The Australian Federal Police Association’s stand to uphold the law without fear or favour on its face is highly commendable. The association has said “No police officer in the ACT will abrogate this responsibility under any circumstances. Any attempt to stop members from carrying out their duty could be met with a charge of hinder police in the performance of their duty.”
The association was referring to the safe injecting room proposal being put by Independent MLA Michael Moore. The association’s stand would carry far more credibility if there was greater evidence around Canberra of a similar attitude of vigilance by police with respect to burglaries, car theft and young hoons speeding in side streets away from the easy dragnet of the open major streets where they usually set up radar and speed cameras.
The association’s claim of wanting to act without fear or favour is pious falsehood when pitched aside the political stand taken by former police officers and now Independent MLAs Paul Osborne and Dave Rugendyke. In this light it seems the association is siding with those MLAs in doing their damnedest to defeat any chance of the ACT getting safe injecting rooms for people addicted to heroin.
It is possible for a majority of the ACT’s MLAs to overcome the objections of Mr Osborne and Mr Rugendyke by legislating for a safe injecting room, but the ACT Legislative Assembly has no power to remove the Federal offences of possession and possession for supply of a prohibited imported narcotic. It therefore makes it easy for the Australian Federal Police Association or indeed any determined number of AFP officers to stymie a reasonable trial of an injecting room by signaling to addicts that they will have to run a thick blue line of police officers if they attempt to use it. The addicts will become the easy pickings for zealous police in search of convictions while the big drug dealers, who are the real menace to society, get away with it – in much the same way the menacing miscreants on the road get away unpoliced while the speedtraps are set in the safe open.
There are questions of degree and discretion in police enforcement of the law particularly with respect to victimless crime and minor crime. The community expects its police force to set priorities which are directed at overall community safety. If the majority of the community’s MLAs vote for a safe injecting room that should be signal enough to the police that illegal possession of small amounts of heroin by addicts heading for a legally sanctioned injection room should be among the very lowest of priorities for police enforcement and that their efforts should be directed elsewhere.
That is not to say the law should be held in contempt or that police should ignore the obvious waiving of heroin under their nose. However, the statement made this week about upholding the law without fear or favour with respect to the injecting room reveals a political agenda. After all as any trader in Civic will tell us, there are heroin deals on the half hour in Garema Place and its environs which the police apparently do nothing about now. But suddenly with the prospect of a legalised safe injecting room the police want to take an active interest in the small drug scene.
The tragic irony of this is that with safe injecting rooms, a heroin trial and perhaps the availability of heroin on prescription to addicts would do more to prevent burglaries and armed robberies than present police practices.