Thursday, 22 June 2023

Police conduct

David LIMBRICK (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:40): (317) My adjournment matter today is for the Minister for Police, and I quote from the Victoria Police Drug Strategy on page 18, where it says:

Victoria Police recognises that drug problems are first and foremost health issues. By taking a health-focused approach, police are empowered to respond to an individual’s circumstances, environment and life stage. This enables policing approaches that reduce harm and keep the community safe.

It appears at the top of a report that has been released this week by the Fitzroy Legal Service into the police approach to the 420 cannabis event earlier this year. This report continues, quoting from the Victoria Police website:

Victoria Police will focus on the drugs causing the most harm within the community, arrest and prosecute drug dealers …

I could continue, but I think you get the point. Victoria Police state that they will be approaching drug use in the community with a health focus, but as the Fitzroy Legal Service report highlights, this is not what happened at the 420 event. Policing was excessive, as it has been over the last several years. In what must be some kind of irony, just around the corner from this display of futile policing the secretary of the Police Association of Victoria Wayne Gatt was giving testimony to the federal joint committee on law enforcement. Despite what was happening in Flagstaff Gardens, Mr Gatt had the following to say:

Overwhelmingly, police in Victoria will focus on commercial trafficking, for example, and trafficking activities in general.

Mr Gatt continued:

… as a default, my members will focus on the criminality that causes the greatest amount of harm to the greatest amount of people. That is not drug users who are walking the streets.

I can confirm that some of the contents of the Fitzroy Legal Service report are accurate, because I saw it myself. People were handcuffed, despite offering no threat of violence or resistance. With many of the people there licensed medical cannabis users, there was also confusion in the approach of Victoria Police. Some people who produced a prescription were left alone and others were searched and had the contents of their bags tipped onto the ground.

My request for the minister is to provide the information that Fitzroy Legal Service has requested from Victoria Police, which includes: (1) the number of police officers and drug detection dogs deployed to the operation, the operational units involved and the number and purpose of the police vehicles allocated to the operation; (2) the total costs of the operation, including salary costs of the officers deployed; (3) the number of people at the 420 rally who were (a) searched, (b) arrested, (c) released without charge, (d) released on summons, (e) given a caution or (f) able to provide police with a medical cannabis prescription; and (4) whether the 420 rally was utilised as a training operation for newly recruited police officers.