POLICE HAVE DISCRETION ON DRUGS

THE AUSTRALIAN Federal Police Association's stand to uphold the law
without fear or favour on its face is highly commendable. The
association has said ' No police officer in the ACT will abrogate this
responsibility under any circumstances. Any attempt to stop members
from carrying out their duty could be met with a charge of hindering
police in the performance of their duty.'

The association was referring to the safe-injecting room proposal
being put by Independent MLA Michael Moore. The association's stand
would carry far more credibility if there was greater evidence around
Canberra of a similar attitude of vigilance by police with respect to
burglaries, car theft and young hoons speeding in side streets away
from the easy dragnet of the open major streets where they usually set
up radar and speed cameras.

The association's claim of wanting to act without fear or favour is
pious falsehood when pitched beside the political stand taken by
former police officers and now Independent MLAs Paul Osborne and Dave
Rugendyke. In this light, it seems the association is siding with
those MLAs in doing their damnedest to defeat any chance of the ACT
getting safe-injecting rooms for people addicted to heroin.

It is possible for a majority of the ACT's MLAs to overcome the
objections of Mr Osborne and Mr Rugendyke by legislating for a
safe-injecting room, but the ACT Legislative Assembly has no power to
remove the federal offences of possession and possession for supply of
a prohibited imported narcotic.

It therefore makes it easy for the Australian Federal Police
Association or indeed any determined number of AFP officers to stymie
a reasonable trial of an injecting room by signaling to addicts that
they will have to run a thick blue line of police officers if they
attempt to use it. The addicts will become the easy pickings for
zealous police in search of convictions while the big drug dealers,
who are the real menace to society, get away with it in much the same
way the menacing miscreants on the road get away unpoliced while the
speed traps are set in the safe open.

There are questions of degree and discretion in enforcement of the
law, particularly with respect to victimless crime and minor crime.

The community expects its police force to set priorities which are
directed at overall community safety.

If the majority of the community's MLAs vote for an injecting room,
that should be signal enough to the police that illegal possession of
small amounts of heroin by addicts heading for a legally sanctioned
injection room should be among the very lowest of priorities for
enforcement and that their efforts should be directed elsewhere.

That is not to say the law should be held in contempt or that police
should ignore the obvious waving of heroin under their nose. However,
the statement made this week about upholding the law without fear or
favour with respect to the injecting room reveals a political agenda.

After all, as any trader in Civic will tell us, there are heroin deals
on the half hour in Garema Place and its environs which the police
apparently do nothing about now. But, suddenly, with the prospect of a
legalised injecting room the police want to take an active interest in
the small drug scene.

The tragic irony of this is that safe-injecting rooms, a heroin trial
and perhaps the availability of heroin on prescription to addicts
would do more to prevent burglaries and armed robberies than present
police practices.