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Drug trade behind police corruption by Peter Westmore..
please read down this INL News page for this full story and other storries about Australian Police corruption
Please view the 40 other Blue Murder episodes further below on this INL News Page...
New Zealander Warren Baxter is still fighting for just after 26 years against the Queensland Police Service and the Queensland Govenment ....after being bashed as shown by the TV Camera film below...
New Zealander Warren Baxter is still fighting for just after 26 years against the Queensland Police Service and the Queensland Govenment ....after being bashed as shown by the TV Camera film above...
Police Corruption wide spread in the Queensland Police Force
Former top cop Mark Standen has been found guilty for his part in a multi-million-dollar drug plot. The court heard the former NSW narcotics chief had been attracted by the world he was supposed to be policing.
See Four Corners Video on Police Coruption in Queensland,
Fitzgerald Report on police and political corruption in Queensland
"For the ABC the trial would go on for another decade..."
When the Queensland government announced what was to become the Fitzgerald Inquiry in May 1987, I was anxious rather than elated. Four Corners had laboured for many months to demonstrate a link between organised crime and senior police. My expectation was a government orchestrated whitewash rather than the energetic purging of forces that had corrupted policing and politics. When the ABC was given standing before the Commission I was more comforted. Witnesses we relied upon became important to the Inquiry. For the ABC the trial would go on for another decade, by which time important reforms were already reaching beyond Queensland.
Media reports of police involvement in organised crime and the vice industry were the catalyst for Queensland's Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, better known as the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The two-year inquiry revealed systemic corruption leading all the way to the State's premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It produced more than 120 prosecutions, the deposition of Bjelke-Petersen, the suspension and imprisonment of Police Commissioner Terence Lewis and the ultimate demise of the National Party Government in Queensland after 32 years of continuous rule. What made the Fitzgerald Inquiry effective were the powers granted to the investigator and the broad terms of reference. Innovations such as indemnity from prosecution for key witnesses set a new pattern for inquiries in Australia. Royal commissions into policing were subsequently held in New South Wales and Western Australia but the extent of political connections uncovered in Queensland made that case unique., Chris Masters' Four Corners report 'Moonlight State' is a seminal piece of Australian investigative journalism and is credited, alongside Courier-Mail reporter Phil Dickie's work, with prompting the Fitzgerald Inquiry. In this excerpt, former brothel owner John Stopford - later a witness to the Inquiry - describes paying off the licensing branch of the Queensland Police in order to run his business. He also recalls in the lead-up to a state election, delivering large cash payments to political parties on behalf of organised crime., Fitzgerald Report on police and political corruption in Queensland,
Qld The Police State.
Uploaded on 15 Jul 2008
Rail Security police are abusing their powers systematically. Now the Government has legitimized this abuse granting more power to the thugs that are meant to protect us.
Warren Baxter- From New Zealand has been fighting for justice from the Queensland Police and the Queensland Government for 26 years, this is a must see video clip... for people interested in police corrupt and police brutaliy to the extreme.., As the news reporter said... "if this is how the Queensland Police are prepared ot acted openly when they know there, is a news team filming their violent and brutal actions .., ...what would they be like if when they know there is no one to film and publicly record their actions..", The even more important issue is that the police themsleves and other investigatory bodies and the Queensland and Federal Govement seem to be be too interested is looking too hard into allegations of this sort of behaviour unless their hand is forced with the media getting hold of clear evidence in camera and/or a brave whistleblower with a lot of guts .. usuatlly a woman as she will not be a Freemason and/or not in that same Freemason or other male orientated social, business, legal, police, sporting, criminal club network/organsiation that a great percentage of Male Queensland Police are in one way or another involved in and/or associated with...
Warren Baxter- From New Zealand has been fighting for justice from the Queensland Police and the Queensland Government for 26 years
this is a must see video clip... for people interested in police corrupt and police brutaliy to the extreme..
As the news reporter said... "if this is how the Queensland Police are prepared ot acted openly when they know there
is a news team filming their violent and brutal actions ..
...what would they be like if when they know there is no one to film and publicly record their actions.."
The even more important issue is that the police themsleves and other investigatory bodies and the Queensland and Federal Govement seem to be be too interested is looking too hard into allegations of this sort of behaviour unless their hand is forced with the media getting hold of clear evidence in camera and/or a brave whistleblower with a lot of guts .. usuatlly a woman as she will not be a Freemason and/or not in that same Freemason or other male orientated social, business, legal, police, sporting, criminal club network/organsiation that a great percentage of Male Queensland Police are in one way or another involved in and/or associated with...
Widespread corruption in Queensland Police
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The fall of Mark Standen from one of New South Wales' most powerful policemen to disgraced criminal has been epic.
Today, a jury found Standen guilty of plotting to import million of dollars worth of drugs into Australia. He used his privileged position as the former assistant director of the NSW Crime Commission to help dodge Customs scrutiny.
Standen came undone because he was desperate for cash to support a gambling problem and he was seduced by the five-star lifestyle of the drug lords he was meant to be pursuing.
Deborah Cornwall's been following the case, and a warning: this story contains coarse language.
DEBORAH CORNWALL, REPORTER: It's three years since Mark Standen's extraordinary double life came crashing down around him.
TERRY, FEDERAL AGENT: Mark, I want you to listen to me very carefully, OK? We are here to arrest you.
MARK STANDEN, ASST DIRECTOR, NSW CRIME COMMISSION: I hope you're kidding.
TERRY: I'm not, mate. I'm deadly serious. Do you understand that?
MARK STANDEN: Is this a gee up? It's gotta be a gee up.
TERRY: No, it's not.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: As chief investigator of the NSW Crime Commission and one of the most powerful cops in the country, Standen had to be arrested by his own workmates, the prize catch in a global police sting to smash a major drug cartel.
Right from the start, Standen has always insisted it had all been some terrible misunderstanding.
In fact, it took a two-year international dragnet to finally nail Standen - it's what the Dutch call a crooked hat - the bent cop who'd been acting as the eyes and ears of Dutch drug cartel in part of a plot to produce the country's biggest ever hall of the deadly street drug ice.
Charles Miranda was the European correspondent for News Limited when he first stumbled on the investigation just four months after Federal Police had identified Standen as a target.
CHARLES MIRANDA, DAILY TELEGRAPH: It was amazing. I think my first thought went to that Hollywood movie Usual Suspects where police forces around the world were looking for the key conspirators, were looking for that break in the case, and all the while it was sitting right in front of 'em.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: It was the story of his career, but he would have to wait another five months until Standen's arrest before he could finally go to print with the story.
CHARLES MIRANDA: When the AFP visited our offices they basically said, "This the biggest security breach in law enforcement history."
MARK STANDEN: G'day mate.
BAKHOS JALALATY: How ya doin'?
MARK STANDEN: Did you manage to get a cash advance?
BAKHOS JALALATY: No.
MARK STANDEN: Mm. That's not good.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: The blanket surveillance on Standen captured hundreds of hours of phone calls, meetings, payoffs and coded emails between the chief investigator and his two co-accused. British career criminal and international drug dealer James Kinch, a one-time informer of Standen's, and family friend and small goods importer Bill Jalalaty, who used his business as a front to try and smuggle in 300 kilograms of pseudoephedrine in a rice shipment from Pakistan., enough to produce $120 million worth of ice.
