Speed labs busted

Hamish Heard
Pre-dawn raids at six Geelong homes yesterday netted two clandestine speed labs, leaving a “significant” dent in Geelong’s illegal amphetamines market.
Geelong detectives and uniformed officers had been tracking a network of suspected drug traffickers before orchestrating yesterday’s lightning 2am raids with the Special Operations Group.
Geelong Chief Inspector Wayne Carson labelled the raids a “major victory” against drugs.
One suspect who was allegedly “cooking” amphetamines at an illegal laboratory in Martin Street, Thomson, charged at heavily armed SOG officers with a baseball bat.
“He was subdued with a Taser gun, so he won’t be doing that again in a hurry,” Insp Carson said.
The man was one of two men, aged 39 and 41, arrested at the Thomson address where police seized a “substantial” amount of suspected amphetamines along with drug manufacturing equipment. A separate raid on a property in McNicol Street, Geelong West, also found an alleged clandestine lab in the process of cooking amphetamines.
Police arrested two males and a female during the raid before taking them away for questioning. Police also arrested a Moriac man in a raid on a Kellys Lane property, charging him with possessing amphetamines.
Officers also carried out simultaneous raids on homes in Fairbairn Drive, Corio, Eureka Street, Geelong West, and Foster Street, in South Geelong.
Insp Carson said police suspected drugs produced at the labs were supplying lower-level drug dealers and users around Geelong.
“It’s an excellent result that, due to the efforts of Geelong CIU, Crime Desk and uniformed officers, we’re getting these drugs off the streets,” Insp Carson said.
“We see the use of these drugs is often a factor in instances of domestic violence and assaults around the nightclub scene, so any effort to rid the streets of it is a case of the more the merrier.”
Geelong CIU Detective Acting Sergeant Anthony Reyntjes expected the street value of the alleged drugs to be “substantial”.
“Police are often criticised for mainly arresting low level-drug dealers and users. Well, we suspect these raids resulted in substantially more than that,” Det Sen Sgt Reyntjes said.