by James Morton
Philosopher George Santayana wrote, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it’. New York’s Knapp Commission found that cycles of corruption occur every twenty years or so, the cycle being discovery, publicity, nominal reform and gradual loss of public interest in the reform process. If the pattern continues, and Santayana’s words are ignored, another cycle is due shortly. Watch this space.
In fact we did not have to watch this space for long. In the autumn of 2014 a new and extremely dangerous scandal broke out in Victoria. It is one which will have serious repercussions throughout Australia. Over ten years ago the Victoria police recruited a lawyer, known only as Lawyer X to the public but well known by lawyers, police and other cognoscenti who handled major defence cases to act as a registered informer who gave them information on drug barons, hitmen, and the gangland wars.
As a result it is possible that cases were compromised and convictions may be overturned. There could also be misconduct or criminal claims against police—some senior—and further allegations of corruption, which will need to be tested.
In April 2014 the Victoria Police were granted an injunction preventing The Herald Sun from publishing any information at all about Lawyer X. The Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston said that Victorians deserved to know the full truth, ‘The police last night moved to prevent us from publishing important details that go to the heart of the public interest.’
There were immediate calls for a Royal Commission but these were pre-empted when in July the Independent Broad-based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC) appointed the former Justice of Appeal The Hon Murray Kellam AO QC to ‘examine the conduct of Victoria Police in relation to the management of human sources, and in particular the issue of whether or not such management has complied with appropriate ethical and legal obligations’. The IBAC Commissioner Stephen O’Bryan QC delegated all of his duties, functions and powers to Mr Kellam under section 32(5) of the IBAC Act 2011.
POSTSCRIPT
On 26 May 2014 the body of Jamie Gao, certainly a Vietnamese teenage student and drug dealer and possibly a police informer, was discovered floating 2.5 kilometres offshore near Cronulla. He had been shot.
What could this possibly have to do with Rogerson and particularly McNamara? Well, it was alleged that not only had they been dealing drugs, specifically 2.78 kilograms of methylamphetamine, known as Ice, but, in an attempt to rip Gao off, they had shot and killed him in a storage unit. According to the police, Gao had been shot at Rent a space in the southwestern Sydney suburb of Padstow in the afternoon of 20 May. And to back this up there was security footage of the three of them going into the unit and only two emerging. Worse, McNamara and Rogerson were carrying what appeared to be a heavy silver Ocean & Earth surfboard bag, which allegedly contained Gao’s body. They then loaded the bag into the boot of a car. And drove off. McNamara’s Quintrex boat was then used to dump Gao’s body at sea.
McNamara was the first to be arrested. He had, he said, been working on a book about youth gangs with Gao. He explained that on 20 May he had been in the warehouse for a matter of minutes talking with Gao—about what he could not remember—before Rogerson opened the shed door and demanded Gao hand over the ‘gear’. Gao pulled out a combat-style knife and simultaneously Rogerson produced a gun from the right pocket of his pants. ‘[The bullet] knocked him back in the chair and he dropped the knife,’ McNamara claimed. ‘[Rogerson] held aim and shot him again. Gao stopped moving, there was no noise … he just killed him.’
He said Rogerson then aimed the gun at his, McNamara’s, head and threatened to kill him and his daughters if he did not help dispose of the body. In effect a defence of duress. Not an easy one to run.
When Rogerson was arrested a few days later his account differed substantially from his offsider’s. He said he opened the door to a ‘nightmare’. It was a story he repeated to the jury at his trial. ‘Well [McNamara] was as white as a ghost, he was shaking uncontrollably and sweating like a pig. Then I looked down and I saw an Asian man lying on the floor with his head to my right … and he was dead.’
He went on to say McNamara told him there had been a struggle, and that Gao had shot himself twice in the chest. ‘I said to him, “Glen, the only thing we’ll be doing here is calling the cops”.’ Rogerson said McNamara explained that the two of them would be killed by Chinese Triad members with whom Gao associated, unless they left the area quickly.
What must have pleased the prosecution was that the pair were running a cut throat defence. Observers might have thought that they would have done better to have come up with a combined story.
