POT LUCK FOR BRIDE CAUGHT IN DRUG NET

A HUGE West Australian drug operation involving 400 law officials found
not a skerrick of heroin yesterday, but did manage to catch in its wide
net one of Australia's hottest young bands, Leonardo's Bride.

Members of the group, which has had two hit singles and is on the brink
of international recording deals, were detained at Perth domestic
airport yesterday on suspicion of drug possession.

Guitarist Dean Manning, 33, was charged with possession of a small
amount of cannabis while the rest of the group were released.

They were unlucky enough to arrive in the west on the third day of a
huge joint exercise by State and federal police, customs officers and
the National Crime Authority.

The customs dogs which sniffed out Leonardo's Bride – considered the
brightest future talent for Mushroom Records, which declined to comment
yesterday – were outside their usual jurisdiction of the international
airport.

The fiveday "Operation Alliance" is using the combined skills and
resources of the different agencies for spotchecks on all routes into
the State through which heroin is carried.

Along with musicians at the airport, the officers found amphetamines at
truck stops, a bit of cannabis on the IndianPacific train and assorted
smalltime crimes at shipping ports along the coast.

They even found a Sydney woman, who had been on the missing persons'
list for two years, in Kununurra, near the Northern Territory border in
the State's far north.

The first operation of its kind in Australia is about
intelligencegathering, smalltime drug busting and a big dose of public
relations, the management team admits.

"We haven't found any heroin yet but that's not what it's all about,"
Acting Assistant Commissioner Graeme Lienert said. "It's a proactive
strategy to let people know that if they traffic in drugs, they will be
caught.

"The intelligence on people moving around this big, wide country is
being documented. In the new year, you'll see the real results."

The management team was formed in response to a high number of
heroinrelated deaths in Western Australia in the past two years.