Police chemically profiling ice, drugs seizures to map out drug territories

Police are using an incredible new tool to map out drug dealers’ turf, dealing a major blow to the nation’s multi-billion dollar drug trade. This is how it works.

Police and forensic units removing drug making equipment from a house in Rosebud.

Police have linked 200 drug batches in Victoria using cutting-edge chemical profiling, and the new hi-tech technique has led to local and interstate arrests.

In a major blow to the drug syndicates behind Australia’s multibillion-dollar drug trade, Victoria Police has quietly analysed almost 4000 drug seizures and used the results to map out trafficking territories.

The head of Victoria Police’s Forensic Services Centre, Cate Quinn, revealed in an exclusive interview with the Herald Sun that chemical profiling had enabled detectives to crack several cases in Victoria, which are currently before the courts.

Critical information was given to interstate police, leading to the arrest of a mid-level trafficker for allegedly smuggling drugs over the border.

Drug traffickers are being caught by police using chemical profiling.

Ms Quinn said chemical profiling, a previously untapped form of intelligence, was being used and is likely to result in more arrests.

“Close to 4000 samples have run through the profiling technique and what we are finding is around about 5 per cent make some kind of link — a relationship between seizures,” Ms Quinn said.

“We can then create what’s called a linkage diagram and we can link people to ­seizures and we can link their co-offenders with other seizures or other operations we have had.

“So, you start to get a ­picture of potentially how these substances are moving around.”

Victoria Police first employed chemical profilers in 2015 and they have been quietly working on the drug database behind the scenes.

Since the launch of the program, 24 additional forensic officers and staff have been employed, and new laboratories have been opened in Morwell and Ballarat in recent months.

Drug traffickers are being caught by police using chemical profiling.

The specialist Forensic Drug Intelligence Capability Program has been such a success that the state government increased funding by $4.7 million in 2019-20.

Police Minister Lisa Neville said the extra cash would create more intelligence to better target manufacturers and dealers, as well as track down clandestine drug labs.

The move comes as the appetite for hardcore illicit substances has soared.

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According to the Crime Statistics Agency, in the year to March 2019, the state had the most drug offences on ­record, 32,392 cases, which is more than double the figure for 2010.

Ice was the leading drug, followed by cannabis, ecstasy and cocaine.

Authorities have previously warned that entire small towns were becoming hooked on dangerous drugs, including ice, and drug syndicates and bikie networks were heavily active in the background.

Major rural centres battling drug use include Mildura, Wangaratta, Shepparton and Bendigo.

Other drug crime epicentres include Melbourne, Latrobe, Yarra, Baw Baw, Port Phillip, Maribyrnong, Hume, Dandenong and Brimbank.

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