MARK STANDEN (in police interview): Certainly never, never, not for a nanosecond thought that Bill would import any drugs of any sort. He talks anti-drugs, he talks about "hanging the bastards", is one of his favourite sayings.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: In his only police interview, Standen tried desperately to talk his way out of trouble, casting himself as a trusting soul who appeared to have been set up by his long-time friend Bill Jalalaty.
MARK STANDEN (in police interview): So, he often plays sort of the dumb Leb. He's probably as close to a pathological liar as I've ever met. ... I have let thousands upon thousands upon thousands of obvious lies slide without pulling him up, 'cause I accept that's what he's like.
CHARLES MIRANDA: His defence is very much, "I was humouring my friend. Yeah, he was talking about drug imports. I thought, 'Whatever. He's so full of rubbish, I'll just go along with it.'" It was almost game-playing. He had a friend who was a simpleton in his mind and he was humouring him.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Standen kept up the bravado all the way through his trial, even when confronted with months of secretly-taped conversations in which he appears to be taking the drug deal very seriously, including coaching Jalalaty on what to say if it all went wrong.
BILL JALALATY: I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about you.
MARK STANDEN: I would say we've been friends for fucking, like, ever since we met (inaudible), we've always talked about business opportunities, we've looked at drinks, we've explored this, explored that. As far as I know you're always bringing stuff in and out.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: He also shamelessly used his police contacts to ensure there were no suspicions over the rice shipment. The Federal Police, he said, just weren't smart enough to catch him.
MARK STANDEN: What I'll do now is I can ring the surveillance guy and see what he's doin'.
BILL JALALATY: Could he be lying to ya?
MARK STANDEN: Wouldn't need to. Unless they already knew the connection, but that's pretty unlikely. But that gives 'em too much credit. They're never that good, you know.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: The Crown said Standen had been running the Australian end of the drug enterprise, taking instructions from his one-time informer James Kinch, who was the middleman for the Dutch drug cartel.
MARK STANDEN (in police interview): I like to believe in people. ... It kills me telling this story 'cause it's - it highlights the stupidity.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Once again, Standen cast himself as the trusting dupe.
MARK STANDEN (in police interview): Kinch gave up all the syndicates, all the groups that he worked with, he named the people. ... No-one ever believed that he would tie (inaudible). I did. I was prepared to.
CHARLES MIRANDA: He very much tried to engage the jury during the trial. He would make these bold statements which were clearly ludicrous, but he would look straightaway to the jury and look at each individual face as if trying to get some sort of acceptance, to sort of get a bit of traction in his argument. He was very cocky.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: But it was Standen's wildly excessive spending and the huge amounts of money he'd collected from his co-accused that proved hardest of all to explain. The Crown said it was impossible to guess just how much cash Standen had received. His salary after commitments amounted to about $500 a week, yet he spent a staggering $4,000 a week, at least $220,000 more than he earned.
On top of that, he'd already lavished his 24-year-old mistress and co-worker Louise Baker with extravagant gifts and a lifestyle to match.
CHARLES MIRANDA: All of a sudden he was buying Tiffany's bracelets, he was doing luxury holidays, he was staying at five-star hotels. ... He sort of liked the charm surrounding that lifestyle, that a criminal could earn more than the investigators and could live this charmed life before they're stopped.
DEBORAH CORNWALL: Perhaps the most striking thing about this case is just how many red flags had been there for years about the way Standen operated. It was well-known he'd had a major gambling problem and he played fast and loose with his criminal informants.
In 2004, he'd authorised a botched operation in which police released seven kilograms of cocaine onto the open market to try and shake out a drug network. Only one kilo was ever returned.
But again, his bosses backed him, because as far as they were concerned, he was their best operator.
CHARLES MIRANDA: A lot of his friends said he had a bit of a narcissistic personality. He was better than everybody else, he thought, he was earning more, he could do whatever he wanted to. Whatever he wants, it's all about Mark Standen.
LEIGH SALES: And on Monday night's Four Corner's, reporter Marian Wilkinson has a fascinating in-depth look at the Standen case. It's well worth catching if you can
Assaults at Airlie Beach Police Station by Queensland Police officer Benjamin Price
In January 2008 Benjamin Price assaulted slightly built 23-year-old female tourist ... The superior officers did not even examine the Airlie Beach Police Station...
Queensland Policewoman Bree Sonter did her duty as a police officer and as a decent human being when she saw police officer Benjamin Price bashing tourists at Airlie Beach Police Station.
Bree Sonter filed a complaint which eventually led to charges being laid against police officer Benjamin Price.
In January 2008 Benjamin Price assaulted slightly built 23-year-old female tourist Renee Toms.
Renee was handcuffed and then flung about by her hair by Price, before being slammed into a desk and the floor inside the watch house.
After this assault on Renee Toms, Airlie Beach Police Sergeant Russell Pike and two junior Airlie Beach police officers filed a report to their superiors.
The officers alleged excessive use of force that amounted to serious misconduct by Benjamin Price.
Sergeant Pike recommended that Benjamin Price be withdrawn from active duty while an investigation was carried out.
These Airlie Beach police officers expected the situation to be investigated.
But their Superior police officers did nothing.
The superior officers did not even examine the Airlie Beach Police Station video footage ( see the link below to this video ).
Sergeant Pike later quit the force in disgust.
"What more could we do? We reported it to our bosses, but we could hardly go over their heads," Sergeant Pike said.
Five Airlie Beach police officers have now quit the police force.
Three more Airlie Beach officers are under investigation.
Then, on 25 May 2008, Benjamin Price assaulted a third tourist.
He handcuffed, punched and kneed 26-year-old Timothy Steele.
And then he rammed a fire hose into Timothy Steele's mouth and turned on the water.
Bree Sonter's complaint about this third incident ultimately led to Benjamin Price's arrest.
But it is understood that Bree Sonter felt under enormous pressure to drop her allegations.
It takes a lot of courage to whistleblow - you agonise over your duties, loyalties and responsibilities for a long time before you actually make the decision that you must take action.
But then nothing seems to be done.
Your message is ignored.
Or "lost".
Or "misunderstood".
Or reduced to gibberish.
Or the person you whistleblow to makes no record of your disclosure, and simply records their "doubts about your credibility".
And they warn the people concerned that you are trying to make a disclosure.
And then very senior public servants write "Briefings For The Minister" in which they advise the Minister not to respond to your disclosure.
And they edit the reason for your disclosure out of their "Briefing Note".
It is frightening.
Your faith in 'the system' is slowly destroyed - 'the system' that you have trusted and upheld all of your life.
You realise that 'the system' is all just a sham.
And you don't just have to whistleblow once, you have to whistleblow over and over and over again, because no public servant wants to hear your whistle.
And the real message to you and to other public servants, as Mike O'Connor rightly points out, is that it is pointless to make a disclosure because nothing is going to be done.
Except 'payback'.
Will Bree Sonter have to live and work in fear of "payback" for the rest of her life?
Maybe not :
Whistleblowing can work.
But it only works at the Non-Commissioned rank.
The Queensland Police Service are quite happy to "burn off" a junior officer.
But if you whistleblow, and the officer is an inspector or above, YOUR career will be finished and the QPS will do all that it can to protect their corrupt senior officer.
