Meth misery

Despite much trumpeting by the WA police force over its drug busting efforts, data shows that the state’s meth problem has only gotten worse. By Kevin McDonald.

‘Australia dominates in global consumption of methylamphetamine’ , was the frightening and sobering announcement made by the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission when the National Wastewater Drug Monitoring Program released its latest report.

Released in June 2022, NWDMP Report 16 reveals Australia has the highest meth consumption rate of 25 testing countries. Western Australia has maintained its regular position as the worst performing state in the nation.

The results are shocking, and the report quite correctly singles out serious and organised crime as responsible for inflicting this ongoing meth misery upon our communities. But one might ask state governments or law enforcement, exactly what are they doing to address this rolling crisis?

With all the monitoring, targeting and meth-seizing from organised crime, why is Australia and specifically Western Australia, the worst performers when it comes to meth consumption? Why is meth always so readily available in our suburbs? 

A little over a year ago I wrote about the McGowan government’s failed ‘Meth Action Plan’ and the associated lack of acknowledgement or accountability from the government and police. I discussed the comparatively low meth interception quantities by law enforcement, against the significantly greater amounts of meth consumed. I highlighted the ready availability of meth along with the harmful consequences inflicted upon the Western Australia community as a result.

The latest NWDMP report might suggest nothing has changed but it has – it’s gotten worse and as I warned in my article, once hard borders were lifted, the problems would return.

It is time to revisit the McGowan government’s meth action plan fiasco and make clear why police reporting, or rather non-reporting, is pivotal and essentially contributes to this failure.

The NWDMP data undeniably confirms that the McGowan government meth action plan is a capital ‘F’ fail. Yet this is what former Police Commissioner Chris Dawson told the public of Western Australia in the 2021 annual police report:

“Against the backdrop of the global pandemic and natural disasters, I am proud to report the WA Police Force has achieved stunning success with the ongoing targeting of organised crime entities that seek to profit from the misery of others through the sale of illicit drugs such as methamphetamine. Assets, including cash, totalling over $83 million were frozen between July 2020 and June 2021 as a result of outstanding teamwork between specialist detective units and our law enforcement partners across Australia and the world. The amounts are a record-high for WA Police Force and have importantly been connected to big illicit drug seizures, including 175kg of methamphetamine and $8 million cash seized as a result of a joint operation involving the Australian Federal Police.”

Now WA borders are open again, what we are getting is hardly a success, let alone a stunning one. With WA confirmed as the worst performing state for meth, in the worst performing country, the former Police Commissioner’s comments are impossible to fathom. But he is certainly right about one thing, and that is the misery meth causes to others.

Police annual reports celebrate drug, cash and firearm seizures but how do police actually measure their performance with data, and then come up with these outrageous statements?

With commentary that includes ‘stunning success’, ‘outstanding teamwork’ and ‘record high’, the general public might conclude that all is going extremely well in the fight against meth. However the NWDMP tells a completely different story. So let’s put this self-congratulatory, grandiose assessment to one side and examine just how police performance-measure their work.

When members of the public report crimes such as assaults, burglary and vehicle theft, police create an ‘incident report’. Conversely, when police receive information about drug activity from the public, they create an ‘intelligence report’ which is something quite different. Different because at that stage drug reports are simply information as opposed to complaints – but stay with me because they can eventually become incidents.

A conversion occurs when drug ‘incident reports’ are created by police themselves, as a direct result of their own activities. When police seize meth, cash or firearms or other illicit drugs through search warrants, an incident report is created within the exact same system an incident report is created for any other crime.

This dichotomy is the fork in the road of deception, oranges become apples, chalk becomes cheese and misleading data is presented to the public. A glance at the WA Police Crime statistic webpage shows the total of drug incident reports are bundled up together with the total of incident reports for all the other crime types. They are compared and added up together as though they belong to the same class of statistic, yet they emerge in a totally different way. Nonetheless these incident reports are analysed as one.

WA Police explain sanction rates as an indicator of the effectiveness of the WA Police Force in achieving offence investigation outcomes such as processing an offender. Sanction rates or ‘cleared offences’ as they used to be called, generally show volume crime hovering at around 15%, while drug crime sanction rates are up around 80-90%. Thus, giving the impression that police are doing a great job in the ongoing drug war.

The true difference is explained by the fact that a drug ‘incident report’ is created as a result of police activity, so most drug reports are accompanied by a processed offender at the time the report is created.

Another misleading representation is the total number of incident reports. Graphs on the same police webpage show a steadily increasing number of ordinary volume crime reports while at the same time, drug crime reports are on a sharp downward trend giving the impression that drug crime is decreasing. Not so.

Remembering that drug incident reports result directly from police activity, less reports translates to police doing less drug work. Arguably a bad sign when you consider WA is the worst of the worst when it comes to meth. 

The WA town of Broome paints a picture of the correlation between reported volume crime and drug crime, how they are statistically reported and how they are dubiously interpreted. In Broome in the last financial year (2021/2022), vehicle theft rose by almost 100%, home burglary by approximately 160%, commercial burglaries 100% and stealing 50%. Over the same period drug offences dropped by approximately 20%. Go figure.

Is it possible that police were so busy chasing up volume crime, they didn’t have time to do drug work? So what do we make of illicit drug abuse being a causal factor of crime?

Reported police drug statistics are sadly vacuous as a measurement of drug crime. In fact, the way the data is presented alongside complainant-based statistics is deceptive.

Non-statistically styled police reporting of drug crime is presented in generous self-praise over successful operations that have resulted in large drug, firearm and cash seizures. While these are individual examples of fantastic police work to be sure, they simply don’t tell the bigger picture. Police meth seizures represent a tiny fraction of the sheer amount of meth in our cities, suburbs and towns and it’s this marker that demonstrates clearly how the McGowan government’s meth strategy has failed.

It is implausible and inexcusable that a state government could devise and implement its own meth action plan, bankrolled by multi-million-dollar investment from taxpayers, and fail to ask relevant questions from the Police Commissioner. Equally and even more significantly, it is implausible, inexcusable and outrageous that a state government could devise and implement its own meth action plan, maintain its status as the worst performing state for meth consumption at a huge social and mental health cost to community, and pretend to be doing a great job.

Herein lies the greatest deception.

Other aspects of the meth action plan such as health support and education programs, can never gain traction while meth availability remains unchecked and new addictions emerge. Meth fuelled violence and crime in all its forms, are a prominent and dangerous feature of today’s police workplace environment.

So where to from here? I wish I had good news but unfortunately, I don’t. Nine hundred and fifty extra police promised by the McGowan government have failed to materialise. With police morale at an all-time low, sky-rocketing attrition and a thin blue line rapidly fading, the job of protecting the community is getting tougher for an undermanned police force on the frontline.

Arguably, the meth action plan failure by the McGowan government over the last almost six years, has been the catalyst and basis for where we are today – and we are not in a good place.

Kevin McDonald is a former WA Police Detective Sergeant.