Why top cops are right about drugs
When long-serving police officers start saying it’s time for a proper rethink on drug law reform, you know the debate has truly shifted, writes former AFP Commissioner Mick Palmer.
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Senior police investigators very rarely, in my experience, have strong opinions about any crime-related issue that are not based on long personal experience.
Serious drug and violence crime investigation is a tough slog and breeds tough, uncompromising, and highly practical, results-focused practitioners.
I do not personally know Detective Superintendent Jon Wacker, the Queensland Police top Drug and Serious Crime investigator, but based on all the feedback I have received, he fits the above description to a tee. Tough, uncompromising, practical, results-focused and most importantly of all, a thoroughly decent human being.
His recent comments in The Courier Mail – that his 43 years’ experience had made him realise that a new illicit drugs strategy was needed – resonated so closely with my own journey that I felt compelled to share my views on his comments. In saying this I’m not suggesting for a moment that I have the operational experience that Superintendent Wacker has, but there are certainly some very significant similarities.
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Superintendent Wacker said that had he been asked five years ago about his attitude on drugs he would have been shocked to find himself making such statements. This was precisely my journey. My career covered 33 years: some 10 years as a detective, almost 14 years as a Police Commissioner in two jurisdictions, and time spent in the 1980s as a practising barrister at the private bar. Like most, I started my police service with a black and white attitude to crime – including illicit drug use – that was basically, “you commit the crime, you do the time”. I had little sympathy for those who broke the law to take drugs or were caught in possession of drugs.
But coalface experience is a great teacher and my experience unquestionably forged and changed my opinion over time to reflect those of Superintendent Wacker. I came to see first-hand, the underlying causal factors that were so often the reason for drug use; the harm, long-term damage and marginalisation that so often resulted from an arrest and conviction of a young Australian, and the futility of attempting to effectively deal with the illicit drug use problem through a policing prism.
The reality is that most police officers are decent and caring people, who see more of the dark and dangerous side of life than many. When attitudes and opinions are fashioned or changed in a policing environment, they aren’t usually fashioned or changed by ideology; they are shaped by coalface experience. By a recognition of the reality: the reality of the actual results being achieved under an operational policing strategy; the reality of the causes, underlying so many of the crimes that are committed; the reality of the good that is being achieved and the damage that is being caused by police actions.
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Jon Wacker identified some of the damage potentially caused when he described the consequences of low-level arrests:
“Grabbing the 18-year-old kid down in the Valley for one eccie in his pocket and arresting and charging him and putting him through the court system when it’s just a stupid mistake.”
“Job opportunities go out the window, travel opportunities go out the window.”
As Jon said, “[T]argeting the low-level social users is probably cutting into our ability to stem the drug flow. And I think it’s time that we look to caution, divert and educate the social drug users.”
Illicit drug use is a serious social problem in our country. But it is a difficult and complex issue and there are no silver bullet solutions by which it can be fixed. It is important to recognise though that there are no bad people in the debate, only concerned people, with different perspectives.
We must be prepared to accept that the results we have been achieving over many years, under our current law enforcement model, are so poor that they scream out for review. That we must find a new way to do business if we hope to achieve better results. That standing still and continuing to tread water cannot continue to be acceptable to a sophisticated and compassionate society such as ours.
Our National Illicit Drugs Policy has the primary aim of minimising harms as well as reducing supply, reducing demand and decreasing availability and increasing price. However, the simple facts are that we have not reduced harm – and despite some excellent, world-class policing, very significant seizures, and the arrests of key players – we have not reduced supply, and have hardly made an indent on demand. In terms of harms, despite the very best efforts of police, we have aggravated way more harms than we have mitigated; we have punished people who we should have protected and in doing so have created an environment of conflict and division between police and young Australians which is counter-productive to the aims we set for ourselves.
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Of course, we must maintain the police focus on organised drug trafficking and traffickers but, as Superintendent Wacker identified, in many situations under our current approach we cause harms to low-level users and the most vulnerable in our society, that far outweigh any benefits likely to flow from arrest and conviction.
There has to be a better way and we must have the courage to seek it out.
Mick Palmer is a former AFP Commissioner.
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