$400,000 drug bust after police target woman

CRAIG SIMCOX/The Dominion Post

MIXED BAG: Constable Hamish Blackburn, of the Covert Operations Group, displays about $400,000 worth of methamphetamine, or P, in a plastic container, along with other drugs and cash seized.

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In an ordinary black suitcase holding a woman's clothes, toiletries and a hairbrush, police found what they describe as one of Wellington's biggest P seizures.

Almost 400 grams of the drug, worth about $400,000, as well as $10,000 worth of LSD and ecstasy were allegedly found in the luggage of unemployed Johnsonville woman Susan Florence Horrobin at Wellington Airport as she returned from a trip to Auckland about 2.30pm on Tuesday.

Police said $10,000 cash was also found in the suitcase of the 54-year-old, who is an approved CYFS caregiver.

Acting Detective Senior Sergeant Warwick McKee of the Wellington Covert Operations Group – formerly the Metro Crime Group, which focuses on drugs and organised crime – said police were rapt about the bust, the biggest he had been involved with during his 20-year career in the city.

"This sort of seizure is really going to impact on the amount of supply here in the capital. It's going to be pretty hard to come by for the next couple of weeks, hopefully longer."

The only comparable haul in Wellington was in 2006 when police seized $8.1 million worth of P in a central city motel room.

Most Wellington P dealers bought the drug in Auckland, where most of the drug labs were, and where most of the imported drugs and precursor chemicals landed.

Mr McKee said the woman had been a target for "some time". Police knew she was going to Auckland and they had arrested and searched her at the airport on her return.

The P was in a small plastic container and small plastic bags.

Police said the drugs were easy to hide and hard to find.

Anti-P campaigner and Methcon managing director Mike Sabin agreed: "You imagine trying to hide that dollar value of cannabis – it's going to be much harder ... "

The former policeman said he would have been "stoked" with the haul. "That's probably one of the biggest that I've heard of in one seizure."

But users would switch to another dealer and pay more rather than going without.

"It's like balloon full of water scenario – where you're squeezing it in one area and it's simply bulging out into another."

Wellington Hospital emergency medicine specialist Paul Quigley said the amount was relatively small compared with what was on the streets.

Horrobin faces seven charges of possession of methamphetamine for supply, possession of LSD for supply, possession of ecstasy for supply, supplying methamphetamine, and possession of cannabis and utensils.

Judge Geoff Ellis, in Wellington District Court, remanded her in custody yesterday for her to make a bail application.

Lawyer Gretel Fairbrother said her client needed bail as she was an approved CYFS caregiver looking after her grandson.

- © Fairfax NZ News