June 4, 2007
IT COULD not have exposed the dirty secret more graphically. Ten years ago this month, French freelance photographer Roni Levi was shot dead by police officers on Bondi Beach.
Levi, 33, armed with a knife, was shot four times by two NSW police.
Senior Constable Anthony Dilorenzo and Constable Rodney Podesta were later found to be drug users, although as they were not tested at the time it will never be known if they were affected when the fatal shots were fired.
That was on June 28, 1997, and while many Australian law-enforcement agencies have since adopted forms of drug testing, Victoria continues to lag behind due to an industrial arm wrestle between Chief Commissioner,Christine Nixon and Police Association secretary Senior Sergeant Paul Mullett.
As an assistant commissioner in NSW, Nixon helped introduce that force's substance abuse policy, and in 2001, when appointed Victoria's top cop, she announced her intention to introduce drug testing for police.
Two years later she said she hoped the policy would be finalised within months adding: "We do have a problem here."
The original plan to introduce testing appeared set to be launched as early as 2002 but has remained dormant since.
According to Mullett, the association agreed to a welfare-based program in which individual police could come forward for treatment and supervisors would intervene when they saw a problem combined with critical incident testing.
He said that before testing was introduced there needed to be legislative change to ensure police drug/health records remained confidential.
"We agreed to a 12-month pilot test before we entered discussions on random and targeted testing but the department has sat on its hands since."
No one in policing doubts there is a problem. The workforce is largely young, has disposable income and police work odd hours. Traditionally when police party, they party hard. Alcohol abuse has been (and remains) a problem in high-stress occupations, including law enforcement.
Details of drug use involving police in Victoria remains sketchy and largely anecdotal. There are stories of some "gym-junkie" police using steroids, of former members of the disbanded drug squad using cocaine, of young police using amphetamines and ecstasy and older ones using marijuana.
Hopelessly compromised police have been caught on tape dealing drugs and protecting their dealers.
Some prefer to turn a blind eye rather than face ostracism when they see their non-police friends breaking the law by taking drugs. The whispered problem surfaced tragically and publicly when one popular Melbourne policeman died of an ecstasy overdose in 2001.
There is not a major police station in Victoria where police supervisors don't wonder if some of their junior members are using drugs. But there is little they can do about it.
Police who are suspected of being occasional drug users do not become the subject of protracted and expensive Ethical Standards Department or Office of Police Integrity investigations.
But at the start of their shifts these suspected drug users are still given the keys to powerful police cars and carry revolvers to keep the peace. They may have to make life or death decisions in a split second.
It remains an anomaly that in Victoria an AFL sharpshooter armed with a football can be tested for illicit drug use yet a police constable armed with a handgun cannot.
The question is no longer whether police use drugs, it is how to deal with the fallout.
Police who take illegal drugs are breaking the laws they swore to uphold. Once compromised, they leave themselves open to blackmail. They will hardly charge the dealer who sold them their drugs.
But if senior police enforce a strict zero-tolerance policy the problem will be pushed underground and become harder to detect. Police with drug problems will not come forward for help if they face the sack.
NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney's attitude is uncompromising.
"Police officers using illegal drugs are engaging in criminal behaviour and no explanation by them alters this fact ... We cannot employ a double standard and we cannot allow any level of criminal activity to go unchecked," he says.
But police are recruited from the community and there is ample evidence that young Australians do not see occasional drug use as a hanging offence.
Surveys show almost six in every 10 Australians aged 20 to 29 years have used marijuana and 20 per cent of the same age group have used ecstasy.
Policing remains a young person's game with constables and senior constables making up 75 per cent of the force.
The most comprehensive study on the largely hidden problem was conducted in 2005 by the NSW Police Integrity Commission. The commission's examination, codenamed Abelia, found police who had used heroin, cannabis, ecstasy, amphetamines, cocaine, ketamine and steroids.
The inquiry noted: "Officers are drawn from a community in which some sections consider using illegal drugs as commonplace and unremarkable."
The comprehensive report quotes a NSW police instructor who saw a lecturer say to a police academy class of nearly 200: "'Raise your hand if you ever smoked cannabis before you joined the academy' and just about everyone did."
One NSW policeman sacked after he was found to have smoked marijuana while in the force said: "I believe it was wrong for me to use cannabis. However, for something that a member of the public would have been lucky to get a $50 fine for, they threw away a police officer with 11 years' experience, that they'd spent time training."
But it is not just young police who use illegal substances. In the 81 confirmed cases in which the commission found police involved in using illegal drugs, their age ranged from 20 to 48 years with ranks from probationary constable to sergeant.
