Drug-drivers targeted during police operation in Melbourne’s outer east
Convicted drug-addled drivers are being targeted in Melbourne’s outer east in a bid to nab repeat offenders from wreaking havoc on the state’s roads.
Outer East
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Police are staking out the homes of convicted drug-drivers across the outer east to catch repeat offenders.
In what is believed to be a Victorian first, Maroondah highway patrol officers ran Operation Isa Brown between November and December to get drugged drivers off the roads.
Officers did 60 patrols of up to 152 addresses of convicted drug-drivers in Knox, Maroondah and the Yarra Ranges.
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They caught two men — both already convicted drug drivers — behind the wheel near their homes in Croydon and Kilsyth, and both will face court.
The operation is the brainchild of the unit’s Acting Sergeant Julian Apps, who used data of drug-driving offenders between May and August to further monitor their behaviour.
Acting Sgt Apps said the operation was in response to drug-driving becoming a more prominent issue in the outer east.
He said officers caught more than 50 drug-drivers every month throughout the outer east in 2018.
“From going past their houses, sometimes you see the cars parked in the driveway … and sometimes they are not,” Acting Sgt Apps said.
“So if we want to target that person, we can build up a picture of when they’re driving and it increases our likelihood of catching them again.
“It’s good to make the most of the intelligence we gather and from that we can potentially stop them from doing it more.”
Maroondah highway patrol Sergeant Michael Aston said the unit planned to run the operation again in 2019 along with other drug-driving operations and education initiatives.
“Certainly it’s something (drug-driving) that is coming across our radar a lot more,” Sgt Aston said.
“It’s been a concern of ours for the while, and this is why we come up with things like this.
“We have to target repeat offenders because drug use is a welfare and a social issue.”
Liberty Victoria president Jessie Taylor said while police were entitled to do the patrols, the group was cynical about the operation.
“Not only is it a questionable use of private information, it also seems to have yielded very modest results,” she said.
“This operation is a good example of the grey areas that exist around appropriate use of personal information when it is collected by public authorities.”
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