Former NSW detective Tim Priest was one of the front-line cops who lead the war against crime in the drug-ridden streets of Cabramatta. Yet he found himself waging his biggest battle not against the drug gangs but against the very organisation he worked for. Eventually, he could stand it no longer and spoke out about the politics and bureaucratic bungling, chronic lack of resources and crazy policy decisions that seem endemic to the New South Wales Police Service. For this, he was labelled a 'whistleblower' and ultimately railroaded out of the force. In the early 1980s, as a young detective I was attached to the Drug Squad at the old CIB. I remember executing a search warrant at Croydon, where we found nearly a pound of heroin. I know that now sounds very familiar; however, what set this heroin apart was that it was Beaker Valley Heroin, markedly different from any heroin I had seen. Number Four heroin from the golden triangle of South East Asia is nearly always off white, almost pure diamorphine. This heroin was almost brown. But more remarkable were the occupants of the house. They were very recent arrivals from Lebanon, and from the moment we entered the premises, we wrestled and fought with the male occupants, were abused and spat at by the women and children, and our search took five times longer because of the impediments placed before us by the occupants, including the women hiding heroin in baby nappies and on themselves and refusing to be searched by policewomen because of religious beliefs. We had never encountered these problems before. As was the case in those days, we arrested every adult and teenager who had hampered our search. When it came to court, they were represented by Legal Aid, of course, who claimed that these people were innocent of the minor charges of public disorder and hindering police, because they were recent arrivals from a country where people have an historical hatred towards police, and that they also had poor communications skills...
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