"It again highlights how difficult it can be to protect the community against people who are hell bent on acting corruptly....."....Chief Commissioner Ken Lay
Two more Victorian police officers have been suspended as a result of an investigation into alleged document leaks to an outlaw motorcycle gang.
Earlier this week Chief Commissioner Ken Lay revealed that a large number of sensitive police documents were found during recent raids on three properties, one of which is linked to bikies.
A detective senior constable and a constable from the North West Metro region have been suspended with pay.
A senior constable has already been suspended without pay.
Police say the leak involves about 1,000 files and up to 10,000 individual documents.
It has been described as one of the biggest security breaches in the force's history.
The data included the names of police informants, some of whom have had to go into hiding.
Mr Lay says the people who are responsible for the leaks could face criminal charges.
Following a series of gangland killings of police informers, a former Federal Court Judge, Sir Edward Woodward, made the alarming comment that corruption in Victoria was at the worst level ever. His comments cannot be ignored: not only because they were made to the Criminal Bar Association, but because he was a former Royal Commissioner into the notorious Ships' Painters and Dockers Union.
Whatever the accuracy of his observation, there can be no doubt that in several states of Australia, there has been an alarming increase in police corruption which damages the hard-earned reputation of the Australian police forces.
What is not widely recognised, however, is the link between police corruption, organised crime and the drug trade.
The problem of corruption varies from country to country. Often it is due to factors such as a weak legal system; inadequate pay for public servants; and a lack of accountability and transparency in government.
For Australia and other Western countries where the rule of law is well entrenched and government agencies have well-established anti-corruption practices, it frequently appears in attempts by organised crime to subvert the police force.
Drug revenue
As the main revenue sources for organised crime are drugs and prostitution, these are frequently linked with police corruption.
The direct cost of drug-related crime is huge. A Parliamentary report last year said that drug crimes cost the country some $2.5 billion a year, although the effects extend far beyond the direct cost, in terms of lives destroyed, violence, and the undermining of public institutions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that illegal drugs - heroin, marijuana and designer drugs such as ecstasy - are the common link between Melbourne's gangland killings and police corruption, as Victoria's Police Deputy Commissioner, Peter Nancarrow, said recently.
The position in Victoria has been so bad that the Drug Squad was disbanded in 2001, but it has subsequently become even worse.
Apart from the gangland murder of people who offered to testify in court against corrupt police, others in anti-corruption units have been threatened by both organised crime and corrupt police.
Clearly, the illicit drug trade is intimately linked with both police corruption and organised crime. If drugs could be removed from the equation, the problems in both these areas would be substantially lessened.
The key problem in Australia is that public policy on illegal drugs is hopelessly confused, at a number of levels.
First, the links between organised crime, police corruption and drugs is obscured by the official policy of treating all forms of drug abuse (tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs) together.
This has been one of the central planks of the lobby which favours legalisation of drugs, on the Dutch model.
Australian governments have accepted this line, which finds its expression in terms such as "harm minimisation", a meaningless expression which actually means tolerance of the drug culture.
Yet there is very little in common between the problems of tobacco use, or even misuse of alcohol - the main "legal" drugs - and the illicit drug trade.
This confusion is perpetuated in the Federal Government's National Drug Strategy, which advocates a "harm minimisation" approach to both legal and illegal drugs, and views drug abuse as primarily a social and medical problem (which it clearly is with tobacco, at least), rather than a legal one (which is untrue, where heroin, marijuana and designer drugs are involved).
This approach was repeated in the recent House of Representatives report into drug abuse, Roads to Recovery, tabled in the House of Representatives in August, 2003.
Additionally, the legal approach to illegal drugs has been hopelessly compromised by policies of toleration pursued by various State governments. These include the legalisation of marijuana for "personal use" in some states, the widespread provision of free injecting kits for heroin addicts, legalised heroin injecting rooms, and the policy of giving heroin addicts access to methadone programs, without ensuring that they are heroin-free.
The result is that law enforcement programs are compromised by governments intent on accommodating the pro-drugs lobby. Additionally, police who lack clear guidelines to enforce an anti-drug policy, are subject to constant attempts to suborn them into accepting a share in the huge profits made by drug dealers, in other words, by organised crime.
If Australia is to deal with this problem, it will have to begin with a zero-tolerance policy towards illicit drugs, vigorous pursuit of drug traffickers, and forced rehabilitation of those convicted of illicit drug use, backed up by the power of imprisonment. Without this, it will be almost impossible to deal with the problems of organised crime and police corruption.
Peter Westmore is President of the National Civic Council.
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay says the force is investigating one of the biggest leaks of sensitive information in its history.
Police investigating links between officers and outlaw motorcycle gangs raided three properties across Melbourne around a fortnight ago.
They say a significant number of police files were found at one location, including details of people who have helped with investigations.
The documents are between months and three years old.
Mr Lay says he believes one junior officer from a northern metropolitan police station is the main person involved.
He has been suspended without pay.
"This person seems to be the key of all the disclosures, although it's true to say that there may be a small number of members acting on the periphery," Mr Lay said.
"A breach of this security is a breach of the community's trust and simply cannot be tolerated."
Task Force Keel has been established to investigate the leak.
Mr Lay says the safety of people who have assisted police is his immediate priority.
"This task force will investigate how these documents were linked, and by whom and identify all of the associated risks," he said.
"Taskforce Keel's priority will be to ensure the safety of people who have cooperated and assisted police."
Mr Lay says the member responsible will be charged.
"The action of this member and any others associated with it will result in criminal charges," he said.
"You will see in the foreseeable future police members responsible will be brought to account and be required to justify their actions to the community."
Mr Lay says he is confident that there is no systemic corruption inside the force.
"It again highlights how difficult it can be to protect the community against people who are hell bent on acting corruptly," he said.
Acting Deputy Commissioner Steve Fontana is heading the investigation.
"We'd like to reassure the community and the vast number of people who do ring up and provide information that they are not at risk," he said.
"This is a very small number of people that we believe have been helping police for criminal investigations."
Greg Davies of the Police Association says he is confident everything is being done to ensure the safety of people named in the police documents.
"We're sure that the chief commissioner and assistant commissioner are taking whatever steps are necessary to make sure anyone mentioned in that information is protected as well as they possible can be, and that the information will be retrieved and hopefully not go any further than it already has," he said.
"Depending on the nature of the information that does find its way into the wrong hands, it can be potentially quite dangerous not only for police officers but members of the public as well.
"The chief commissioner is right to be concerne
d about it and equally he's right to launch an investigation."
THE STORY NSW AND THE ACT WAS NEVER ALLOWED TO SEE!
BLUE MURDER
The most controversial drama series ever made in Australia,BLUE MURDER, will finally screen in NSW and the ACT six years after it was prevented from broadcast. The two part series will begin Tuesday 31 July at 9.30pm, concluding Wednesday 1 August at 9.30pm.
The highly acclaimed drama that delves into corruption in the NSW police force and crime underworld of the 80's, was legally embargoed from screening in NSW and the ACT because underworld identity Neddy Smith, one of the key characters in the series, was charged with seven counts of murder just before the program was due to be broadcast in 1995.
Earlier this month, the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute Neddy Smith for the murder of Lewton Shu, clearing the way for the first ever screening of BLUE MURDER in NSW and the ACT.
In all other States and Territories, the BBC drama CARE will screen at the same time.
