NEWS: Herald Sun - 29/06/2006 'Drugs no-go zone'

Drugs no-go zone
Mark Buttler
29 Jun 2006

HEROIN addicts and dealers will be banned from nine Melbourne suburbs in a radical crackdown on the drug trade.

They will risk jail if they break court orders banning them from drug-plagued Footscray and surrounding suburbs.

Police plan to round up dealers and addicts who don't live in the area and ask magistrates to ban them from the entire 31 sq km of the City of Maribyrnong.

It covers Footscray, Braybrook, Yarraville, Maidstone, Tottenham, Seddon, Kingsville, West Footscray and Maribyrnong.

The scheme, which starts on Saturday, centres on Footscray where residents and businesses have been blighted by the heroin trade and related assaults, robberies and burglaries for 20 years.

If Project Reduction is a success it could be adopted in other problem areas such as Melbourne City, Richmond and Springvale.

The Sentencing Act gives magistrates the power to place offenders on good behaviour bonds with special conditions.

Those sent before courts under Projection Reduction who want to continue to enter the municipality would have to satisfy a strict set of requirements.

They would need to show they had immediate family in the area, required medical or legal advice, or needed to be there for any purpose or business that could not be conducted elsewhere.

In a six-month period last year, 60 per cent of the 388 offenders processed at Footscray police station were not from the City of Maribyrnong. Of those, 72 per cent had problems with drugs. The bans will apply to people convicted of drug dealing and possession.

But offenders including burglars, shoplifters and people with assault convictions would also be eligible for exclusion orders if they were found to be drug addicted.

Footscray locals are fed-up with dealers and addicts using their streets.

Constant police attention and a succession of blitzes over many years have failed to break the drug trade.

Sen-Det Brendan O'Mahoney of Footscray CIU, who developed the scheme, said it was aimed at breaking the networks that the heroin industry thrives on.

"If you take away the demand, hopefully that will lead to less dealers being in the area," he said.

He said Footscray was treated as a one-stop-shop where addicts steal and sell their stolen goods then meet dealers and shoot up again.

Sen-Det O'Mahoney said he could not say if the drug trade would move to other suburbs because no such scheme had operated before.

He said a dedicated researcher would be assigned to monitor whether crime dropped in Maribyrnong during the six-month trial and whether the exclusion orders had any effect in other areas.

Regardless, he said Footscray ratepayers and business operators deserved a break from the drug trade.

"It's pretty clear most of our offences occur to support drug habits," Sen-Det O'Mahoney said.

He said he hoped the plan would deprive dealers of a market and keep visiting addicts away from the culture generated by being in the company of other users.

Sen-Sgt Dave Byrt said Footscray was used by heroin addicts because it was close to the city and easy to get to by public transport.

The bans will apply to people convicted of drug dealing and possession.
But offenders including burglars, shoplifters and people with assault convictions would also be eligible for exclusion orders if they were found to be drug addicted.

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Drug ban 'will push problem elsewhere'
June 29, 2006 - 11:04AM

Banning drug users and dealers from Melbourne's western suburbs would generate a "seagull effect" as the problem would move elsewhere, says prominent outreach worker Les Twentyman.

Using court orders to stop people from entering certain suburbs if they are caught using or dealing drugs also would isolate them from services set up to help them, Mr Twentyman said.

His comments follow a report in a News Ltd newspaperreport that police are set to launch Project Reduction which will encompass nine drugs-plagued suburbs and impact on non-residents only.

"About four or five years ago in (Sydney's) Cabramatta they had a similar plan where young people were banned from coming into the CBD ... for up to 28 days," Mr Twentyman told the Nine Network today.

"The effect was that young people couldn't access the services, particularly Centrelink which meant if they didn't put in their dole form they were cut off ... it put them back into drug and gang activity."

Mr Twentyman said his Open Family organisation offered a service in the city's west which saw a doctor provide aid to 50 drug-addicted young people every week, while needle exchange programs also operated in the affected area.

