Bent Uncensored

by James Morton

  Coleen Thomas, one witness due to appear at the inquest, simply disappeared, saying she did not wish to have a ‘fucking pair of concrete boots’. The inquest was followed by a 2007 Corruption and Crime Commission of Western Australia report, which confirmed the suicide verdict. When it was suggested that Tony Lewandowski should be given police protection after confessing to his part in verballing the Mickelbergs, Avon Lovell had commented, ‘Put him in the Petrelis memorial protection program? No.’

  Sometimes, even in these more sophisticated days, police can be lured into traps by unlikely bedfellows, often with disastrous consequences. In Western Australia one such culprit was police groupie Pasquale Minniti, who came to prominence in 2006 when the Corruption and Crime Commission investigated allegations he was able to have speeding tickets cancelled for his friends.

  Throughout the early noughties Minniti, a panel beater known as ‘Inspector Minniti’, had assiduously cultivated police contacts and obtained confidential information via the police computer, including some for a prisoner on remand. He was taken along by officers on patrol and had errands run for him and his friends. The police would target and harass people who had offended him, and he was given police hats and ties to wear.

  In 2009 Minniti was found guilty of corruption, making a false statutory declaration and attempting to induce a witness to give false evidence to the Crime and Corruption Commission. He was jailed for eighteen months, while former police officer Arduino Silvestri, who provided a false statutory declaration for Minniti, was jailed for twelve. Another sergeant received a twelve-month suspended sentence and a $6000 fine for witnessing a forged document. He also received a ten-month suspended sentence and a $5000 fine when he pleaded guilty to unlawfully using a restricted-access computer.

  Minniti’s downfall was also that of one-time police minister John D’Orazio, whom he assisted in trying to get his traffic fines quashed. Caught on tape, D’Orazio later appeared before the Crime and Corruption Commission to try to explain his relationship with Minniti. Far more serious was the Queensland case of Lee Owen Henderson, who had raped Tracey Dovey on 21 November 1988 in her Burleigh Heads home and then killed her by injecting her with a hot shot of heroin. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and after killing a fellow prisoner received a second life sentence. From his cell, and using elaborately headed notepaper, somehow Henderson scammed the Rockhampton police into thinking he could help with their crime clear-up rate. In June 2002 he became a registered confidential police informant and was alleged to have set up a joint phone-betting account, from which he received almost $8000. Henderson was also given his own locker in the police station and was allowed to go out on unsupervised visits for lunch. Under magistrates’ orders obtained by police, Henderson was allowed out of prison nine times over three years and once was taken to Brett’s Wharf restaurant on the Brisbane River to meet a female associate. He was photographed wearing an armed robbery unit tie. On 28 July 2004 it was arranged for Henderson to have a day’s release from prison and attend the Villa Mar Colina Motel at Yeppoon so that he could have face-to-face contact with targets suspected of being involved in the importation of a large quantity of cannabis from Papua New Guinea. Unfortunately, Henderson took a dominant role in the conversations that took place and actually attempted to procure the commission of the offence of importation and/or supply of dangerous drugs.

  One officer also arranged for Henderson to be given a $5000 reward for providing information on a crime, but $1000 of it ended up in a police officer’s own bank account. A telephone-diversion arrangement was put in place at Cleveland police station, which allowed Henderson to make nearly 1250 redirected, unmonitored phone calls from jail between 2003 and 2006. In yet another damaging revelation, the 2009 Crime and Misconduct Commission report Dangerous Liaisons said that Henderson orchestrated the theft of more than $250 000 in drug money during a police raid on a property.