BLUE MURDER begins with Sydney criminal Neddy Smith's activities in the late 1970's, charting his gradual acceptance into a circle of corrupt police officers led by top cop Rogerson and culminates with the shooting of policeman Michael Drury and the crumbling of Rogerson's empire in the late 80's. The series features an outstanding cast including Richard Roxburgh as Dt Sgt Roger Rogerson, Tony Martin as Needy Smith and Steve Bastoni as Michael Drury, with Gary Sweet, Alex Dimitriades, Peter Phelps, Marcus Graham and Bill Hunter.
BLUE MURDER is an ABC / Southern Star Entertainment Production. Written by Ian David. Directed by Michael Jenkins. Produced by Rod Allan.
BLUE MURDER (NSW AND ACT ONLY)
Screens Tuesday 31 July and Wednesday 1 August at 9.30pm ABC Media Release
Thursday 26 July 2001
Blue Murder Video One
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Please see more Blue Murder videos below
Blue Murder hits ABC
The award-winning drama series Blue Murder, which colourfully re-creates Sydney's 1980s underworld, will screen on television in NSW for the first time next week.The ABC's legal and scheduling departments finally gave Blue Murder the green light to be screened here and in the ACT yesterday, six years after it was shown in the rest of Australia.Featuring Tony Martin as notorious criminal Neddy Smith and Richard Roxburgh as infamous detective-sergeant Roger Rogerson, it will air in two parts at 9.30pm on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Already widely viewed on bootleg copies by police, lawyers, criminals and anyone else interested in such fare, the program is still expected to be a ratings success for the ABC.Blue Murder was pulled from screening in NSW in 1995 when Smith was charged with seven 1980s murders, all of which have now been dealt with by courts. Four of those murder charges were dropped at committal, one led to conviction at trial, one was "no billed" by the Director of Public Prosecutions earlier this month and one, that of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, ended in acquittal by jury.Despite that verdict, Blue Murder will still go to air with a scene in which Smith kills Huckstepp.The first part of the series features Smith being awarded a "green light" to commit crimes by police grateful for Smith's favourable evidence at the inquest into the death of drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi, whom Rogerson shot in 1981.
It culminates with the shooting of drug squad detective Michael Drury by hitman Chris Flannery, in a conspiracy involving Melbourne drug dealer Alan Williams and Rogerson, who in real-life was cleared of involvement. The second part follows the flawed investigation into Drury's shooting, Flannery's and Huckstepp's murders, Rogerson's career downfall and Smith's descent to prison, where he has remained since.
By Stephen Gibbs, Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday, July 26, 2001
Blue MurderVideo Four
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Please see moreBlue Murder videos below
ABC rushes Blue Murder
THE ABC's controversial award-winning miniseries Blue Murder about Sydney's underworld will be shown nearly a month ahead of schedule in NSW next week.
The program was due to air in late August but an ABC spokeswoman said the threat of legal action forced the network to screen it early.
"We have to move quickly to screen it because there may be charges pending against some other well-known people portrayed in the show which might stop us from screening it," she said.
"We've been given a small window of opportunity and our lawyers have given us clearance to screen it, but we have to do it quickly."
The 1995 production, which has been shown twice in all states except NSW, dramatises police corruption and underworld activities in the 1980s. It could not be shown in NSW because of outstanding charges against Neddy Smith, who is serving a life sentence for murdering brothel owner Harvey Jones in 1983.
Two weeks ago the Director of Public Prosecutions cleared the way for the series to be screened in NSW by no-billing an indictment against Smith, 56, for the murder of drug dealer Lewton Shu in 1983.
Based on Smith's autobiography and the book Line of Fire about the 1984 shooting of drug squad cop Michael Drury, Blue Murder depicts various underworld killings.
It stars Tony Martin as Neddy Smith, Gary Sweet as hit man Christopher Dale Flannery and Richard Roxburgh as Roger Rogerson.
Blue Murder Video Eight
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Blue Murder Video Ten
Please see moreBlue Murder videos below
Better late than never
As Blue Murder gets the all-clear to screen in NSW, Tony Davis takes a personal look at the events covered in the controversial drama.
It is truly odd that one of the best pieces of television drama ever produced in Australia has never screened in NSW, the country's most populous State and the one in which 90 per cent of the story is set. But that's the case with Blue Murder, winner of multiple AFI awards, which screened in the rest of the country in 1995. Now, following a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions not to pursue Neddy Smith over a 1983 murder, the ABC will air the miniseries over two nights, from Tuesday.
Those who have not managed to beg, borrow or otherwise obtain an interstate video of Blue Murder during the past six years should get ready for an absolutely compelling re-creation of real-life events from the early 1980s.
With brilliant and appalling ferocity, Blue Murder recalls an era unlike any other in Australian criminal history, one in which certain police and crooks formed a partnership to more effectively commit crimes that at least one side of the equation was meant to prevent.
Blue Murder is a masterful piece of scripting, direction and acting. Rapid-fire conversations overlap while cameras follow the action in documentary-style, always giving you the sense you are moving among real and dangerous people rather than having scripted lines delivered to you.
Some of the greatest names of the Sydney underworld are portrayed: Christopher Dale Flannery, the hitman known as Rent-a-kill; Warren Lanfranchi, the heroin dealer who preferred a baseball bat to a well-structured argument when it came to financial negotiations; Lanfranchi's girlfriend, the glamorous and screwed-up Sallie-Anne Huckstepp; and above all others, Neddy and The Dodger.
Neddy was Arthur Stanley Smith, the drug dealer and armed-hold-up specialist given the green light by certain police to commit any crime (except murdering police), as long as he shared the proceeds. Neddy left bank robberies in police cars, while the cops up front radioed headquarters to say they'd lost the trail of the suspects.
The Dodger was Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson, whose name will forever be prefixed by the words "disgraced" and "former". He became a household name in the early 1980s after winning a supposed OK-Corral-style shootout with Warren Lanfranchi in a Chippendale lane.
Generally less mentioned in this whole story but equally important—from this writer's point of view, at least—is me.
Blue Murder, which I watched in one breathless sitting, took me back to Glebe Coroner's Court in 1981 where, as a second-year newspaper cadet, I spent day after day with many of the "cast", sitting just a few steps away from Rogerson, Huckstepp and others, watching their every movement, reporting on each word said.
I was 20 years old. There are a lot of things I was at 20 that I am glad I am not now. Gullible is one of them. Sure, one senior policeman might play with the truth, I thought. But not two, or three, or four… and surely entire events and interviews wouldn't be invented from scratch.
It seemed so clear cut: Detective Sergeant Rogerson was a policeman with bravery commendations and Lanfranchi was a drug dealer. Officer after officer supported the story that Lanfranchi had pulled a gun first. OK, there were no fingerprints on the butt, but police forensic experts said that was not unusual.
Later revelations would change public perceptions of the NSW Police Force. Back then there still was a general sense that even when the police occasionally bent the rules, they were still operating in our best interests.
Anyway, during the Lanfranchi trial the other side overplayed its hand. During the court breaks, a cavalcade of interested parties came to the little windowless press room or stopped me in the corridor to explain that senior police controlled the State's entire heroin trade, had committed bashings, murders and more besides; that Rogerson, in spite of his modest income, leased a Lamborghini.
It seemed too far-fetched to be true, and later events showed it wasn't true. It was a Bentley, for example, and Rogerson owned rather than leased it.
