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| Police with a dog trawling passengers exiting Kings Cross station, in the hope they might catch someone hoping to share a joint later on. |
The clusterf*ck that is drug prohibition in NSW has been exposed in all its shame by a court awarding $93k compensation over an illegal strip-search at a music festival.
A then 27-year-old woman was indicated by a drug dog, taken to a tent, stripped and told to bend over and remove her tampon. She was bleeding because she has recently given birth. A male policeman came into the tent while she was naked to return her bag after it was searched. No drugs were found.
The woman was the lead litigant in a class action of 3,000 other stip-search victims, and her lawyers say this could cost NSW Police $150 million in damages.
It's clear the police in such cases can be searching for only a small quantity of drugs as, say, a kilo of coke was unlikely to be concealed.
Sniffer dogs have a terrible record in finding trafficable quantities of drugs because it seems major dealers don't take trains, walk around searched venues or try to run the gauntlet of sniffer dogs to enter music festivals.
This farce of prohibition comes as NSW has a shortfall of over 1500 police even as it clings to its drug enforcement programs – in pointless pursuit of illicit drugs, many of whom are less harmful than alcohol.
Police seem very attached to strip-searches and taking helicopter joy flight over Nimbin, looking for cannabis crops. Any cost-benefit analysis of these activities seems elusive.
No word yet from new Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon, but Police Minister Yasmin Catley has defended sniffer dogs, calling them a 'useful tool'. She evidently continues to ignore the findings of the recent NSW Drugs summit which included:
"Cease the use of drug detection dogs and strip searching for suspected drug possession during the
current trial of drug-checking services at music festivals, with consideration to extending this to all music festivals."
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