  It was not as though the police had not been warned. When Henderson was first used the far northern regional crime coordinator had told them that Henderson, who took the nickname ‘The General’, was ‘not a person to be trusted’. Well before that warning, in 1993 career criminal turned journalist Bernie Matthews had already written an article, ‘Superliar’, in The Gold Coast Bulletin about the dangers of employing informants in general and Henderson in particular. If by mischance police had not read the article then they might have remembered that in December 1987 Henderson had produced two cassettes that he claimed were conversations between himself, corrupt New South Wales detective Roger Rogerson and a Warren Richards at a brothel in Sydney’s Kings Cross. The tapes apparently disclosed a conspiracy to kill prostitute and whistleblower Sallie-Anne Huckstepp. Henderson was discredited at Huckstepp’s inquest in 1990 and a $60 000 inquiry showed that he had manufactured the tapes in the sewing shop in Parklea prison when he was serving a sentence for kidnapping.

  Operation Capri followed and its report was not well received. Police unions are right to be protective of their members, but sometimes, as with the Beach inquiry in Victoria, they are protective even in indefensible circumstances. Now the Queensland Police Union of Employees was not pleased. On 22 July 2009, the day of the tabling of the Capri report, the union issued a media release:

  This is nothing more than a media stunt by the CMC … If there was substance to all of the allegations in this report there would be 20 or 30 police facing the courts not just three.

  The timing of the report today has much more to do with a conference hosted by the CMC next week where Russell Pearce … is scheduled to do a presentation regarding Operation Capri.

  Police Union president Ian Leavers said that everyone had the right to innocence until proven guilty, especially when the report comprised ‘wild’ allegations relying on the word of convicted criminals.

  It is for the courts to decide someone’s guilt or innocence, not the CMC, not the media and not the police commissioner. I believe the only reason the CMC was in such a hurry to publish the allegations is so they could grandstand at an anti-corruption conference next week.

  Dangerous Liaisons warned of the dangers of the improper dealings between law-enforcement officers and Henderson. Two officers faced criminal charges of perjury and falsifying evidence and were acquitted when the judge stopped the case. One retired and the other was reinstated but due to his ‘procedural breaches’ lost some pay for his time off work. Eleven others who faced disciplinary action resigned. Leavers was extremely upset about the Crime and Misconduct Commission’s handling of the case. ‘The CMC should hang their heads in shame’, he said.

  There was insufficient evidence to even put to a jury. The two police officers involved … have been through hell over many years, this has destroyed careers and destroyed families.

  In 2009 the CMC began Operation Tesco, an inquiry into allegations that three officers on the Gold Coast were involved in inappropriate associations with criminals, drug use, misuse of confidential police information and accepting gratuities. It soon emerged that there were long-term problems in an environment where there was drug and alcohol abuse by some police officers and a marked reluctance to report suspected police misconduct. Whistleblowers could expect to be punished by their fellow officers. One was sent bullets at his family’s home.

  The eighteen-month investigation found that free drink cards were given out to police in nightclubs frequented by members of outlaw motorcycle gangs, and police were leaking information to them. One officer had given a reference to an ex-stripper, and yet another had lied as a cadet about her medical history of depression and shock treatment for mental-health problems. But in the end only one serving and one former officer faced criminal charges, and six others were disciplined. There was, said John Allen, counsel assisting the commission, no evidence of endemic corruption.

  However, in 2010–11 thirty Gold Coast officers were subject to internal discipline. One was dismissed for theft from a social club and eight others resigned. They had been charged wi
th a variety of offences including fraud, perjury, supplying drugs, sexual misconduct with a witness and forgery.

  Criminal lawyer Michael McMillan said that following the CMC investigation the police had lost a lot of their power and were no longer feared by the underworld.

  They’re not nabbing the crooks as swiftly as they used to and many are getting away with all their crimes. The courtrooms are empty, we used to go until 5 p.m. every day, now it’s a busy day if we are there until midday. Temporary helicopters and taskforces won’t fix this, permanent resources and more power will.

  The Police Union complained that so much money had been spent and so many officers harassed to so little effect. Why, if there was so much corruption, were there no arrests and prosecutions? One answer is that evidence obtained from a suspect in a CMC investigation cannot necessarily be used in a prosecution.