Their trial began in August 2015 and shut down three days later when McNamara’s counsel, the flamboyant Charles Waterstreet, prototype for Cleaver Greene in the television series Rake, in opening the case to the jury told them that during his time in the police force Rogerson had been involved in previous instances when suspects had been killed. Justice Geoffrey Bellow found that Rogerson’s rights to a fair trial may have been compromised and discharged the jury. Of course, anyone with access to the internet, the public libraries or even bookshops would have had every opportunity to read of Rogerson’s earlier career.
There was yet another twist before things got underway. It emerged that a compromising photograph with a caption appeared on Mr Waterstreet’s Instagram account—he denied he had placed it there but withdrew it. In stepped senior counsel Greg Smith, the former NSW Attorney General, to represent McNamara and, despite protests from Rogerson’s counsel about the delay, the case was put back until 2016. The trial finally began in January 2016 now with Kara Shead representing McNamara. She lasted until the beginning of April when McNamara sacked her on what he said was independent legal advice. Waterstreet stepped back in and applied for the jury to be discharged. This was refused and eventually the trial continued with Gabriel Wendler now leading his defence.
McNamara gave evidence that he was afraid of Rogerson and only went along with him because he feared for his family. But there were photographs taken after Gao’s killing and before the arrests of the pair with a six pack in a club—something which tended to weaken that defence. Rogerson stuck with the story that he had not been present when the struggle between McNamara and Gao took place. McNamara had been his mate and that was why he had gone along with disposing of the body.
Impartial observers had thought the evidence against the pair very strong but at one stage in their deliberations the jury asked the judge whether they could convict one but not the other of Gao’s murder. Finally, on 15 June, after six and a half days, the jury convicted Rogerson and McNamara on both the murder and drugs charges. They were remanded back in custody until on 2 September they were both sentenced to life imprisonment with life meaning life. The judge said they had shown no remorse and rejected McNamara’s story that he had been researching a book with Gao. Greed had, he said, been the motive. He was unable to say definitively which of the men had fired the fatal shots. McNamara indicated he was appealing against both conviction and sentence. A decision about an appeal was awaited in Rogerson’s case.
NOTES
1. From ‘Bent for the Job’ to Downright Criminal
p. 2 In 2006 he was ordered to pay in excess of $286 000: R v Eade [2002] NSWCCA 257; State of NSW v Eade [2006] NSWSC 84; O’Sullivan v The Queen [2002] NSWCCA 98.
p. 3 As a result the police downed tools: Nat Arch (UK) MEPO 2/7012.
p. 4 Don ‘Shady’ Lane: Don Lane, Trial and Error.
p. 5 The rotten-apple theory won’t work any longer: T Newburn, Criminology, p. 625.
p. 6 The rotten apple theory of police corruption that it is one of individual moral failure: K Bryett and A Harrison, Policing in the Community, p. 74.
p. 6 The question of free food: Cathy Alexander, ‘Is Macca’s supersizing our cops?’
p. 8 I think his model is a bit simplistic: Richard Evans, conversation with James Morton, 4 September 2012.
p. 8 American sociologist ER Stoddard: Alfre
d W McCoy, Drug Traffic, pp. 32–3. See ER Stoddard, ‘The informal code of police deviancy: a group approach to blue coat crime’, in Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology and Police Science (1968), 59 [2].
p. 12 He certainly should have been caught in Queensland: ‘Police let wanted man off the hook’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 January 1982.
p. 12 By the spring of 1983 the hunt for him stepped up: Advertiser, 12 September 1983.
p. 13 Throughout his sentence Creed’s behaviour was exemplary: Nigel Hunt, The First Police Union; John Silvester and Andrew Rule, Tough; Patrick McDonald, ‘Life and crimes of Colin Creed’.
