FOOTSCRAY police have destroyed hundreds of weapons seized on local streets and in raids on homes in the area.
Inspector Tony Long said many of the weapons including knives, swords, guns and tasers had been taken off people as part of street checks or from houses during searches.
“Often when you go to somebody’s house over drugs or other matters, there seems to always be a bit of a collection of stuff like this,” he said.
“Some items came in as part of amnesties or are handed in by family when people die and leave them behind.”
The weapons have been stored in the station’s property area along with thousands of other items of evidence.
Inspector Long said the station was in the process of changing over from a manual to a computerised system for keeping track of items in its property area. Sergeant Steve Meehan said the log books contained 15,000 items under 3000 entries.
“You have stuff that might go for a court case and it might be a trial that goes on for a long time and we can’t dispose of it,” he said.
“We’ve got to store all that stuff and it’s up to the local station to maintain all that. A long-term shelf has evidence from serious crimes that go back as far as 1999.”
Items included weapons, mobile phones, watches, jewellery and drugs.
“We’ve got everything here from the smallest amount of drugs up to cars,” Sergeant Meehan said.
“Property is a huge issue for us. We really had everything including a kitchen sink, but we recently got rid of that.”
—Benjamin Millar