  One outcome was the Queensland Police Service gifts and benefits policy, which came into effect on 1 January 2012 and which prohibited free or discounted entry into licensed premises and free or discounted alcohol. Officers were also required to report on the acquisition and disposal of gifts and benefits.

  In the year 2012–13 the CMC conducted forty-three inquiries into 192 allegations of misconduct. The most common types of allegations investigated related to official conduct (duty failures), the unlawful possession (use) and supply of dangerous drugs by police officers, the unauthorised release of information from the Queensland Police Service database, and assaults by police officers on members of the public. In other words, a good deal of what Operation Tesco had looked at in 2009.

  By September 2013 there were, however, fears that an increase in crime and the escalation of outlaw motorcycle gangs on the Gold Coast were due, at least in part, to the clearing out of experienced officers.

  The noughties were damaging for Victoria Police as well. The Melbourne gang wars were at their height. On 13 December 2001 newly appointed Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon announced the immediate disbanding of the drug squad. In its place would be established a new, clean, accountable body, the major drug investigation division. As one former officer remarked, ‘Nothing like a cleansing and refreshing name change’.

  Unfortunately, members of the disbanded, discredited drug squad were invited to apply to join the new division. While at Harvard, Nixon had studied techniques to create a police force with the capacity to resist corruption. Her hero Patrick V Murphy had been charged with the task of cleaning out the New York police after the 1971 Knapp Commission, and the first thing he did was replace 90 per cent of its senior ranks. Nixon may have regretted not following her hero more closely.

  One of the most egregious examples of collective noble cause corruption is that of Victoria’s armed offenders squad. In 1979 the Beach inquiry found that the armed robbery squad had committed ‘abuses … so grave as to warrant the most prompt institution of safeguarding reforms’. However, it was not until 1999 that the squad was amalgamated with the special response and prison squads to form the armed offenders squad, with a brief to investigate non-fatal violent crime. The new squad lasted seven years. By then it had, so its critics said, become an uncontrolled law unto itself. Its thirty-five detectives, including the one female member, wore a uniform based on that of the jewel thieves in the film Reservoir Dogs: black suit, white shirt and a tie with a logo of crossed revolvers. The logo was superimposed on top of the Victoria Police badge symbol and used on official documents. There were allegations of beatings, bashings and brickings. Supervision was lacking, and in 2003 when a newly appointed inspector drew up detailed proposals to improve the day-to-day working of the squad, these were ignored until he was transferred out and the proposals were shelved. An Office of Police Integrity (OPI) report found that:

  Informal squad culture … gained such strength and impenetrability that the chain of command was effectively reversed, to the point where some squad members considered themselves immune from managerial accountability or authority.

  The lessons from the Wood Royal Commission in New South Wales had, again, drowned in the Murray. Despite the fact that the squad was warned television cameras were being installed in its headquarters at St Kilda in September 2006, one officer was caught on tape punching a suspect and threatening him that his ear would ‘come off’ by the end of the interview and, when another suspect asked to be allowed to make a telephone call, a second detective beat him with the telephone saying, ‘Here it is; here’s your fucking phone call … piece of shit’.

  On 13 September Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon told the squad it was being disbanded. She was taped, and the tape was leaked to The Herald Sun. A little poem was written that summed up the squad’s attitude:

  So long as there’s bad crooks, they’ll need us around, If they’re rid of us then crime will abound.

  On 19 September 2006 three detectives were shown videotapes of themselves beating a suspect. All claimed not to recognise themselves on the video but were suspended the same day. The disbanding of the squad was followed by a reprise of the protests about the Beach report. This time around 300 police and former members of the squad, including the suspended detectives, rallied in the appropriately named Batman Park. Motions calling for the reinstatement of the squad and the resignation of Christine Nixon were passed. Police Association secretary Paul Mullett told the meeting that the result of disbanding the squad would be ‘what’s currently occurring in New South Wales: drive-by shootings, ethnic gangs, race gangs, youth gangs, street gangs, gang rapes by the day’.

