POLICE SWOOP ON DRUG DEALERS

Police have arrested 18 suspected drug traffickers and charged about a
dozen others with related offences in the opening offensive of a tough new
strategy to combat the heroin crisis in central Melbourne.

A new flying squad launched its first show of strength, in which detectives
and dog squad members blitzed the central business district, questioning,
searching and arresting people in an 18-hour operation.

Senior police said yesterday the policy would continue, with 100 detectives
taking part in Operation Minder given the freedom to follow the heroin
trade and drug-related robberies as they move across the city.

The State Government and Melbourne City Council applauded the new approach
while welfare groups warned that it may push the drug trade and associated
crime into other areas and clog the prison system.

City traders and resident groups have been calling for tougher action on
drugs in the city and police said yesterday it was time for a concentrated
effort to clean up the area around Russell Street between Bourke and
Lonsdale Streets.

More than 75 detectives from the taskforce swooped on heroin dealers and
users in an operation that began on Thursday evening.

Police charged 18 people with trafficking sizeable amounts of heroin with a
street value of tens of thousands of dollars. Up to a dozen others were
charged with possession of heroin, theft of a car, criminal damage and
weapons offences, with more charges to follow.

Detective Superintendent Gary Jamieson of the crime department said the
highly visible police operation would continue to deter street dealing. He
described the new approach as "high-impact and quick-response policing" to
a problem that greatly concerned the public.

"This is a new concept in policing, we have got a new flying squad,
operating out of the crime department, and this sort of operation will be
something that will continue in the future," he said.

He said that Operation Minder was designed to be overt to break the trend
of the city centre acting as a magnet for drug dealers and users. He also
indicated that police were prepared to commit all resources to track the
problem.

"One of the problems with something like this is that you just push the
problem elsewhere," he said. "But the good part about it, from our
perspective, is we can also move elsewhere and we will do that."

The judicial system needed to support police by sentencing dealers to
prison terms if found guilty of trafficking, Superintendent Jamieson said.

"They (dealers) are just desperadoes ... someone described it as being
seagulls flying in, we arrive and they fly into the air, and soon as we
leave they land again, but eventually there may not be any seagulls left,"
he said.

Superintendent Jamieson said many users were not charged during the
operation as police were aiming at traffickers who continued to flout the
law. ``Our focus is on the drug traffickers only in this operation, and I
think these results really demonstrate that there are a lot of people
pushing drugs out there to any person,'' he said.

The Premier, Mr Steve Bracks, said the Government was pleased that police
had blitzed the Russell Street area.

Mr Bracks said drug users were victims of dealers, and the targets of the
operation had been the peddlers.

``I really applaud the police commissioner, Mr (Neil) Comrie, and police
command for the action they've taken,'' he said.

Mr Bracks said the Government had given a commitment to clamp down on drug
dealers, but also to include rehabilitation and harm-minimisation in its
policy.

A Melbourne city councillor, Cr Wellington Lee, who owns a pharmacy on the
corner of Russell and Little Bourke Streets, said he was delighted to see
police had made a concerted effort to make the streets safe for Melburnians.

Mr Jamie Boyd, a youth outreach worker with Open Family, said by chasing
addicts off the streets the police would push the problem out of the public
eye leading to a higher overdose rate.

``The problem will just move elsewhere into places where it is harder for
us to access them and offer them the help they need.''