HEROIN: THE MAIN ENEMY
Fighting drug-related crime is the focus for Peter Ryan.

The Police Commissioner, Mr Peter Ryan, has disclosed new figures on needle
use in NSW which strongly suggest heroin use is increasing, but says he will
no longer involve himself in advancing alternative drug policies after being
warned to stay silent by NSW politicians.

Mr Ryan said that in one NSW town with a population of about 30,000, a local
needle exchange earlier this year recorded 3,000 needles handed in over a
four-week period. "It does give an indication of a trend, and the trend has
obviously been growing," he said in an interview on the first anniversary of
the report of the Wood Royal Commission into police corruption.

Justice Wood advocated a trial to decriminalise heroin, and Mr Ryan has
previously hinted that he may support such an experiment.

Mr Ryan said it was an incontrovertible fact that people with expensive
heroin habits must raise money to support their drug-taking, often through
crime. But when asked if he supported a trial to distribute heroin to
selected users - such as that proposed for Canberra but scuttled by the
Federal Government - Mr Ryan said: "I am charged with the enforcement side
and I've already been told to mind my own business when it comes to anything
else, so that I will do and just continue with the enforcement side."

He said drug use, particularly heroin use, was the main cause of crime and
said conventional strategies, such as the recent police blitz on dealers and
users in Cambramatta, had been successful. Robberies and theft in the suburb
had fallen dramatically during the blitz, with housebreaks down by 63 per
cent. He said his strategy now was to arrest as many drug dealers and users
as possible so the police could gain intelligence to clear up other crimes.

But Mr Ryan said he believed much more needed to be done to prevent drugs
entering Australia, and there was a need to improve the co-operation and
intelligence-sharing between Australian police forces.

He said Australia should have a "nationally funded" fingerprint data base
and he disclosed that the existing data base, jointly paid for by police
forces, would need to be overhauled by 2000.

Mr Ryan said he believed most police supported his reform program for the
service, which has seen regional and local commanders given far more freedom
to decide their crime-fighting priorities but put under greater pressure to
produce results.

He had anticipated recent increases in some forms of crime, such as knife
and firearm-related robberies, before they were officially reported, and
early action he had taken had increased police arrest rates.

He said he would prefer to be judged on how safe and secure the public felt,
but warned that no police chief in the world could claim to have reduced
crime to acceptable levels.

"Crime is with us. It's like the air we breathe. It's all around us," Mr
Ryan said.

He added that he was dissatisfied with what he saw as an unacceptably high
level of scrutiny by official agencies, including the Police Integrity
Commission, the Independent Commission Against Corruption, the NSW Ombudsman
and various Government committees, saying NSW was the most "watchdogged"
force in the world. "There's always someone looking at us and asking us for
information," Mr Ryan said.

"I would like to see us being given the chance to get on with the job, quite
frankly. It's taking up a huge amount of my time and the time of a lot of my
senior managers. It also affects operational police because they are
constantly looking over their shoulders."

Mr Ryan said he accepted that it was too soon after the Royal Commission for
the number of bodies to be reduced but, over time, they would have to be.

Checked-by: "Rolf Ernst"