allowed a comparison with the way the drug move-on powers were being used in Cabramatta and/or • the high Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (ATSI) populations allowed a comparison with the findings in the Policing Public Safety report that ATSI people were receiving a high number of move-ons. Fairfield LAC was chosen to allow some examination of anecdotal claims that drug trade had been displaced there from Cabramatta as a result of the use of the move-on powers. Cabramatta was also selected to assess whether police had continued to issue seven day directions. In the LACs we audited, a total of 3,736 drug related move-ons were issued over the review period. We selected approximately 6% or 252 of these, to analyse more closely. We excluded six records and ultimately audited 246 records. 62 During the second year of the operation of the Act, Fairfield and Cabramatta recorded the two highest numbers of drug move-ons disobeyed in NSW. For this reason, a sample of disobeyed move-ons in Fairfield and Cabramatta was also audited. There were few disobeyed move-ons in the rest of the State. In order to understand how disobeyed move-ons were being dealt with across NSW, they were all included in the audit. Table 2 displays the number of move-ons audited for each LAC included in the State-wide audit. Table 2 also shows the proportion of move-ons audited to the total number of move-ons issued in that LAC for the review period. 60 NSW Police, Email, Corporate Information Unit, 19 December 2003. 61 Described in more detail below in the discussion of, “Artificially inflated statistics”. 62 We removed 4 records from the audit because their unique identifiers no longer existed on the COPS system or had already appeared once before on the list of move-on events provided by police. All 4 of the records that were removed from the audit were from Barwon LAC. A further 2 records were removed because their narratives revealed that they were not move-ons. These were from COPS event narratives, drug moveon incidents N247 and N248. In both cases, there was no attempt made by the officers involved to move the person on, and in both cases the person was arrested and entered into custody. NSW Ombudsman Review of the Police Powers (Drug Premises) Act 2001 23
Page 1 and 2: Review of the Police Powers (Drug P
Page 3 and 4: Contents Preface ..................
Page 5 and 6: Chapter 11. Drug move-on powers in
Page 7 and 8: Acknowledgements This report was re
Page 9 and 10: Part One. Background. Chapter 1. In
Page 11 and 12: Drug offences, unlike for example,
Page 13 and 14: elieve is in a public place with th
Page 15 and 16: Chapter 2. Methodology In this chap
Page 17 and 18: 2.3.5. Health data NSP distribution
Page 19 and 20: As the table indicates, more than o
Page 21: 2.4.7. Complaints The NSW Ombudsman
Page 25 and 26: Another data limitation is that COP
Page 27 and 28: Chapter 3. Legislative survey This
Page 29 and 30: Once police have entered the suspec
Page 31 and 32: The table below sets out the penalt
Page 33 and 34: (c) that the nature and extent of t
Page 35 and 36: The Act contains four additional in
Page 37 and 38: A fortification removal notice is r
Page 39 and 40: For example, section 39(3) of the Q
Page 41 and 42: Part Two. Drug premises Chapter 4.
Page 43 and 44: In the police training manual on th
Page 45 and 46: Case study 2. Drug premises search
Page 47 and 48: 4.2.4. Presenting the application b
Page 49 and 50: A Crime Manager we interviewed from
Page 51 and 52: applications. In this Act, an inves
Page 53 and 54: Chapter 5. The definition of drug p
Page 55 and 56: 5.2. Recommendation That Parliament
Page 57 and 58: 5.5.2. Section 11(2)(b): fortificat
Page 59 and 60: In our chapter on Cabramatta, we di
Page 61 and 62: The woman was found guilty of allow
Page 63 and 64: 5.5.5. Means or devices for drug us
Page 65 and 66: Number of Premises Figure 7. Razor
Page 67 and 68: However, no other evidence of drug
Page 69 and 70: • magnum revolver and a 0.357 mag
Page 71 and 72: 5.5.8. Section 11(2)(g): large amou
Page 73 and 74:
The magistrate noted that there wer
Page 75 and 76:
In relation to the money located on
Page 77 and 78:
5.7.6. Cars as drug premises As we
Page 79 and 80:
… rather than being on the edge o
Page 81 and 82:
Chapter 6. The Drug Premises Act -
Page 83 and 84:
• the offence of being found on,
Page 85 and 86:
With reverse onus, we didn’t have
Page 87 and 88:
In the following section, we will d
Page 89 and 90:
Officers from the State Crime Comma
Page 91 and 92:
The second reading speech, which gi
Page 93 and 94:
In the granny flat, police found ca
Page 95 and 96:
Table 6. Pleas entered and court ou
Page 97 and 98:
The magistrate said that he had a r
Page 99 and 100:
13. Allowing use of premises as dru
Page 101 and 102:
The defendant says he was not there
Page 103 and 104:
Figure 13: Ages of people charged w
Page 105 and 106:
Table 12. Number of charges for var
Page 107 and 108:
Chapter 7. Cabramatta 7.1. Introduc
Page 109 and 110:
No. of Drug Premises Figure 14: Num
Page 111 and 112:
Table 13. Information about drug pr
Page 113 and 114:
It should be clear that this legisl
Page 115 and 116:
The unit was in disarray, with spar
Page 117 and 118:
7.5. Level of drug supply the law i
Page 119 and 120:
7.5.3 Firearms, weapons and high le
Page 121 and 122:
7.6. Charges laid under the Drug Pr
Page 123 and 124:
7.6.4. Young Asian people and drug
Page 125 and 126:
Of these 52 people, 31 people pled
Page 127 and 128:
7.8. Conclusion: Impact of the Drug
Page 129 and 130:
By way of comment, the continuing a
Page 131 and 132:
Chapter 8. Targeting drug supply Pa
Page 133 and 134:
Table 18. Drug Misuse and Trafficki
Page 135 and 136:
Low level drug suppliers are more l
Page 137 and 138:
Other forms of organisation in evid
Page 139 and 140:
Table 19. Drugs Located, State-wide
Page 141 and 142:
Table 23. Drugs located, Northern R
Page 143 and 144:
However, the submission concluded b
Page 145 and 146:
To begin with, telephone intercepts
Page 147 and 148:
The prohibited drugs that were loca
Page 149 and 150:
One factor that appears to have per
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