I was reporting for the News Limited newspapers: The Daily Mirror, The Daily Telegraph and The Australian. My court-reporting training had consisted of being shown around Glebe Coroner's Court by the cadet I replaced, and of me asking as many questions as would be tolerated by the other permanent press-room fixture—a young reporter from Fairfax's late and unlamented The Sun.
Being a newspaper cadet in the blokey, beer-soaked atmosphere of early 1980s journalism is the sort of thing you are glad to have done, but would never do again. I spent several months as a graveyard-shift ambulance-chaser and remember it as a time of fires, car crashes, deathknocks and bullet-ventilated bodies face-down in parks.
Some of those bodies, we later learned, belonged to people who had been in the orbit of Lanfranchi, Smith and Rogerson, but for me at the time there was never a sense that any of the criminal goings-on I saw each week were likely to endanger average punters—or involved the police.
There was great camaraderie on police rounds. Senior journos drank with influential cops or chatted about wives and kids while the warehouse fire blazed or Police Rescue unwrapped the car from the pole. Some old-hand reporters could get traffic fines pulled and more. Rogerson received a bouquet of "hero" stories the morning after the Lanfranchi shooting.
The situation served the press and the police well. The only people who lost out were the public.
Glebe Coroner's Court, where I was stationed for several months, was directly above the morgue. A rather strange employee, who kept his lunch in the cold room, delighted in taking young reporters through his domain, leading the way through a field of unclad corpses on steel trolleys parked in neat rows, or through the autopsy rooms where cadavers were being pulled to pieces. "This is a motorcycle accident and this is a drowning," he would explain, but his favourite show-and-tells were the ones in the freezer drawers, the often butchered or burnt corpses being kept as evidence. Warren Lanfranchi's was among these, deteriorating and blighted with some sort of fungus.
Lanfranchi was not much older than I was. His world couldn't have been more different and, as evidence came out, it showed beyond doubt there were two completely separate Sydneys existing at the same time with very little interaction between them.
Blue Murder authentically depicts the amazing things that were happening in unremarkable-looking pubs and restaurants around Glebe, Surry Hills and Chinatown. They were places I had walked past hundreds of times with scarcely a thought that there might be a bashing in progress, a hit being organised, the proceeds of a job being split or police and crims drunkenly engaging in a target-shooting contest in the basement.
Blue Murder does not judge. It merely presents a well-informed view of what happened, and, in showing the charisma, bravery and brutality of Neddy and The Dodger, helps explain the control this unlikely partnership established.
If there's proof of a good historical re-enactment, it's when you become so involved with the characters they become fixed in your mind as the real people. When I see actual footage of Neddy or the Dodger, they don't look quite right—yet when, say, Tony Martin turns up on screen I immediately think of Neddy Smith and even shiver a little.
Writing this story made me go back and look for my old newspaper clippings. The court stories I covered—the Lanfranchi shooting, the Harry M. Miller fraud trial, the notorious severed-head-and-fingers murder of Kim Barry in Wollongong and others—were filed by phone in great haste during adjournments. They became littered with typos and literals as they were quickly shunted through copytakers, sub-editors working with pencils, then compositors shaping the words mirror-wise in hot metal.
Anyone who thinks media standards are slipping ought to search out newspapers from that era and compare. And anyone who harks back to the good old days when the streets were safe and the cops were on our side should watch Blue Murder.
Late 1980's Airlie Beach Queensland Australia & the Australian Tax payers considering the costs of a $5,000,000.00 Tony Fizgerald QC inquiry into Crime & Corruption of the Qld Government & Police. So What, old news. True & impossible say otherwise................Unless of course your name is Senior Detective Paul Wilson Qld Police's finest & your stantioned at beautiful tropical Airlie beach Qld. Hanging out on Friday & Saturday nights at the Whitsunday Terraces Resort with Chartered Accountants & Lawyers James Grevel & his 1980's scumbag lawyer associates all actively involved in Detective Paul Wilsons drug import business.
Cannonvale Road Airlie Beach around the same time a Qld Detetctive was thoiught to have comitted suicide at his residence.
Only at the time of the shot I happened to be taking coffee in the house of a girl friends aunt & we both eye witnessed Detective Paul Wilson leaving the residence at hast of that detective that was soon after found dead.
The Aunt & I realised it would be a certain death sentance too ever speak of what we saw & remained silent. however soon after that her son met with an " accident " & was confined too a wheel chair forever after. ( Detective Paul Wilson *specialist field of policeing was " Accidents " & he is known too have advised numerous people, " They would Be Having an Accident ", if they did not comply with his Demands....
Its a well documented fact a Mr M. Banks met with an , " accident " , at the hands of Qld Detctive Paul Wilson.
After Detective Paul wilson & James Grevells lawyer associates & a chartered accountant & National Parks Officer Marty visited Mr Banks & demanded he be their Drug Mule & security officer in Airlie Beach.
Mr M Banks advised all of the group where to Go & Just how to get there, with specific directions.
He was Then Advised by Detective Paul wilson of the Queensland Police Force , " ( you have two weeks to get out of Town ! " Or You Will Be Having An Accident " .
All of the Group were advised to leave the appartment or they would be having their own accident of the balcony right then & there.
Months later at Airlie Beach Hardware store at about 9 :00am on a Friday moring Mr M Banks suffered severe spinal injuries from Detetcive Paul Wilson throwing a 6 liter can of paint from the mezanin 2nd floor onto Mr Banks neck as he knelt on the 1st foor inspecting cleaning products.
The Eyewitness Daydream Island Government Registered Accident & Safety Officer on the Island construction, later wrote a report as he saw Detective Paul Wilson attempt to murder Mr M Banks & shouted at the Detetctive to Stop as he ran from the side loading entrance. the store clerk the Son of the Local ambulance station Manager also Eye witnssed the events & his Father begged & pleaded with Mr M. Banks not too take legal action as Detetctive Paul Wilson had personally threatend too kill every member of the family if they spoke of the incident.
When it all became clearer & very apparent to Mr M.Banks he contacted his then 2nd Lawyers who where sueing his former lawyer James Grevell for professional Negligence in instructing Mr M.Banks too accpet $6,500 in damages from the insurance company of the Hardware store owned by good friend of Detetctive Paul Wilson Mr Rusty Dyson who also eye witnessed the events of Mr M.Banks 's injuries on that morning & his attempted murder.
Lawyer Barry John Ross of Gladstone despite being advised to take a criminal action out against Detective Paul wilson & the Queensland Police which was the correct course of action as Detetctive Paul Wilson was at the time of Mr Banks injuries officially " On Duty " . Barry John Ross lawyer for Mr M. Banks, advised Mr M.Banks that certain " Threats " were made directly too Barry John ross by Detective Paul Wilson...........so Mr Barry ross Lawyer for Mr Banks ignored Mr Banks instructions to treat the matter as a Criminal Action.
Mr Barry Ross proceeded to enrich himself for the next seven years in a charade that involved a Legal aide funded action of professional negligence of James Grevel so in point of fact was sueing the Qld Law Society insurance company at the Australian & Qld Tax payers expense.
Mr M. Banks advised the Queensland Law Society Manager in person of the events surrounding this charade conducted by his lawyer Mr Barry John Ross of Gladstone Qld & that Manager was unconcerned with the facts they were given & let the matter proceed to the supreme court in Brisbane in 2005 for damages of Aust$400,000 for Mr M. Banks.