2. Doomed to Be Bad
p. 14 Damper was all there was to mark the celebrations: John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, p. 141.
p. 14 In 1789 he was forced to resign: Andrew Keenan, ‘It began with the first constable’.
p. 14 The New South Wales Corps, known as the Rum Corps: The colony, like many British territories at the time, was short of coins and rum, mainly from Bengal, soon became the medium of trade. The officers of the corps were able to use their position and wealth to buy all the imported rum and then exchange it for goods and labour at very favourable rates.
p. 16 Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur: David Philips, William Augustus Miles, pp. 118–19.
p. 17 When Wilson’s authorship was revealed: Sydney Herald, 18 June 1841.
p. 17 about one of the most thorough knaves: Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Review, 31 October 1846.
p. 18 A select committee on police was formed in 1847: WA Miles, Evidence before the Select Committee on Police 1847, pp. 17–24, in New South Wales Parliamentary Papers 1847, vol. 2, pp. 55–64.
p. 19 Bell’s Life thought him ‘about as queer and as funny …’: Bell’s Life, 19 December 1844.
p. 19 Here lies the remains of William Augustus Miles: David Philips, William Augustus Miles.
p. 21 Evidence given by Mr Keck and Captain Innes: Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August 1849.
p. 21 That burglaries should be fearfully on the increase: Sydney Morning Herald, 27 August 1849.
p. 21 Keck, his wife, Innes and the turnkey Hibbs were dismissed: James Morton and Susanna Lobez, Kings of Stings; Sydney Morning Herald, 24 August 1849.
p. 22 However, on the Queen’s Birthday holiday in 1848: Peter N Grabosky, Sydney in Ferment, pp. 75–6; Terry Irving and Rowan J Cahill, Radical Sydney; Sydney Morning Herald, 12 January 1850.
p. 22 In the 1850s CGB Lockhart: Archives of New South Wales, 2/674.15, p. 6.
p. 23 A peaceful traveller, or even an armed escort: Sydney Morning Herald, 2 July 1919.
p. 24 With reference to the charges of bribery generally: Royal Commission on Alleged Chinese Gambling, 1892.
p. 25 No less than six cases of police misconduct: Argus, 8 February 1853.
p. 26 The select committee on police in 1852 was told: George Brouwer, Past Patterns—Future Directions.
p. 26 However, magistrates were often perceived: Dean Wilson, The Beat.
p. 27 The arrangement under which the police took a share: John O’Sullivan, Mounted Police of Victoria & Tasmania.
p. 27 Fifty officers from the paramilitary Irish Constabulary: Nat Arch (UK) HO 45/4312.
p. 28 Nothing could be worse than its condition when he took the reins: Cited in Robert Haldane, The People’s Force, p. 39.
p. 29 After his retirement as chief: John O’Sullivan, Mounted Police of Victoria & Tasmania, pp. 79–82.
p. 29 Standish was not a good choice: Dean Wilson, The Beat, pp. 162–4.
p. 30 There were clear examples of favouritism: John Sadleir, Recollections of a Victorian Police Officer.
p. 30 In November 1882 he was nearly thrown through the window of the Melbourne Club: There are various reasons given for his near defenestration in the Melbourne Club. First, that he called the colonel ‘Jumbo’, and, second, that he had been insulting him all evening. The latter is curious because on five of the six times the colonel was put up for temporary membership Standish was his proposer.
p. 32 As for Winch and Larner: Argus, 16 October and 11 November 1882.
p. 34 One does not expect the genius of a Sherlock Holmes: John Christie, Private Papers.
3. Spooks, Strikes and Scandals
p. 36 Truth newspaper interviewed twenty-three bookmakers: Truth, 20 February 1925.
p. 37 ‘[An] increase in burglaries in city premises’: Round Table, March 1924, vol. xiv.
p. 39 ‘In the police strike riots seventy-eight shops were smashed’: Round Table, March 1924, vol. xiv.
p. 39 The hapless Nicholson was left isolated: Robert Haldane, The People’s Force, p. 180.
p. 43 As is so often the case, until this time: Victorian Parliamentary Debates, 15 July 1925, p. 151; Argus, 21 March, 4 April and May–July 1925.
p. 45 Do you know that the Commissioner of Police was found: Robert Haldane, The People’s Force, p. 197.
p. 45 Nor was Blamey necessarily a good judge of character: John Hetherington, Blamey. p. 63.
p. 46 Another version, admittedly third-hand at best: Kevin Morgan, Gun Alley.
p. 47 Blamey was finished: Royal Commission on the Alleged Shooting at and Wounding of John O’Connell Brophy, VPRS 3992 and VPRS 2570. Brian Hardiman, in his paper Police Accountability, says that crucial files on the affair are missing from the archives.
p. 48 His interim findings on the CIB: AM Duncan, Interim Report, 1937, pp. 8, 9, 12–15.
p. 49 When questioned, both men freely admitted their actions: Police File 46/8682/14.
p. 50 When interviewed many years later, Victorian chief commissioner: Alan Dower, Deadline, p. 21.
