Join the campaign to end police drug dog searches in NSW public places

This program is a charade played out for press releases. It has never caught a major drug dealer and doesn't reduce demand for drugs. An exhaustive 2006 evaluation by the NSW Ombudsman slammed to program as unfair, harmful and ineffective. The rate of searches has since doubled. Clearly, doing something useful for the community is not the goal.

The use of drug detection dogs at music festivals has been directly linked to an overdose death in NSW. Twenty-three year old James Munro died after taking three ecstasy tablets prior to entering Defqon1. His father Stephen explained to ABC's 7:30 Report 'There was a police presence at the gates and a concern he would be detected.'

As well as encouraging people attending music festivals to take all their drugs before entering the event, it's led to people adopting dangerous practices like hiding drugs in body cavities.

The high volume of dog operations on trains targets target poorer people even though wealthier people are more likely to use illegal drugs. In 2013, about 80% of searches on trains found no drugs.

A person at Redfern station is 650% more likely to be searched than a person at Central and they are less likely to be found with drugs.

In 2013, 64% of all people searched during drug dog operations were not found with any drugs.

Police are now using strip searches during drug detection dog operations. These usually find no drugs.

This kind of policing undermines the status of police and damages their relationship with the community.

It's time to ditch the dogs. Join the campaign!