Police adopt strategies to store drug exhibits

The Fiji Police Force will begin centralising the storage of drugs seized as exhibits in criminal court cases.

The move follows the start of investigations into missing hard drugs and concerns over the security of drugs held in Police custody.

Commissioner of Police Rusiate Tudravu said Police were moving away from the previous practice of storing seized drugs at individual stations and would instead keep them at stations with secure vaults.

Seven bars from the original 39.5kg of cocaine linked to Canadian Joshua Aziz Rahman were missing from the High Court vault, five years after Police deposited the exhibits there.

Forensic testing of the remaining cocaine exhibits subsequently returned negative results, with flour found in the bars instead.

Mr Tudravu said a special Police team had been checking drugs and cash held in Police custody across the divisions for almost three weeks.

“There’s a special team that is already out there. It’s almost three weeks now to follow up with the investigation and the checks that have been made in all divisions based on two things, drugs, cash, that are within our custody,” he said.

The new strategy is to centralise drug exhibits at Police stations with vaults, including Nadi, Lautoka and Totogo, as well as at the Police Mobile Force.

“That is the strategy that we have followed so that they are not kept at individual Police stations like the practice before,” Mr Tudravu said.

He clarified that Police had no authority over drugs stored in court exhibit rooms because those facilities come under the judiciary.

Minister for Justice Siromi Turaga said on Tuesday that a review had been carried out covering storage, access controls, closed-circuit television, record-keeping and chain-of-custody procedures.

He said security upgrades were already under way at the High Court criminal registry.