4. Chief Commissioner William John MacKay
p. 51 Scots-born MacKay has been variously described: Larry Writer, Razor, p. 116; Susan Borham, ‘Corruption in high places’.
p. 54 Razorhurst, Gunhurst, Bottlehurst, Dopehurst: Truth, 23 September 1928.
p. 55 Even the rather more sedate Sydney Morning Herald: Sydney Morning Herald, 10 and 11 July 1928.
p. 55 It was during the debate on the proposed legislation that Linda Littlejohn and Jessie Street: Letter from L Littlejohn and J Street to members of the Legislative Assembly. Street’s son Laurence Whistler Street became chief justice of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and conducted the inquiry into the involvement of Premier Neville Wran in the Murray Farquhar scandal; see ‘MacKay’s Legacy: Cops and Crooks in Cahoots’.
p. 56 At the time, the City of Sydney was infested with criminals: Lance Hoban, A Centenary History of the New South Wales Police Force, pp. 60–1.
p. 56 The special powers conferred later came to be an instrument: Justice JRT Wood, Royal Commission into the New South Wales Police Service, vol. 1, 1997, pp. 53–6.
p. 57 The detectives have now such a firm grip on the under–world: Smith’s Weekly, 31 October 1931.
p. 58 According to his admiring biographer, Vince Kelly: Vince Kelly, The Bogeyman.
p. 59 The whole system in connection with starting price betting prosecutions reeks with injustice: New South Wales Parliamentary Debates, 3 March 1936.
p. 60 First, you narrow the terms of reference: Trevor Haken and Sean Padraic, Confessions of a Crooked Cop.
p. 60 Variously described as a man who would believe the best: Vince Kelly, The Bogeyman; Truth, 7 March 1937.
p. 61 It has been my unpleasant duty and Without in any way seeking to minimise: Royal Commission into SP Betting Report, 1932, p. 116.
p. 66 Kelly told the officer in charge: Truth, 20 April 1947.
p. 66 Reilly had long had good police connections before Kelly: David Hickie, The Prince and the Premier, p. 130.
p. 66 At first it was known as the ‘Basher Squad’: Basher squads were nothing new in policing. In the 1920s they had been used in Sheffield, England, by Sir Percy Sillitoe, much to the delight of the press, and he went on to use the same tactics in Glasgow.
p. 67 At the beginning of February 1946: David Hickie, The Pr
ince and the Premier, p. 274.
5. Ray ‘Gunner’ Kelly and Co
p. 68 One of the best detectives of the New South Wales police: Sydney Morning Herald, 4 February 1960.
p. 69 For a time Kelly, born in New South Wales in 1906: Sydney Morning Herald, 25 August, and 11, 12 and 18 September 1930; Argus, 29 August 1930.
p. 70 The next year Kelly worked with the riot squad: Interview with Tim Girling-Butcher for Sin City.
p. 70 Although some of the photographs of him appear to show: Evan Whitton, Can of Worms II, Chapter 1: The Police.
pp. 71–2 Those Kelly took on and groomed included Murray Riley: Smith was the son of James Smith, the ex-boxer whose arm was swallowed by a shark in what became one of the great murder cases of the 1930s, the Shark Arm Murder.
p. 73 If I was investigating Sir Robert Askin: Evan Whitton, ‘Detective accused of corruption’.
p. 73 No one can open one (an illegal casino) without the permission of the Premier: Kevin Perkins, The Gambling Man.
p. 74 Krahe had joined the police as a cadet in 1940: David Hickie, The Prince and the Premier, p. 280.
p. 74 After he’d arrest you, the paying began: George Freeman, George Freeman.
p. 75 I never had run-ins with them at all: Interview with Tim Girling-Butcher for Sin City.
p. 75 An incident that backed up Freeman’s assessment took place in February 1972: Tony Maguire, ‘The case of the missing victim’; Andrew Keenan, ‘Purge of corruption seems doomed to fail’; Jennie Curtin, ‘Death of former policeman remains a mystery’; Keith Gosman, ‘Heroin in the ice cream’.