Sniff, sniff, It’s war: Drug Dog Blitz
By Matt Khoury
The Mardi Gras has traditionally been a night of drag queens, political activism and sexual expression, but 2008 sees the street lined with a pack of party animals on leashes, and guys and girls wearing blue shirts, with hand-cuffs and pistols.
It’s not retro fashion, a time-warp back to punk band ‘The Police’ or an S&M fetish theme for this year’s parade. Tourists will see the city of Sydney in all its glorious evolution to a police state.
The message from NSW Police has been clear: a blanket sniffer dog operation will swarm the festival season. While ignoring gay bashings, gay bashes are a different story.
David Burnie, Vice President of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, believes that gay and youth events have been targeted due to a perceived high intake of illegal substances.
The war on drugs has been relentless: at the Good Vibrations Festival on February 16, police detected 68 people with illegal drugs, including cannabis, amphetamine, cocaine and ecstacy.
Last weekend saw ‘Operation Appaloosa’ in full force. The gay harbour party was targeted with 23 drug-related charges resulting from a drug-detection dog operation.
Also, 18 drug-related charges stemmed from a police operation at a dance event in Alexandria.
The Police Powers (Drug Detection Dogs) Act 2001 came into force on the auspicious date of 22.02.02 after a magistrate ruled that a police search of a man after sniffer dog indication was unlawful. The act received bi-partisan support.
An Ombudsman Review of the ‘Drug Dog Act’ said ‘There is little or no evidence’ to support police claims it targeted suppliers, with just 19 convictions of young, first-time suppliers resulting from over 10 000 indications. They were inundated with community complaints.
‘Overwhelmingly, the use of drug detection dogs has led to public searches of individuals in which no drugs were found, or the detection of mostly young adults in possession of very small amounts of cannabis for personal use,’ the report concluded.
But operations continue. Night clubs have been closed down. Public transport and street parades are subjected to searches that would be unlawful in other countries. (Dogs were trialled in California, where a campaign saw the city laced with marijuana to confuse dogs, before being abruptly cancelled).
The movement against dogs in NSW is suppressed. ‘Rusty’ Harris fought the police through a score of court cases on the northern rivers for years. The Greens Lee Rhiannon is an outspoken critic of the policy.
Cameron Murphy, the President of the NSW Council of Civil Liberties, said, ‘The reason drug dogs are allowed is that we don’t have a Bill of Rights in Australia.’
Welcome to Sydney, where the cops really are dogs.
