Drug offences rise almost 40 per cent after operations from Queensland Police
Bikies, drug busts and machine guns – what police found during a sweep of one Brisbane region, including in a suburb where homes sell for millions of dollars.
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HIDDEN drug labs, machine guns and properties with links to some of Australia’s most dangerous bikie gangs.
These are the worrying discoveries behind a three-month drug crackdown from Queensland Police in Brisbane’s southeastern suburbs.
Operations, such as Taskforce Maxima, have helped police take the broom through suburbs south of the river with statistics from MyPolice showing drug offences have risen by 357 from March to last month – an increase of almost 40 per cent.
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One of Brisbane’s most affluent suburbs in Chandler was rocked last month after a raid on a property on Old Cleveland Rd, with links to the Comanchero and Bandido outlaw motorcycle gangs, on June 18.
During a search of the property, officers from the taskforce and Organised Crime Gangs Group, found a clandestine laboratory used to produce crystal meth, along with 30 grams of ice, cannabis as well as a machine gun, handgun and ammunition.
A 45-year-old Chandler man and 45-year-old Petrie Terrace man were charged and are yet to appear in court.
“The increase in drug possession and not other more serious offence types could suggest the
elevated data is not directly related to one particular operation or protracted investigation but the result of general proactive policing strategies as a whole being conducted throughout South
Brisbane District,” a Queensland Police Service spokesman said.
The numbers add to a trend shown in other specific areas during the COVID-19 pandemic, including Logan, which showed a rise in drug arrests in recent months.
The spokesman also said it was unsure whether the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on their ability to crackdown on drugs as it was still ongoing.