Meth crisis fuelling police burnout rates

the meth crisis in western australia has increased the dangers of frontline policing and exacerbated attrition rates. By Kevin McDonald.

Frontline policing has always been complex and difficult. But the unrelenting proliferation of methamphetamines over the last couple of decades has thrown up policing challenges of a type that barely existed before meth.

It has gotten worse overtime. There are challenges both in terms of illicit drug crime investigation itself or daily encounters with psychotic individuals ending in arrests or hospitalisations. Then there are the wider and deeper manifestations of meth use in the community such as violent car-jackings, theft, burglary, domestic violence, unprovoked serious assaults, and murders. And it is those daily encounters and all the associated crime that have demonstrably increased the risk, stress, danger and injury to police across the country. 

The issue of increased police attrition across the nation’s police forces is a vexed one. According to a recent union survey of WA police officers, one common denominator is an apparent lack of support from senior police management. Post-traumatic stress disorder is also having an increasingly devastating impact. While low unemployment and a competitive job market in Australia prevails, it is worth examining the operational frontline of police and its nexus with meth use.

Research published in the 2022 International Journal of Mental Health Nursing shows police felt a higher risk to their safety when responding to people affected by methamphetamines compared with other drugs. Some of the stories shared by experienced frontline police include:

“I'm frightened. I won't lie about that. The adrenalin is pumping and you just don't know how it's going to turn out. I will deal with it and wrestle with people … with meth you are just concerned about your safety and concerned about other officers’ safety because it is so unpredictable.”

“The violence seems to be escalating in relation to meth users ... It was extremely difficult. Obviously, the extreme violence that they display once you have to deal with them.”

“He had taken some meth … gone in and started beating up his family … his girlfriend and his mum and his dad … We got called there … He was throwing furniture all around the house; caused quite an extensive amount of damage to the property… It took two of us, myself and my partner at the time ... A lot of verbal and physical fighting to get him under control ... So that one was just pretty nasty in the fact it was … a lot of damage. Some pretty nasty injuries to some of the family.”

Police and paramedic participants reported transport vehicles were not suited to transporting people affected by methamphetamines displaying violent or psychotic behaviour. Police pods, whist designated safe, increased the risk to the person when their behaviour escalated, resulting in injury. As one respondent said:

 “Obviously, what goes along with that is, when they're in the back of the pod, even if they're handcuffed, they bash their heads on the side of the pod, cause themselves injury … it's not uncommon to have to stop halfway … and have to try and rip them out of the pod again because they've started self-harming and then that goes up to the next level.”

Law enforcement as it relates to meth (and other illicit drugs) has failed over the last decade in various policing jurisdictions. This failure is evident from wastewater testing results that confirm meth consumption has remained many times higher than meth amounts seized by law enforcement despite large border seizures and a predominant focus toward organised criminals.

In Western Australia in 2017, a record haul of 1.3 tonnes of meth was seized from a vessel in Geraldton which senior police management claimed at the time would put a huge dent in supply. This claim, like countless other similar claims after large seizures, was utterly false. Wastewater testing results show meth consumption remained constant in the years preceding, during and after the Geraldton interception. In any case, by what marker or measure are these outrageous claims made? The answer – there are none.  

Overall, the volume of consumption outstrips the quantum of meth seized by at least a factor of five to one. There is a lot of meth out there despite the work being done targeting importation.

Police attrition connected to increased dangers of frontline work, directly linked to meth, is now trapped in a cycle of perpetuity. Constant vacancies, lack of back-up, inexperience and lack of support from police management add to an already pressurised workplace, which in turn leads to further attrition. All of which is exacerbated when diminished police numbers results in reduced service to the community. In some metropolitan and regional districts, low frontline police numbers mean available resources are disproportionately deployed to response duties whilst everyone eagerly waits for new recruits to graduate.

With large quantities of meth still being distributed and consumed in our suburbs and regions, meth availability remains high and readily accessible. A small 10-gram bag of meth can sell for up to $10,000 or higher so street-level drug dealing is highly lucrative among users and small-time dealers.

The increased seriousness of criminal behaviour is largely attributable to widespread meth availability, consumption and all the criminal behaviours that stem from it. To say this has contributed to a vastly more dangerous frontline workplace environment is an understatement. Instead of offenders running the opposite way from police, meth affected offenders actually target and goad police, chase police in stolen vehicles and ram them. The number of assaults against police in WA’s Kimberley region has sky-rocketed from a ten-year average of 82 per year in the period up until 2020 to well over double at 185 per year in 2023.

Local level meth abuse in regional WA appears to be a lost cause. In an effort to try and tackle burgeoning meth-induced youth crime in the Kimberley region, additional police resources drawn from other areas (Operation Regional Shield), has been ongoing since February 2022. One might think they’d have come up with something more effective and long-lasting after two years of a Band-Aid measure.

The Queensland Youth Justice Department, in a response to the Queensland parliament’s youth justice reform committee, pointed to data that showed an increase in ice and other meth use from 17 to 20 per cent – more so in 10- to 13-year-olds. Director General Bob Gee wrote in his briefing paper: “There is strong evidence to suggest that these factors are driving an increase in the seriousness of some high-risk youth offending.”

Any worthwhile questioning and analysis of the operational police frontline environment must consider the impacts of meth. Evidence pointing to the increased complexity, dangers and impacts on frontline police (and other first responders) dealing with meth affected people is irrefutable. And while that is occurring, law enforcement must examine what it is doing, and what it is not doing, to curb the availability of meth.

The widespread damage caused by the dissemination and consumption of meth through suburban and regional Australia represents a national failure of police management to stem the flow of meth. If the longevity of this problem continues unaddressed, there will fewer police on the frontline to deal with its after-effects. 

There are operational solutions that will help reduce the availability of meth. But they won’t be implemented whilst there is zero accountability preventing government and police management from acknowledging that they have failed.

Kevin McDonald is a former WA Police Detective Sergeant.