DRUG CLEAN-UP

Greymouth Evening Star, 17 October 1939, Page 8

DRUG CLEAN-UP

SYDNEY CAFE RAIDED SYDNEY, October 6. After months of secret planning between the Sydney Criminal Investigation Bureau drug squad and American G-men, the Tientsin Cafe in Sydney was raided. Detective-Sergeant Gordon, of the C. 1.8. drug squad, said in the Central Police Court yesterday that the cafe, in Campbell Street, was the headquarters of the Australian drug ring. Tang Huie, alias Allan H. Ng Kin, 30, manager of the cafe, who pleaded guilty to a charge of having had prepared opium in his possession on October 4, was fined the maximum of £4OO by Mr. Arnold, S.M. The Tientsin Cafe had been mentioned in communications between U.S.A., the Home Office, London, and the Commonwealth Government, Detective Gordon said. Mr. Arnold warned Huie that he would send him to gaol if he appeared before him again. He said that illicit dope dealing was “a menace to the community of Australia, and must be ruthlessly and relentlessly stamped out.” Huie was arrested in a room at the Tientsin Cafe at 9 p.m. on October 4 by Detective-Sergeant Gordon and De-tective-Constable McDermott.

“He had in his possession a tin of opium which he had been endeavouring to sell to an American seaman for £11,” said Detective Gordon. “He was also making arrangements to sell other tins of opium at a later date.

“He has been concerned in the opium traffic in an indirect way with his father, who has been convicted on three occasions for this offence.”

The Sydney arrest and conviction followed the patient and dangerous investigations of an American detective. •*

An experienced officer, whose build did not suggest that he was a policeman, he travelled for months as a seaman on Pacific liners.

Each time he arrived in Sydney he visited suspected opium trade centres in the city. Sydney police waited confidently, knowing that some day he would become so familiar in the Tientsin Cafe that he would be able to purchase opium. Their expectations were justified, and the arrest was made. It was known that seamen on transpacific ships had picked up opium in Sydney for delivery in Honolulu, San Francisco and Vancouver.

Because of measures taken by American G-men and other police, the price of opium had reached high figures in these places. A 6Soz tin, costing £7/10/- from agents of the drug ring in Sydney, could be sold for £7O in Vancouver. The confession of a German-born naturalised Australian seaman, Heinrich Roxsin, gaoled in Honolulu last March, sent the police forces of three countries and the Home Office in London on the trail of the Sydney opium smugglers. Copies of his confession, naming his Sydney accomplices, were sent secretly to the police at Sydney and Vancouver, and to the Home Office, and led 'to the Australian - American scheme for the Sydney arrest. ;