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Hitting crime hotspots AS soon as the suspect opens his townhouse door, three police arrest him while two other officers push past, racing upstairs to the thirdstorey bedroom. Caulfield Divisional Response Unit (DRU) officers are in Mentone at 6am on a Tuesday morning, carrying out a raid on an alleged drug trafficker’s home and know they need to get into the bedroom on the top floor as soon as possible. They want to grab any drugs in the room before any other suspects within might have the opportunity to destroy the evidence. The bedroom door is locked, so the officers break it down. There’s no one in the room, allowing the DRU to start a thorough search of the house. Outside the front door, officers begin setting up an evidence table as a neighbour begins to take his dog for a walk. “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” the neighbour says.
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POLICE LIFE | SPRING 2020
He explains to the officers that the occupants of the raided house have been making life hell for everyone else living in their otherwise quiet suburban cul-de-sac. The suspects’ house has played host to constant fights, screaming, loud parties and shifty-looking visitors at all hours of the night, he says. “I think they might be drug dealers,” the neighbour says, not knowing that Caulfield DRU has been covertly investigating the suspects for about six weeks. Police take two people into custody and uncover a quantity of a white crystalline substance, believed to be methamphetamines. It’s towards the lower end of jobs Caulfield DRU does, but less than three weeks later, they’ve completed 25 more unrelated raids, including Operation Brandish, which involved 14 arrests in 13 simultaneous raids on properties across Melbourne’s inner south-east. For almost 12 months, Caulfield DRU had been running Operation Brandish as an ongoing investigation into a drug trafficking syndicate. During the raids on 15 August, police seized a large commercial quantity of what is believed to be methylamphetamine and cocaine, significant quantities of other drugs, chemicals used to manufacture drugs, hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and a loaded handgun.
The main Brandish raid on two adjoining penthouses in South Melbourne involved Special Operations Group officers gaining entry through the apartment building’s staircase, with another team swooping in from above on a police helicopter, ready to rappel down onto the penthouse balconies if needed. A police drug detection dog was called in and was able to detect cocaine stashed away behind two paintings. Caulfield DRU’s incredible work-rate not only dismantles and disrupts drug trafficking and organised crime networks, but it has a very real impact on reducing street-level crimes such as car jackings, home invasions, robberies and burglaries in Southern Metro Division 2 in Melbourne’s south-east. Its regular high-profile operations have also gained Caulfield DRU a reputation within Victoria Police as one of the most impressive investigative units within the organisation. Senior Sergeant Shane Rix has been in charge of the unit since its inception 10 years ago. He said they use a highly intelligence-based approach, analysing hotspots and trends in common crimes to identify organised crime groups or outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCG) operating in those areas.
