MEDIA MISSED A CHANGE OF TACTICS IN THE DRUGS WAR

The Police Haven't Gone Soft On Cabramatta's Drug Dealers, Write
David Dixon And Lisa Maher, They've Merely Changed The Way They Fight
Them

It is becoming accepted wisdom that police have eased up on
enforcement and are losing the war on drugs in Cabramatta. The
immediate origin of the idea is a report to a Legislative Council
inquiry by the crime statistician Dr Don Weatherburn that arrests for
narcotics possession in the area had declined by 40 per cent, while
arrests for dealing in narcotics had fallen by 52 per cent in the two
years to last November.

Weatherburn, however, cautioned that there was "no way I can tell
from the figures at this stage what is responsible for the drop-off",
and he suggested the committee investigate policing strategies in
Cabramatta.

But his caution has been overlooked in subsequent commentaries.
Instead the media have seized on his later speculation that the fall
might be because "police have eased off in their enforcement action
against drug use or drug dealing".

This was in tune with complaints from sections of the Cabramatta
business community and of the Police Service. So the "police go-slow"
has become fact in popular understanding. And it may well be behind
the foreshadowed increase in police for the area.

But this picture of police laxity is simply unrecognisable to anyone
familiar with the streets of Cabramatta in this period. So how should
we understand Weatherburn's remarkable figures?

First, they partly reflect changing policing strategies. Our research
for the Police Service in 1997-98 showed that the strategy shifted
from enforcing drug laws to improving the quality of life in the
Cabramatta CBD by displacing the drug market and deterring and
dispersing participants by using (or threatening to use) a broad
legal armoury of non-drug offences such as littering, ticket evasion,
trespass, breach of bail, and consorting. (The Legislative Council
committee could usefully examine trends in such offences.)

The primary tool was an intensive uniformed police presence, rather
than undercover buy/bust operations which had been restricted by
legal changes in 1997.

Uniformed officers may provide visual reassurance to local
communities, but are not, for obvious reasons, very effective at
detecting drug offences. Instead, the priority became "cleaning-up"
Cabramatta. Reducing the visible signs of disorder associated with
the drug market was apparently more important than making drug
arrests.

Also, the crackdowns of the mid-1990s had contributed to a doubling
of recorded offences of possessing or using narcotics in NSW between
1995 and 1998. But in the longer term, they made drug laws harder to
enforce because at street level, users and user-dealers learnt to
hide their drugs better; in mouths, noses and other bodily cavities.
In one of our studies, three-quarters of our interviewees reported at
least one occasion when they had been carrying illegal drugs which
police did not find when they were searched.

Of greater concern was "target-hardening" at the retail level. Police
crackdowns on what was a freelance market encouraged operations to
become more organised. Arrangements via mobile phone, drive-bys and
sales from apartments were safer than the street corner or arcade. At
the same time, some police activity was directed higher up the drug
ladder. In 1997, the (then) specialist Drug Enforcement Agency
assisted Cabramatta police in routine street-level enforcement by
conducting buy-bust operations.

National reports said it was not cost-effectiveness to deploy such
supply-side specialists in street-level enforcement and that they
should set their sights higher up the supply ladder. So, a decline in
arrests for street-level sales might indicate a more effective use of
law enforcement; catching one big fish is better than a net full of
minnows.

The image of Cabramatta as an under-policed drug market defies
reality. For several years, the Police Service has deployed
additional resources in a series of intensive operations.

It is not surprising, however, that the market has not been
suppressed. Nobody with any knowledge of drug policing would expect
it to be. Unfortunately, the rhetoric of the war on drugs encourages
some members of the public and some operational police to believe
that suppression is achievable.

The result for both groups is the same - the disappointment,
frustration and anger which led to the establishment of the
Legislative

Council inquiry. Simply pouring more police resources into Cabramatta
or providing new police powers will not solve the problem - and
understanding the problem is much more complicated than is often
assumed.

Ironically, the Cabramatta heroin market is, for the moment at least,
a shadow of its former self. Cocaine, introduced to the area in 1998,
is the drug of the moment. The supply of heroin is now a trickle, as
the price of an ounce has rocketed from $3,000 to $10,000.
Local-level law enforcement can claim no credit for this. The extent
to which supply-side enforcement higher up the market is responsible
is unknown (despite the predictable claims to the contrary). If
explaining the relationship between policing and the local drug
market is difficult, understanding the higher reaches of the market
is even more challenging.

Professor David Dixon from the University of NSW's faculty of law,
and Dr Lisa Maher from the faculty of medicine, have been studying
the policing of the Cabramatta drug market for more than five years.