Since NSW police introduced random drug testing in September 2001, 3700 random tests have been conducted for only two positive results. The Morris Iemma Government has announced it will increase random tests to 2200 a year and start screening for steroid use.
The wildly under-represented results may be due to several factors but flexible rosters that enable police to have several days off in succession means they can take drugs and return to work confident the chemicals have been flushed from their systems. The NSW Government has rejected commission recommendations to introduce off-duty tests, and accurate analysis of hair strands - where drug residue can remain for 90 days.
Paul Mullett says there is evidence that random and target testing doesn't work.
"It is using a sledgehammer to smash a nut. It just drives the problem underground," he says.
Mullet says police who buy drugs from dealers can be dealt with through the existing criminal code.
"Police are not above the law and we do not support that sort of activity."
Some operational police, those who drive the powerful cars and carry guns, admit to working while high. One former constable told the NSW inquiry she used amphetamines while on duty "because they help me to cope with thinking, to wake me up so that I can concentrate so I could be awake and alert enough so they wouldn't have anything to pick on me about (and) to make sure I get my job done properly".
In tests on 1249 NSW police officers involved in 293 critical incidents between 1998 and 2005, there were seven positive results.
But when police suspected of using drugs were actively targeted, the results jumped to nearly one in five returning a positive sample. Between 1998 and 2005, NSW police conducted 148 targeted tests of 27 positives.
Of 30 cases dealt with where police tested positive, 16 resigned, three were discharged as medically unfit, seven were dismissed and four disciplined and allowed to remain.
Excuses offered by some police caught were as imaginative as those used by some professional athletes. They included one claiming he mistook a "joint" for a roll-your-own cigarette. Another suggested a piece of chocolate cake he ate was "laced" with cannabis and yet another said his drink was laced. The most imaginative was the one who said he inadvertently took his wife's medication for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
Most police drug policies try to walk the thin line between welfare and law enforcement discipline. If you deal, use hard drugs, or buy from other police you are out. If you come forward and admit to a substance problem you will be helped.
As one NSW policeman told the police integrity commission: "If they did test every officer, what would they do? Sack every cop who is using drugs? There's already a shortage of police officers."
But some police who used drugs were also open to wider criminal activity. The investigation found some police drug users also protected dealers, sold drugs and stole money.
In Melbourne a drug squad detective, later jailed for drug trafficking, was caught on tape telling an informer his nose was "red raw" from cocaine use. He also said he knew at least six serving detectives who were abusing ecstasy and cocaine.
An ex-detective, recently convicted of trafficking, was recorded on telephone intercepts discussing ecstasy and cocaine use with former colleagues.
But it is not just police users who can be compromised. Those who do not take illicit drugs may still refuse to enforce the law.
"Some officers told the PIC that they would always place their friends above their duty as an officer. It is clear that encounters with friends, relatives or acquaintances who use illegal drugs may present an integrity risk to a wide range of officers," the Abelia report states.
Under the proposed plan in Victoria, police who seek help or are persuaded by a supervisor to accept expert treatment will fall within a welfare model.
Police who are caught through targeted or critical incident testing will be referred to a Professional Standards Assessment Panel. If the breach is classified as a category 2 offence, the police officer may be dismissed, disciplined or face criminal prosecution.
If it is deemed to be a category 1 offence, the police officer will receive drug and alcohol treatment.
The treatment/punishment would be decided after studying the individual's employment record, the drugs used, whether they were affected while carrying out operational duties and if the drugs were "illegally obtained via work".
Senior police will also be able to order immediate testing on fitness for duty grounds if there is a belief the police officer has attended work affected by drugs or alcohol.
But as it stands police in Victoria are not tested. They are assumed to be clean - even when they aren't.
www.pic.nsw.gov.au
TRUE CONFESSIONS
"It was there, so it was available, also maybe boredom with reality and mundane life, I think about six years into the police service I started getting well and truly sick of it, bored with it, so this was just something different, I guess."
NSW policeman dismissed for taking drugs after 12 years' service
"Just with friends at parties, kind of thing. They were having a bit of fun, so I wanted to join in."
Policeman who quit after four years on why he took drugs
"I mean ecstasy's a type of drug you wouldn't take at home. Um, parties or nightclubs and that was it."
Former detective sergeant
"I guess - I mean, I was 25 at the time. Everyone knows being a cop is a bit of a stressful thing ¿ It was just a bit of a stress relief. I could go out and just be normal."
Former police constable on why she took ecstasy and amphetamines
Source: NSW Police Integrity Commission