Prior to that hearing Mr M.Banks had Detetive Paul wilson who stationed himself close to Mr Banks at Nambour on the Sunshine Coast, place a loaded pistol while seated in his Falcon police vehicle to Mr Banks head & state " Your Not going To Give Me any Trouble In court are You NOW ?! " .
Numerous attempts were made on Mr M Banks life prior to the supream Court Hearing & known associates of Mr M. Banks prior to that court hearing suffered fatal Accidents, one of which was a witness for Mr M.Banks in that court hearing.
Tony Fizgerald QC Bob Aitkinson & The Australian Governor General who's Long back ground in the Qld Law Society is well documented & numerous politicians were made aware of the facts.
Tony Fizgerald never did land a Mr Big of Drugs in Qld.......... there was far more money in not landing one for Mr Fizgerald.
Incidently Mr Banks recived only $25,000 years after trail as Barry John Ross stole the other $25,000 total $50k awarded to Mr M.Banks who also incidently had the Guts too stand up in the Supream Court & Expose All of the True facts & Names of those involved in which the Law society appointed Judge almost jailed Mr Banks.
Only Mr Banks had the wit and courage to send documents to the prerss & media 48 hours prior too trail with instructions to open them if Mr Banks did not walk from the court house & advised the Judge of this important Fact also.
The Judge struck from the records Mr Banks entire testimony exposing the lawyers involved in drug importation & their close association with the Queensland Police in closed courtroom in the two day trial .Incidently Barry john Ross did not appear in court to for his client Mr Banks nor did he instruct eye witnesses to appear for Mr Banks .
Costing Tax payers in the eight year process over half a million dollars in legal fees etc etc etc .
That was & still is the state Of Justice In Queensland Australia today.
Posted by Unquestionable documented Legal Truth's & Vast amounts of Points of Documented Legal fact. at 10:13 PM
The who's who of Blue Murder
Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson
Once considered among the local constabulary's finest, "The Dodger" was brave enough to stare down the likes of Christopher Dale Flannery and Neddy Smith. Rogerson cultivated friends and allies in high and low places and was ruthless in the way he did business. He shot Warren Lanfranchi in a narrow lane in 1981—supposedly after Lanfranchi drew a gun on him—and watched his empire crash down soon afterwards. Played beautifully by Richard Roxburgh.
Currently A free man (acquitted of conspiring to murder Michael Drury, he served three years in the '90s for conspiring to pervert the course of justice), although the Police Integrity Commission recommended this year he be criminally charged on three counts.
Arthur Stanley "Neddy" Smith
The dangerous and highly intelligent crook with a heart of venom. His frightening autobiography, Neddy, illustrates a man operating on a completely different moral code to the rest of us (though, alas, on the same moral code as several powerful NSW policemen). Tony Martin delivers with chilling authenticity.
Currently Serving a life sentence for murder and suffering from Parkinson's disease. He was acquitted in 1999 of the murder of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp.
Michael Drury
The cop who claimed he wouldn't take a bribe from Rogerson and almost paid for it with his life. Steve Bastoni interviewed Michael Drury to get the role right, and plays him with enough ambiguity to ensure he is not a cliched hero. Bizarrely, Michael Drury and wife Pam came on set to see the scene in which Drury is shot in his Chatswood home.
Currently Retired from the NSW Police Force last year.
Christopher Dale Flannery
The wild hitman known as Rent-a-kill. The unlikely casting of Gary Sweet is a triumph and Blue Murder leaves no doubt about Flannery's much-discussed fate.
Currently Believed dead.
Warren Lanfranchi
Petty crim and drug dealer, shot by Rogerson. It was claimed by Lanfranchi's family he had $10,000 on his person at the time of the shooting. It was not there when the body arrived at the morgue. The Blue Murder account is very different to the one Rogerson detailed under oath. A 21-year-old Alex Dimitriades does the honours.
Currently Dead.
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp
Prostitute, drug addict and girlfriend of heroin dealer Warren Lanfranchi—yet glamorous enough to captivate television cameras and become a household name with her allegations about Rogerson. Before playing the role, Loene Carmen interviewed Huckstepp's daughter, Sasha, who herself turns up as a nurse in Blue Murder.
Currently Dead.
Ian David
The writer of Police Crop, Joh's Jury and other classy TV dramas, David based his Blue Murder script on In the Line of Fire (the story of Michael Drury by Herald journalist Darren Goodsir) and Neddy, by Neddy Smith with Tom Noble. He also met Smith, conducted hundreds of other interviews and suffered real-life threats and burglaries while working on the project.
Currently President of the Screen Writers' Guild; developing a miniseries about the Ivan Milat backpacker murders.
Michael Jenkins
The director of Blue Murder, Jenkins also worked on the controversial '80s miniseries Scales of Justice.
Currently Working on Young Lions, a drama pilot for Nine, and developing a film on the life of Ned Kelly.
Blue Murder screens on the ABC on Tuesday and Wednesday night at 9.30pm.
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Michael Rupert- ex LA Drug enforcement officer-
-on CIA Drug Running Video One
Real-life drama in TV classic
WHEN Blue Murder screens tonight, NSW viewers will finally be able to make up their own minds on what is fact or just good television.
While the truth may never be known, Blue Murder writer Ian David yesterday admitted he had received threatening phone-calls, had his home broken into and heavy criticism from some of the people portrayed in the confronting drama.
The events depicted in Blue Murder are based on Neddy Smith's autobiography and journalist Darren Goodsir's In the Line of Fire, as well as David's own research and interviews.
But the writer said while the events were necessarily dramatised, he stood by his work saying it was as close to reality as he could make it."It was the best we could do for the time," he said.
"When I look back on it I'm quite pleased that it still stands up."
The series centres on the infamous shootings of drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi by detective Roger Rogerson in Dangar Place, Chippendale. It also deals with the shooting of policeman Michael Drury at his home–allegedly by missing hitman Christopher Dale Flannery.
Other incidents shown include Neddy Smith killing Lanfranchi's prostitute girlfriend Sallie-Anne Huckstepp–a murder for which he was later acquitted.
David said he would watch the show with director Michael Jenkins and actor Tony Martin, who portrayed Smith, over a few beers.
The actor on whom the production relies most, Richard Roxburgh, yesterday was filming a movie in London but said his chief fear after playing the role was the reaction of his real life character Roger Rogerson.
While Rogerson, who watched part of the TV show during a 60 Minutes interview, has always maintained he shot Lanfranchi in self-defence, the former detective sergeant is said to have liked Roxburgh's portrayal–apart from his smoking and piano playing.
"It was a very weird hall of mirrors experience as I watched Roger watching me being him," Roxburgh said.
But another of the four former police officers who witnessed the shooting in Dangar Place was yesterday not so forgiving of any dramatic licence.
Retired Detective Sergeant Rodney Moore was driving his white Volvo only metres from Rogerson when he saw the 1981 shooting.
Mr Moore, now working as a labourer, said that while Blue Murder was good entertainment, he was angry at the depiction of the character Mal Rivers.
"They have got this 'Mal Rivers' taking money out of Lanfranchi's strides," he said. "This is just absolute rubbish. What happened was what was in the coroner's court. Lanfranchi pulled out a gun and Rogerson shot him."