"I can understand the frustration of police. I live out there and it is so sad to see how big the problem is," Mr Twentyman said.

"(But) it will become a seagull effect, going from one area to the next.

"What do you do then, ban it from that area?"

Mr Twentyman said it was the high youth unemployment rate, at above 50 per cent in Melbourne's west, that was the real cause of drug use.

"I don't know of one young person who likes being addicted or dependant on drugs ... they haven't got a job, and therefore they don't think they've got an identity."

Project Reduction, which begins on Saturday, will cover nine suburbs in the city's west: Footscray, West Footscray, Braybrook, Yarraville, Maidstone, Tottenham, Seddon, Kingsville and Maribyrnong.

AAP

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Heroin plan gets OK
Mark Buttler and Jacqueline Freegard
30 Jun 2006

RESIDENTS, business owners and Premier Steve Bracks have backed a radical police plan to ban heroin addicts and dealers from Footscray.

Under the crackdown, magistrates would be asked to place convicted addicts and dealers from outside the area on orders banning them from the City of Maribyrnong.

Although critics said the problem would just be shifted elsewhere, locals said they had been putting up with the heroin trade for many years and it was time they got some relief.

Every Footscray business owner contacted by the Herald Sun yesterday backed the scheme, dubbed Project Reduction.

Footscray Auto Care manager Alan Marshall said so many other initiatives had failed, it was time to try something different.

"I've been stepping over them (addicts) for years. They've got to give it a go," Mr Marshall said.

Footscray Halal Meats manager Julian Bayratar he did not like bringing his son into work because of what he might see.

Six other local business operators and residents contacted backed Project Reduction, which will begin tomorrow.

Mr Bracks said he supported the program: "It deserves a go to see if that dispersement can have an effect. It deserves a go."

City of Maribyrnong Mayor Janet Rice said she was disappointed the council did not know of the plan until yesterday.

Cr Rice said the council and relevant health and social agencies should have known so a more comprehensive strategy could be put into place.

"We're surprised the police didn't tell us about it before we read it in the Herald Sun this morning," she said.

"Questioning people in the street and banning people from our city is just going to move the problem somewhere else."

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Reclaiming our streets
EDITORIAL
30 Jun 2006

HEROIN is a curse that has brought misery and despair to many thousands of Victorian families.

Police fight a never-ending battle to control the spread of the drug among vulnerable people.

The Herald Sun yesterday revealed a new plan to curb rampant heroin dealing in the inner-western suburbs.

The area surrounding Footscray has long been blighted by pushers brazenly selling their wares to desperate addicts.

The plan will see users and dealers banned from certain areas, risking jail if they enter the forbidden zones.

It covers Footscray, Braybrook, Yarraville, Maidstone, Tottenham, Seddon, Kingsville, West Footscray and Maribyrnong, and could be extended to other suburbs if successful.

Civil libertarians might blanch at the thought of restricting freedom of movement but it is a small price to pay if we can save lives and reduce crime.

The people of the western suburbs, who have had to put up with pushers on their street corners for too long, are ecstatic with the plan.

Hopefully they will be now be able to reclaim their neighbourhoods for families and children, instead of being forced to share them with drugs and despair.

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pekkie said:

This is infuriating me!

Of course dealers and addicts are going to move to different areas of Melbourne now. It's just pushing the problem from one place to another. Next thing will be banning addicts and dealers from Melbourne, and shuffling them off to Adelaide, or something equally as ridiculous.

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The people of the western suburbs, who have had to put up with pushers on their street corners for too long, are ecstatic with the plan.

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Civil libertarians might blanch at the thought of restricting freedom of movement

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COUNCILLORS in Melbourne's western suburbs have joined social workers in attacking a plan by police to ban drug offenders from their patrol area in a bid to reduce crime.

Senior Sergeant David Byrt, from Footscray police station, yesterday revealed details of Project Reduction, a 12-month pilot program whereby police apply to magistrates for exclusion orders to stop non-resident drug offenders from entering the nine suburbs that make up the City of Maribyrnong.

