Police using sniffer dogs on Melbourne trains are barking up the wrong tree

The last place you’d expect to see a sniffer dog is at the entrance to your suburban train station, but that’s exactly what greeted public transport users in Melbourne’s south-east this month as part of Victoria Police’s operation to target drug possession on the network.

In Sydney, the use of sniffer dogs at music festivals over the weekend has been criticised by festivalgoers, and renewed calls for it to be scrapped.

And with evidence suggesting the use of sniffer dogs leads to an erosion of civil liberties and an increase in drug-related harm, why is Victoria Police using them? And does it undermine the government’s efforts to combat overdose rates using supervised injecting rooms?

For Victoria’s medicinal cannabis users — who are prohibited from driving under the current system — public transport is one of their only means of transport.

David Limbrick, a Liberal Democratic member of Victoria’s Legislative Council, told Crikey: “Medical cannabis patients should be concerned about being searched, despite having a legal prescription.” Fellow Legislative Council member for Legalise Cannabis Victoria Rachel Payne said she was concerned that “Victoria Police simply do not understand medicinal cannabis is a prescribed medication, and more often than not, treat patients like criminals”.

“We know in Victoria that there are roughly 10,000 arrests a year for cannabis-related crimes, with 92% of those being for possession alone,” Payne said. “So why are we criminalising users and not drug dealers?”

The use of drug-detection dogs has long been dismissed by experts as ineffective and invasive. Studies from NSW suggest drugs aren’t found in 63% of searches. This was even less in South Australia, where 82% of searches came up with nothing.

With potentially only an 18% chance a sniffer dog has correctly determined you’re in possession of a potentially illicit substance, this means you could be subjected to a potentially humiliating and invasive search in public. A study released last week by the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission found that in more than 70% of cases, NSW Police failed to protect the dignity of people being searched.

As RMIT academic Peta Malins told Crikey, this can lead to lasting trauma: “My research has shown that the searches can cause feelings of shame and stigma, and can also lead to lasting trauma, especially for people who end up being strip-searched and especially for people with prior experiences of sexual trauma.”

When Victoria Police launched a sniffer-dog operation at Frankston station last month, Acting Sergeant David Healy told Bayside News: “If you have nothing to hide, then you won’t mind engaging with our detection dogs.”

But surely Victoria Police can’t presume people on public transport are ambivalent about being subjected to invasive searches on their way home from work?

A comprehensive study conducted in NSW in 2006 showed only 0.19% of searches had resulted in prosecutions for drug supply — and that was primarily at festivals. Are we expected to believe big-time drug dealers are shifting product on our public transport system? Instead, with no clear guidelines on what constitutes drug detection, sniffer dogs are used to target vulnerable members of the community.

Evidence suggests sniffer dogs don’t deter people from carrying or using drugs. Malins’ research suggests it simply encourages more dangerous efforts, such as hiding drugs in internal bodily cavities, buying from unknown sources at the point-of-use, shifting to more dangerous but less-detectable drugs, pre-loading drugs, or panic ingesting dangerous quantities when dogs approach.

Limbrick agrees: “They provide no benefit to public health and little to no benefit to policing.”  

It seems counterproductive for the government to facilitate supervised injecting rooms to reduce drug-related harm, while simultaneously subjecting substance users to the threat of punitive searches on the public transport system. Would the government prefer if substance users drove? Somehow, I doubt it.

With no obligation to document how many searches have been conducted, or how many illicit drugs were found, this just feels like another cynical display of force by Victoria Police, one that will target everyday members of the public — and not the criminals they intend to prosecute.

A Victoria Police spokesperson said to Crikey, “Victoria Police regularly conducts public safety operations at major public transport hubs to detect and deter anti-social behaviour. The highly visible operations see police engage with commuters in and around train stations to ensure safety.”

“The operations can include the use of passive alert detection dogs. The dogs are trained to detect a range of illicit drugs, which gives police reasonable grounds to perform searches under the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substance Act. For a passive alert detection dog operation to occur, police must provide intelligence to demonstrate there is known drug activity in the area.”

“The dogs recognise medicinal cannabis. In this event, the person is asked to show their prescription.”

Does the use of sniffer dogs anywhere — airports, music festivals, trains — offend you? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.