July 31, 2001 Daily Telegraph
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ABC drama a killer in the ratings
Six years after it was made, Blue Murder has been a triumph for the ABC. On Tuesday night it averaged 379,000 viewers in Sydney. It had been shown in other Australian cities years ago, but legal cases involving the key characters delayed its presentation in its state of origin.
An audience of 379,000, as measured by OzTAM, may not sound huge compared to the 800,000 who watched Thorpie winning gold medals last week, but let's put it in context. Sydney people, in common with the rest of Australia, tend to go to bed early, so it's rare for any program starting at 9.30pm to attract more than 300,000 viewers.
Channel Ten's much publicised youth drama, The Secret Life of Us, which screens at 9.30pm on Mondays, scored 251,000 viewers this week, while Nine's Sex and the City, showing at the same time, scored 310,000. The critically acclaimed The West Wing, which showed at 10.30 on Tuesday night, attracted 150,000.
Blue Murder did surprisingly well with what TV programmers call the "youth demographic", who would have been at primary school when the events in the show happened. About 129,000 Blue Murder viewers were aged between 16 and 39 (while the usual youth favourite, Rove Live on Ten, attracted 143,000 groovers).
Normally the ABC's most watched program of the week is The Bill, which attracted 381,000 Sydney viewers on Tuesday—considerably more than its usual 320,000. This suggests Blue Murder encouraged some eager viewers to tune in early. Perhaps the ABC should show it every night.
By David Dale
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, August 2, 2001
Joh Bjelke-Petersen had been Premier of Queensland for 29 years, and appeared unstoppable as he ran his 'Joh for PM’ campaign. Nothing was expected from this Special Inquiry, which followed in a long line of previous Inquiries that had found no evidence of police corruption. This time the combination of the president of the Inquiry, Tony Fitzgerald (here played by Nick Tate), and the Counsel assisting, Gary Crooke (Lewis Fitz-Gerald), was to prove a devastating combination while Chris Master’s Four Corners program Moonlight State and the nightly current affairs input of the ABC’s Queensland reporter Quentin Dempster, maintained public focus on the issue.
Having Sergeant Dillon represent himself in the telemovie is a moving and shocking indictment of those exposed by the Royal Commission.
Is Blue Murder an accurate portrayal of events? Or is it racy fiction wrapped around a thin skeleton of facts to make electrifying television? Or a bit of both?
There are doubts about the show's claim of being a true representation of the police and underworld wars. Such reservations are understandable, given the brazen, nonchalant way in which corrupt deals and killings are presented.
But not only are the scenes believable, they are,
in more than 90 per cent of the cases, chillingly accurate.
And that's what makes Blue Murder all the more terrifying.
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Screenwriter Ian David researched the story extensively and interviewed some of the players. He also blended truthfully the themes raised in the two books that provided the platform for the production. So intent was he on accuracy that many scenes were filmed where they took place.
For instance, undercover policeman Michael Drury's shooting was filmed in the home where the event occurred.
Roger Rogerson's barbecue with Neddy Smith and other mates was filmed in the real
Rogerson's former backyard in Condell Park, and drug dealer Warren Lanfranchi is shot in
the Chippendale laneway where the real Lanfranchi was shot.
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But for pedants, there are some issues worthy of debate.
Smith is shown murdering Sallie-Anne Huckstepp but he has been acquitted of this crime. He is shown throwing solicitor Brian Alexander off a boat, but he has never been convicted of it.
It is highly unlikely that Smith, or any of Rogerson's colleagues, were privy to the talks about the attempted killing of Drury. And Rogerson never smoked cigarettes.
There are other small errors, but given the body of work that is assembled, and the multitude of events canvassed, they are minor.
However, on the flipside, Smith did confront CIB chief Noel Morey at Morey's boozy farewell, but perhaps not in the manner depicted; Smith did accompany Rogerson to many police functions; and hitman Christopher Dale Flannery visited hospital to see if he could "finish the job" after failing to kill Drury.
Another feature that has intrigued some viewers is the matter-of-fact way in which Drury reacted to the offer of a bribe from Rogerson. It is this author's view that Drury's nonplussed response says more about the state of the police then, rather then anything to do with Drury's integrity.
Darren Goodsir is a Herald journalist and the author of Line of Fire, upon which Blue Murder is partly based.
By Darren Goodsir
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, August 2, 2001
Police Corruption on the Gold Coast, Queensland Australia...
Police Corruption and rorts rife on Gold Coast
SERIOUS charges are set to be laid against 10 people, including current and former police, after allegations of Gold Coast police using drugs, associating with criminals and turning a blind eye to crimes including nightclub drug rapes.
Six police are also facing disciplinary action as a result of the Crime and Misconduct Commission‘s Operation Tesco probe into Gold Coast police misconduct.
The first day of Operation Tesco’s public hearings has heard explosive evidence of Coast police stroking the Gold Coast’s dark underbelly.
In his opening address, counsel assisting the inquiry, John Allen, said Operation Tesco was sparked after eyewitness accounts of Gold Coast police taking drugs and being paid bribes by criminals for tip-offs.
Mr Allen said while the allegations were not proven, they were a ‘significant trigger’ for Tesco which had uncovered ‘significant evidence’ of police having improper associations with criminals and providing them with confidential information.
The inquiry was told drugs including 30 ecstasy pills and two bags of amphetamine were found during a raid in January this year on a Brisbane apartment where a Gold Coast police officer codenamed G7, and associates including a suspected drug supplier, were staying.
During secret hearings, officer G7 admitted to taking ecstasy, using and supply ‘black market‘ steroids and receiving $100 drink cards at Surfers Paradise nightclubs and improperly processing bouncer licence applications.
Officer G7 had also admitted to using the police computer to do criminal checks on girlfriends.
Another officer, D1, admitted to associating with drug dealers and said the receipt of free drinks was ‘common knowledge’ among senior police. He said Gold Coast police also received free McDonald’s meals and tickets to Gold Coast Titans games.
The hearing was also told that the use of ‘blue light taxis’ to ferry off-duty officers, friends and family to and from nightclubs and social functions was a longstanding and accepted practice among Gold Coast police.
Mr Allen said there were reports some police whistleblowers were ‘harassed, intimidated, victimised and humiliated’ for co-operating with the inquiry.
He said the CMC expected to lay charges against one current and one former officer and recommend disciplinary action against a further six officers.
“Criminal charges are also expected to be laid against eight civilians, most of those being in connection with serious drug offences,” he said.
The hearing is set to run for five days and will continue this afternoon with the first police witnesses.
I also love family, Having a punt, Horse Racing, Photography, Cooking a great BBQ, a beer or 4 ,computers, Reading Crime Books, and solving crimes before the end of the show!!!
Corruption is endemic within Australia's police agencies, and certainly within the Australian Federal Police and New South Wales Police, which between them cover the Sydney airports. It also embraces crime commissions and other institutions charged with responsibility for police governance on behalf of the public.
During the three years of research for The Expendable Project, the team uncovered a staggering amount of evidence to substantiate this statement. This included police involvement in most types of serious crime, and even in one instance, alleged blackmail of a government minister. We were approached periodically by individuals who clearly feared for their own welfare.
To illustrate the significant scale of this problem, we have posted below a number of videos, which are freely available in the public domain. For further reading, we have also recommended some of the documents and reports which are posted in the Expendable Library.