Sergeant Byrt described the plan as an innovative move to reduce drug-related crime in Footscray and surrounding suburbs such as Seddon, Braybrook and Maidstone.

But councillors from the neighbouring municipalities of Hobsons Bay and Moonee Valley believe it will simply push drug-related activity into their areas. "I am most concerned that it will actually move the people into the next suburb, which would be Flemington-Kensington, and then throughout the City of Moonee Valley," said Moonee Valley Mayor Jan Chantry.

Cr Chantry described the plan as draconian and outmoded. "Contemporary drug policy promotes treatment and rehabilitation for dependants, rather than an approach like this that I believe will further stigmatise drug-dependent people.

"Communities should work together and perhaps we could have come up with a better solution to this social problem rather than just erecting this city wall to keep unsuitable or undesirable people out."

Maribyrnong Mayor Janet Rice criticised the focus on Footscray and said enforcement was only one aspect of the drug issue.

"From our perspective we feel that the focus on Footscray is unfair and not productive. We need to be dealing with drug issues holistically and collaboratively," she said.

"We've been working so hard to fight this stigma that Footscray is the drug capital of the universe. It's not — it's a great place to live, we love it here, and to have this … sets us back five years."

Hobsons Bay Mayor Carl Marsich said while he understood the frustrations of Footscray police, more could be achieved by controlling the source of drug-related crime.

The councillors' concerns echo those of outreach worker Les Twentyman, from Open Family, and Odyssey House chief executive David Crosbie. Mr Twentyman said the plan would isolate addicts from services set up to help them. Mr Crosbie said it would spread drug activity, making it more difficult to police.

Senior Sergeant Byrt conceded he did not know how the project would impact on surrounding areas.

"There's actually been no recorded studies of the effects of displacement conducted before, and the advantage of this is we now have people in place whose task it is to specifically monitor those effects," he said.

But he rejected the notion that Project Reduction was a radical new measure.

"This is simply an extension of a process that we've always had available to us through the … Bail Act, and prior to July 1 police have been applying these conditions as bail conditions on offenders.

"Now we're simply going to formalise it more and make it a sentencing option for a magistrate upon conviction."

Project Reduction, which begins on Saturday, will cover nine western suburbs: Footscray, West Footscray, Braybrook, Yarraville, Maidstone, Tottenham, Seddon, Kingsville and Maribyrnong.

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"Contemporary drug policy promotes treatment and rehabilitation for dependants, rather than an approach like this that I believe will further stigmatise drug-dependent people.

"Communities should work together and perhaps we could have come up with a better solution to this social problem rather than just erecting this city wall to keep unsuitable or undesirable people out."

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As you can see, many Western suburbs residents are not exactly ecstatic about the plan... which I think is bullshit... they tried to do this in Cabramatta in NSW a few years ago, and it just increased drug related harm for the reasons already mentioned - people will be less able to access services, motivated not to identify themselves as drug users..... *sigh*

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City bans first heroin dealer
Mark Buttler
September 22, 2006 12:00am

THE first heroin trafficker has been banned from entering the City of Maribyrnong under a radical plan to combat the drug trade.

The man was just one of those nabbed in a crackdown that netted 30 people charged with 140 counts of heroin dealing in the municipality's heart, Footscray.

The Herald Sun believes he was banned by Sunshine Magistrates' Court on Wednesday.

Police had charged the man, who lived outside the area, and presented him to the court with a request he be banned from the municipality.

The man pleaded guilty and was ordered to stay away.

Police said more than half of those charged in the operation, which has run over several months, were not from the City of Maribyrnong.

One man was charged with 24 counts of trafficking heroin and another with 18. Neither was from Maribyrnong.

A total of 100 people were charged with drug offences including possession, trafficking, cultivating, and property offences including thefts, burglaries, armed robbery, theft of a motor vehicle and theft from a motor vehicle.

Heroin, cannabis and amphetamines were seized by police.

Police also confiscated weapons including a pistol, imitation guns and swords.

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