POLICE STATION DRUGS STASH

A CACHE of drugs has been found in a ceiling cavity at the Bellerive
police station.Builders renovating the Bligh St station found the
drugs hidden in two places above the CIB office wing.

An inquiry has been launched by the police internal investigations
unit into how the bags of cannabis came to be concealed in the
ground-floor ceiling space.

The bags will be forensically examined and any fingerprints found will
be compared with Tasmania Police records which contain those of all
present and former police officers.

Superintendent Peter Wild, of the internal investigations unit,
confirmed yesterday that builders renovating the old station had found
the drugs when they tore out the ceiling.

Three bags of cannabis were found on Tuesday and it was revealed that
another larger stash had been uncovered on April 27 during earlier
renovations.

Supt Wild said it was believed the cannabis found in April may have
been placed in the ceiling cavity in 1991.

An old shop receipt bearing a date in 1991 had been found with the
cannabis bags.

It is not clear how long the second stash has been in the ceiling but
it is possibly of a similar age.

"The bags were found in two areas of that section of the building,"
Supt Wild said.

One was found above an office and the other above a
corridor.

The ground-floor ceilings in the station are made of cork-like squares
which are easily pushed out of place.

The building is being renovated in readiness for it to take over from
the Glenorchy station as the headquarters of the eastern district
police division.

Samples Supt Wild would not speculate on who might have been
responsible for placing the drugs in the ceiling cavity.

He also would not comment on whether investigators would try to obtain
DNA samples from the bags.

"We will see what happens when we fingerprint them," he
said.

A bag of other items was also found with the drugs but Supt Wild
declined to reveal what was in the bag.

Internal investigators are working with the builders to search the
entire ceiling cavity across the ground floor of the station to see if
anything else has been concealed.

One theory being investigated is that a police officer hid the drugs
in the ceiling and forgot about them.

Another possibility is that a civilian brought to the station by
police had the drugs and hid them in a bid to avoid detection.

Under Tasmania Police policy, all drugs seized by police are meant to
be entered on a seized-property register, weighed, measured and later
destroyed by representatives from the Health Department, with the
exception of small amounts occasionally kept for evidence in court
cases.

In an embarrassing raid in 1993, thieves broke into the Launceston
police drug store and made off with most of the marijuana plants
stored there.

No one was ever charged.

Also, drugs seized from St Helens were reported to have gone missing
and were later found behind a door.

Former drug squad sergeant David Charles Ling was last month convicted
of supplying marijuana to his mistress, resulting in a clamp-down of
police procedures relating to drugs.

Legal heavyweight Sir Max Bingham was called in to review the
procedures and he issued 19 recommendations, which included firming up
procedures for keeping track of drugs once they come into police
possession.