WA Police lay first charges in drink-spiking take-down with self-administered testing kits

Police have laid the first charges linked to world-first drink-spiking kits that were rolled out in WA police stations almost two years ago — each of them relating to allegations of “intoxication by deception” and sexual offending. The specially developed, self-administered testing kits — which can screen for more than 600 drugs in a simple sample — were introduced to 24-hour police stations in the metropolitan and regional areas in 2022. Since then, officers have handed out 247 drink-spiking kits as a “direct result” of allegations of drink-spiking. As of early last month, of those tests, 24 had returned positive results and 21 people had spoken to police in relation to further investigations. “At this time, 10 charges have been preferred and are inclusive of sexual offences and intoxication by deception offences,” a police spokeswoman said. In Budget estimates last month, ChemCentre executive Lina Barbato said it was still too early to determine if there were particular trends in the types of drugs being detected. Forensic science laboratory director Bianca Douglas said the lab was keeping up with demand. “We provide early information back to the police investigators as intelligence and then follow up with more evidential reporting back to them,” she said. When the program was launched, police said victims of drink spiking had previously complained they had not been able to access forensic testing — and without that evidence they had felt like they were not being believed. “The challenge in that is that there hasn’t been a clear role designation for any service provider to take a forensic test from a person, so victims have attended emergency rooms, they’ve attended at GPs, they’ve attended at police stations, but with no clear outcome as to what would actually occur,” then-State Crime Operations Acting Commander Gordon Fairman said. “On the other side of the coin, the forensic toxicology exam hadn’t been developed, so there was a traditional toxicology test that could be done that would screen for a small number of drugs, but those drugs are not the drugs that we would suspect would be in drink spiking.” Some substances can only be detected in a person’s system for 12 hours, meaning prompt testing is crucial. A standardised reporting procedure was also developed, which saw the sex assault squad become a “single contact point” to investigate all drink-spiking reports. The initiative was developed in consultation with the Sexual Assault Resource Centre, ChemCentre WA and Royal Perth Hospital’s emergency department.