The unit's director, a softly spoken ex-ASIO spook, Neil Fergus, said it was combating the risk by education and training of police. Neither was the police service involved in any investigations into the use of PIEDs, he said. Incidents such as large drug thefts are simply left to local detectives to pursue, largely unsuccessfully. It's a customs or a state policing matter. Not so, said Ms Vance.
Police say it's way down their priority list whenever help has been asked for.
They say it isn't a big issue. Customs has compiled Olympics risk assessments, but Mr Jones said it was unlikely teams would include suspected drug users, although customs was unlikely to know if they did. We don't have a network with a whole range of countries who give us information about people who use PIEDs. Mr Jones also said he was unaware of any cases where state police had come to customs with information about possible traffickers. Until that's done, all the legislation in the world will be useless.