Self-Testing Kits For Drink Spiking Victims Available To Catch Offenders Faster

A world first program will help WA police understand the prevalence of drink spiking in the state and assist in identifying if someone has been spiked, bring the offender to justice.

Self-administrated testing kits will be available for drink spiking victims at 24-hour police station in the metropolitan area and in all regional stations.

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The tests will be able to test for more than 600 drugs.

State Crime Operations Acting Commander Gordon Fairman told The West Australian victims of drink spiking incidents have historically said they have not been able to access forensic testing and without that evidence, have felt like they haven’t been 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,” he 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.”

- State Crime Operations Acting Commander Gordon Fairman

Cdr Fairman said a standardised reporting procedure had been developed, seeing the sex assault squad become the “single contact point” to investigate all incidents and would track offenders “by location, by time of day, by day of week, by victim demographic, by suspect demographic.”

It is hoped the program will encourage more victims to come forward to help police paint a clearer picture of the extend of drink spiking in the state.

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