Pubdate: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 Source: Royal Gazette, The (Bermuda) Copyright: 2003 The Royal Gazette Ltd. Contact: http://www.theroyalgazette.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2103 Author: Matthew Taylor LISTER ASKS IF CLEAN SWEEP WAS WORTH IT Public Safety Minister Terry Lister has ruled out a "Clean Sweep" style crackdown on the Island's drug dealers. He said newly arriving police officers had been used for undercover operations but only for short periods because they soon became known in such a small place. But he said there was no plan to get in overseas undercover policemen for covert anti-drugs operations as in the 1990s operation where they bought small amounts of drugs from dealers and filmed them using hidden cameras. Mr. Lister told The Royal Gazette: "Once you back off from Operation Clean Sweep you have to ask yourself what it really accomplished. "Just about everybody who went to court was a street corner drug pusher. Mr. Big did not come out of that." Then Police Commissioner Colin Coxall, who masterminded the scheme, has always contended the small pushers would lead to nabbing the main players but the operation had been stopped by Government before it got to that stage. But Mr. Lister said the former United Bermuda Party government was right to do that. He said: "It cost them a lot of money to get some very small people. "At the end of the day you have to measure who went to jail. Nobody went other than street corner people." Pressed on the earlier abortion of Clean Sweep Mr. Lister said: "I would like to say they were 90 percent through given the money that was spent." He said hundreds of thousands of dollars had been spent with little to show for it. Mr. Lister said Government's chief weapon in the drugs war was intelligence but he admitted locals preferred jail to informing on their friends. He said: "Every time we arrest someone on the cruise ship, we are trying to get to who it is they made contact with, who it is they are working with in Bermuda. "Every time we catch people at the airport it is the same thing. "They are the people most likely to pass out information we want because the local people very quickly close up. "We don't get a lot from locals because they are more inclined to say 'I will do the time'. "I don't know whether it is because of retribution or whatever but they choose to go that route." - --- MAP posted-by: Doc-Hawk