Pubdate: Tue, 27 Jun 2000
Source: Mercury, The (Australia)
Copyright: News Limited 2000
Contact:  93 Macquarie Street, Hobart, Tasmania 7000 Australia
Fax: (03) 62 300 711
Website: http://www.themercury.com.au/
Author: Catherine Anderson, Law Reporter

TEEN SAW DRUG OFFICER 'CUTTING UP' CANNABIS

A POLICE officer who has denied supplying cannabis to his lover was seen by 
her teenage daughter cutting up and weighing the drug, a court heard 
yesterday.Zara King, 17, of Launceston said former police sergeant David 
Charles Ling looked shocked when she walked into the kitchen where he and 
her mother were weighing cannabis.

Ling, 36, formerly of the northern drug bureau, has pleaded not guilty in 
the Supreme Court in Hobart to eight counts of supplying cannabis and one 
of perverting the course of justice between October 15, 1996 and July 1998.

Seven of the counts allege Mr Ling supplied cannabis to his lover of about 
two years, Josephine Mary King, which she sold for him and gave him most of 
the money.

The charge of perverting the course of justice alleges Mr Ling asked 
another police officer to lie about what had happened to a small bag of 
cannabis the officer had found in a Launceston shop.

Miss King said she saw Mr Ling and her mother weighing cannabis in the 
kitchen of her Abbott St, Launceston, home.

She said there was a lot of cannabis lying on a bench and Mr Ling and her 
mother were standing at the scales.

She said she left the room immediately.

She said on another occasion she also saw Mr Ling sitting on the couch 
cutting cannabis in a bowl when she lived at David St, Launceston.

She said she and her mother picked up Mr Ling from Civic Square and she saw 
him remove a bag of cannabis from under his jacket and give it to her mother.

Miss King said she had weighed and bagged cannabis for her mother and later 
was involved in selling it to people known to her family.

She said she made some sales, but the drugs were her mother's and the money 
went back to her.

She admitted under cross-examination that she had lied to protect her 
mother before.

"I won't lie for her this time," she said. "I've got a family of my own now."

She said after Mr Ling ended the relationship with her mother, she had gone 
driving with her mother to look for him.

She denied transferring to another school to be near Mr Ling's children.

Her mother denied in court plotting to ruin Mr Ling's career.

The trial continues today.
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