Editorial: How to trap big fish of drugs trade

The benchmark of drug-fuelled organised crime in New Zealand has traditionally been the Mr Asia syndicate. During the late 1970s the syndicate imported 30kg of heroin and its leaders further demonstrated their notorious disregard of human life by brutally murdering anyone who crossed them.

To most law-abiding citizens at the time it must have seemed as bad as it gets and, with the syndicate's collapse, things could only get better. Unfortunately this has not turned out to be the case. A Herald investigation this week has shown that the drug trade has expanded to a scale that Mr Asia syndicate members could scarcely have dreamed about. Police insiders have calculated it is worth about $1 billion a year, more than the entire police budget.

To give an idea of the scale, a police officer interviewed by Herald reporters said the Mr Asia syndicate was "tiddly-winks compared to what is happening now". Where there was just one major syndicate, there are now at least 12 operating from parts of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. All have close and lucrative connections with New Zealand gangs, operating in many respects like large international cartels.

But scale is just one measure of the change. The sophistication of the 21st-century drug networks is even more telling. Like any legal business, they are always on the lookout to improve their bottom line through sophisticated marketing techniques and new products. Although cannabis is still a staple, it appears the heroin of Mr Asia has given way to methamphetamines like P and its variants.

Arguably, the best tactics to employ against the gangs are good intelligence and the ability to seize the assets of those who profit in this deadly trade. But Herald inquiries suggest neither tactic is being fully exploited.

Last year the value of assets forfeited under the Proceeds of Crimes Act was a record $3.7 million, which sounds impressive on its own but is, in fact, a drop in the ocean compared with the total value of the drug trade. As Justice Minister Phil Goff commented, he was getting just the little fish and not the big ones.

As far as intelligence gathering goes, there unfortunately seems to be no consensus between frontline police and their chiefs. Frontline police spoken to by the Herald complain that insufficient resources are allocated to the fight against the gangs, and they point out that the number of specialist police assigned to gather intelligence on the gangs has shrunk from 40 in the mid-1990s to just 12 today.

The assistant commissioner for crime reduction, Peter Marshall, counters by saying changes to the way the force gathers intelligence do not amount to a reduction of the effort against gangs. "Whilst in times gone by intelligence-related activity may have been specifically aligned to gangs, in the current environment intelligence officers throughout New Zealand, in one form or another, are dealing with this type of group activity," he says.

This appears to mean that the work of specialists has been taken over by generalists, and that is why so many police are disgruntled. They rightly argue that the best way to effectively tackle a problem of this sophistication and complexity is with specialist officers who have a grasp of the detail.

The Government is aiming to overcome weaknesses in the legal framework of the fight against drugs by strengthening the Proceeds of Crimes Act so that the onus will be on the criminals to prove that their assets are legitimate. The police would do well to follow their example and make their efforts more effective by increasing the number of specialist intelligence officers on the front line. The importance of the task cannot be underestimated. It is not just a matter of numbers or of catching a few unscrupulous characters who defy the law, but of stamping out a trade which has done incalculable damage at all levels of New Zealand society.