POLICE dogs will be sent from Brisbane and Townsville to patrol for drugs during Mount Isa’s One Night Stand.
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Mount Isa Police Station’s officer-in-charge said the drug detection dogs will mainly focus on the entry and bag checking areas at Tony White Oval, where the event will be held on Saturday.
Senior Sergeant Renee Hanrahan warned attendees that pre-loading would not be tolerated for the drug and alcohol free event.
She said Queensland Police Service has three stages of policing for an event which could see an influx of up to 12,000 people.
The first phase involved monitoring the Barkly Highway up until Saturday, noon, to ensure motorists arrived safely. The second phase was policing the event from 4pm to 10pm. The third phase is monitoring the additional visitors in the licensed premises and in the community afterwards.
The challenge for police was knowing exactly how many people will attend One Night Stand. “It’s been difficult to monitor not being a ticketed event, trying to monitor numbers,” Senior Sergeant Hanrahan said. “We have to cater for the maximum amount and we can scale back from there.
“But in conjunction with the event organisers, the city council, MIETV, our emergency service partners, a lot of planning has gone in place to make sure it’s a great event for the community.”
Senior Sergeant Hanrahan said that police had monitored accommodation and flights into Mount Isa to estimate what the influx of population will be. “From a disaster management perspective, police know how many rooms that are available. We have been looking at how many were booked out.”
The officer-in-charge also responded to a social media comment which said that there would be no breath testing at the event.
She said this was true but that anyone who showed signs of intoxication would not be able to walk through the gates at Tony White Oval.