  After negotiations Victoria Police agreed that those officers not charged would be guaranteed positions on the newly formed armed crime task force set up to replace the squad. In the wash-up, two of the three officers received community service orders of ten weeks and the third five weeks. Charges against a detective inspector, of counselling and procuring the assault, were dropped.

  As the decade went on, public focus was shifting from rooting out crooked, drug-dealing cops, to the top brass and the institutions there were intended to be anti-corruption watchdogs. It was a case of cleaning up the cleaner-uppers.

  Much of the trouble for the senior hierarchy arose from the death of Shane Chartres-Abbott, a 28-year-old bisexual prostitute who specialised in rough sex. He was shot in Howard Street, Reservoir, in July 2003 on his way to court to stand trial for the rape of a thirty-year-old Thai woman in a St Kilda motel. Her tongue had been bitten in half and Chartres-Abbott, who claimed to be a 200-year-old vampire, was running the defence that he had been lured into a snuff movie in which he himself would be killed. As he left his home with his pregnant girlfriend and her father, he was shot in the neck in what was believed to be a contract killing in revenge for the woman’s death or possibly to prevent Chartres-Abbott from naming his other clients in court. Operation Briars was later set up to establish whether police officers were connected with the killing. It was suggested that one had given Chartres-Abbott’s address to the hitman. On 27 March a career criminal identified only as ‘JP’ and known by the pseudonym ‘Jack Price’ agreed to give evidence against senior officers allegedly linked to the case.

  In 2009 there was another twist to this story when former police media director Stephen Linnell was sentenced to eight months’ imprisonment, wholly suspended, and fined $5000 on perjury charges. He had agreed to testify against Deputy Police Commissioner Noel Ashby, admitting that he leaked to him information on Operation Briars.

  In February 2010 charges of perjury against Ashby were dropped. He had been accused of lying when questioned at an OPI hearing, saying that he had not received information about a serving detective who was being investigated for murder. Justice Robert Osborn ruled that the charges could not be sustained because the hearing at which he was alleged to have lied was not conducted within the law: the OPI deputy commissioner who heard the case had not been formally authorised to do so. As a result DPP Jeremy Rapke withdrew the charges.

  In June 2010 Linnell’s convictions were quashed. T
he OPI alleged that Ashby had passed on the information to former Police Association boss Paul Mullett and that, as a result, the suspected detective was tipped off. Charges against Mullett were dismissed by committal magistrate Peter Couzens, who described the evidence against him as ‘more chaff than wheat’. Linnell later wrote a book entitled Don’t Tell the Chief: The Untold Story of Police, Politics and Power.

  In November 2010 the OPI admitted that it was incapable of dealing with an allegedly corrupt officer, Officer X, who was said to have links to Carl Williams’ father, George, and the Moran family, and also to have been the victim of a robbery while guarding $4 million worth of cigarettes in the 1990s. It appeared that files on Officer X had vanished.

  In the late summer of 2009 Christine Nixon, the first woman to become a chief commissioner and who had already been considering retirement, announced that she was standing down not long after a story broke that she had been part of a freebie package that involved travelling to the United States with her husband. And so the baton passed to Purina Task Force head honcho Simon Overland, a former Federal Police officer with ‘an impressive resume’. Deputy to Christine Nixon from mid-2006, he replaced her as the new Victorian chief commissioner on 2 March 2009. Four months later the United Kingdom’s Sir Ken Jones, with an equally impressive police pedigree, became one of Overland’s deputy commissioners.

  Within a year there were apparent rifts in the relationship between the chief and his deputies. Sir Ken was not afraid to speak his mind, even when he was out of step with his colleagues and his boss. In 2010 suspicions were raised by a whistleblower that, before the state election, Overland had allowed inaccurate and misleading crime statistics to be published. The stats, which showed a 27.5-percent reduction in CBD assaults, were thought likely to bolster Labor in the elections, and to some it appeared that Overland’s relationship with the Brumby government was a little too close. An ombudsman investigation ensued.