22 November 2005

Police warn real estate agents of drug risks

| Kerces
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Police warned of the risk of drug syndicates using rental properties as drug factories in a presentation to the Real Estate Institute of the ACT today.

Police said careful checks of credentials and references of any potential renter was one way to guard against properties being used for illicit purposes.

Detective Sergeant Dave Allen, from ACT Policing’s Operations Monitoring and Intelligence Support team, also said property managers needed to keep an eye out for signs of drug manufacture and cultivation during their inspections. The main sign appears to be excessive amounts of chemicals as well as the presence of laboratory equipment.

“Of course any premises with unusually large quantities of any chemicals should be reported to police immediately,” Det Sgt Allen said.

He advised agents not to touch anything in the premises, nor to deactivate any equipment, but to leave the premises immediately and contact police with details of the property for investigation.

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midnitecalla9:42 pm 25 Nov 05

we had a situation two doors over from where i lived in Kambah, we had reported it to police more than on one occasion but seem to fall on deaf ears

it was only when a “customer” parked his dads ute in the drive way to our place and iended up backing in to it not realising it was there, due to poor streetlighting and overgrown foilage that the coppers got interested! the condition of the house was always fetid to say the least with garbage bags every where and junk in the overgrown garden and with cars coming and going at allhours it wasnt exactly discreet either ! but it took a patrol car that came to the smash to finally take notice and call it in!

needless to say the sounds of a work crew 2 days later repairing the property was music to our ears and luckily a normal family moved in soon after.

rather the sounds of a quiet street that a constant runway of cars any day of the week.

Yeah great, you can evict them. After they burn your house down or trash it. I am guessing thier bond won’t cover it and good luck getting it out of thier centrelink payments

There’s usually a clause in the lease stating that the tenant agrees not to conduct any illegal activities on the premises and can be evicted if caught doing so.

Try the house fire in the rented property in Gungahlin not so long ago. I guarantee the landlord isnt doing cartwheels after his house was nearly destroyed by morons

ixnay_on_the_illpay3:07 pm 23 Nov 05

How loose is that ssanta… you tell me.

I’ve had bosses that offered to pay wages in drugs – surely there’s a similar arrangement between some tenants and lessors.

I beg to differ seepi. Hydro set=ups are one of the more messy ways to do horticulture. The other problem is with all the moisture in the air, the houses gyprock walls tend to become looser than JB after a shot of tequilla!

If you’ve ever seen the result of some of these setup’s you would know the damage they can cause. Ten’s of thousands of dollars in remedial work to bring the place back to a lettable standard. Some of the photo’s from yesterday were frightening.

I suppose it’s always possible to run a cocaine factory from the guest bedroom in a tidy and careful way, without damaging the property…but at the back of my mind something tells me there might be some illegality about this??

OK, so like any bad tenants you want them out if they’re damaging the property and the police will give extra special help in this case.

But carefull ones not damaging the property?

Is there some liability there?

I didn’t think of the sprinklers…
Apart from that though, plants would make good tenants – ne maintenance calls, and not much weaqr and tear of the house.

Probably not so much the landlords as the property managers/agents.
It’s not the shed roof being blown off that’d worry me – more like the 10 tons of soil and sprinkler systems making just a little mess of the shag pile carpet in the master bedroom.
-Not to mention bloody great marijuana plants growing out of the dunny.

Depends…could landlords get in trouble if police decided they knew illegal activities were being carried out on their property?

aside from the risk of the shed roof getting blown off is there any reason why landlords should care?

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