PUBLIC DOMAIN VIDEOS
The following selection represents just a small sample of the videos, both amateur and professional, which are readily viewable on YouTube and other social video networks. They are in no particular order, but they do serve to exemplify how widely known the corruption actually is, particularly with respect to Sydney and its airports.
In addition, a series of more focused investigations and hearings have been undertaken. For example, the 2005 public hearing by the Police Integrity Commission was documented in The COBALT Report:
This was particularly relevant to The Expendable Project, not only because the locale of the prime subject, Detective Sergeant Christopher John Laycock, included Sydney Airport, but because at least one of his close associates has been directly accused of owning the marijuana which was found in Schapelle Corby's boogie board bag.
But Laycock has never stood before a court on any of the matters referred to in the report. Equally staggering, the Australian media appears to have collectively forgotten about the revelations detailed within, which are supplemented by a number of additional external allegations. For further information view The Laycock Blog.
Another high profile case is that of former Assistant Director of the NSW Crime Commission, Mark Standen, who as an ex-AFP officer, had worked in the same office as AFP Commissioner Michael Keelty, in Sydney
Standen was found guilty of conspiring to import $120 million of pre-cursor drugs in 2011. For further information, view The Standen Blog.
ONGOING CORRUPTION
Despite the impression created by the enquiries cited above, the issue of serious corruption within Australian police agencies, and the disturbing nature of the
multiple bodies which purport to enforce integrity, has never been fundamentally addressed by any Australian government.
Further, there appears to be no appetite whatsoever to address this. This is perhaps exemplified by the response to Dr Janet Wilson's letter of 3rd July 2011,
The conclusion, that Australia is as indifferent to the chronic corruption within its police services, as it is to the abuse of the human rights of its citizens, is
hard to avoid.
Schapelle Corby is a direct victim of this malaise.
Australian Police Corruption Our town: the secret of Blue Murder's success
A gutsy cops-and-robbers story shot in our backyard and speaking our language, that's why this drama is a hit. And it should help a few actors' careers, writes David Dale.
It was made six years ago, about events that happened 20 years ago. The photography is grainy at times, and you can't understand a lot of the dialogue. Many of the characters are not clearly identified, and their motives are obscure.
Some of the events are implausible, bordering on preposterous. One of the real people portrayed in it has said: "It's not a bad movie as a drama, but it's all bullshit."
So why did Blue Murder work so well with Sydney viewers, and why will it launch or relaunch so many showbiz careers? A few possible explanations…
It confirms the deepest archetypes of our city. We like to think of ourselves as living in a rough, tough pragmatic town. Sydney's first police officers were criminals, because Governor Phillip appointed 12 of his most trusted convicts as "the Night Watch" in 1790. That interchangeability established a tradition which lasted at least 200 years.
Sydneysiders have always believed their coppers were a bit bent, and haven't been too fussed about it, as long as somebody came around to commiserate about break-ins. If Roger Rogerson dispensed a bit of vigilante justice, that was what those scum needed. If the cops let Neddie Smith bash a few blokes at a two-up game, or helped him throw a crooked lawyer to the sharks, that's what defines us as an exciting metropolis.
We sometimes wondered if the rumours about powerful people we were hearing in the pub were just urban myths. Blue Murder showed they were true. And when Neddie describes the show as "bullshit"—well, he would say that, wouldn't he?
It speaks our language. Thugs and cops don't articulate like trained thespians, and it was a brave move for Blue Murder's director, Michael Jenkins, to let them mumble some of the time, and for the ABC not to censor the f- words and the c- words or tone down the brutality in an attempt to enlarge the audience. It's late-night viewing, designed for people who don't mind a little mental exercise to fill in the gaps.
We want to encourage the ABC to return to its glory days. Once upon a time the ABC had money to spend on dangerous drama that held up a mirror to Australian society. Now the ABC has a boss who thinks The Weakest Link is groundbreaking television.
It has familiar actors at the top of their game. As the moustachioed villain in Moulin Rouge, Richard Roxburgh was just silly (in accordance with the director's instructions). As the South African sidekick to the Scottish sadist in Mission: Impossible II, he was wimpy. For the past six years, we've been underestimating him—because we weren't allowed to see Blue Murder. Finally we know what a charming monster he can be.
If we saw Wildside (also directed by Michael Jenkins) on TV two years ago, we know Tony Martin can do an idealistic cop barely under control, and if we saw The Interview at the movies or on video (or best of all, on DVD), we know Tony Martin can do a cop who might just be crooked. But we never knew he could make us feel sorry for a brutal killer.
We'd gone off Gary Sweet lately, but now that we've finally seen his hyped-up Rent-a-Kill, we look forward to a comeback (even without the fluff-wig). And why haven't we seen anything lately of Loene Carmen, who played Sallie-Anne Huckstepp (after an auspicious start as the love interest in The Year My Voice Broke)? Blue Murder even managed to remind us that Ray Martin was once a subtle interviewer.
It has impeccable period detailing, smart jokes and a car chase. Blue Murder isn't homework, it isn't a sociological duty, it isn't subsidised culture—it is just entertaining. How about Neddie's big-collar shirts and wide lapels, the Dodger's cardigan, the barbie round the pool, the gorgeous sunset on the harbour, and dialogue such as "How many other blokes have got a green light?" "No-one—we shot all the others".
These days every successful Hollywood thriller must contain a car chase, a sex scene, violence treated flippantly, ironic pop culture references, a flawed hero who undergoes a symbolic death-and-resurrection, and an ambiguous ending. Ian David didn't know any of that when he wrote the screenplay, years ahead of David Chase's brilliant work on The Sopranos.
All we need now is for Blue Murder to be released on DVD, on sale at ABC shops with a second disc containing deleted scenes, commentaries by writer, director and actors, and a documentary explaining why it took so long to reach us.
It might just earn enough money to make the ABC feel like doing it all again.
By David Dale
Sydney Morning Herald
Thursday, August 2, 2001
Viewers go for Blue Murder, but you'd hardly read about it
Sydney is a town where word of mouth can work wonders. The second night of Blue Murder did even better for the ABC than the first night.
Driven by enthusiastic reports about Tuesday's first episode of the true-crime saga, an extra 54,000 Sydneysiders tuned in to the ABC on Wednesday, bringing the total audience to 433,000—an amazing figure for any 90-minute show starting at 9.30pm.
But, if the ABC can possibly find a way to shoot itself in the foot, it will. If you looked at the Sydney ratings figures released by OzTAM yesterday morning, you would have found no mention of Blue Murder. Instead, the ratings showed that, in Sydney, Foreign Correspondent got 443,000 viewers and Lateline got 412,000—record performances for both shows.
An ABC spokesman explained that the person responsible for notifying OzTAM of changes in the national programming schedule was based in Melbourne and had not known that Blue Murder was running (in Sydney only) over two nights.
Sorry, Jennifer Byrne, but any pay rise you may get for more than doubling your Foreign Correspondent audience will have to be passed on to actors Richard Roxburgh and Tony Martin, writer Ian David and director Michael Jenkins.
By David Dale
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday, August 3, 2001
Blue Murder (miniseries)
Blue Murder is a two-part Australian television miniseries produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) in 1995 and is based on true events. Given its confronting content, the DVD release was classified MA 15+. An injunction brought during Arthur "Neddy" Smith's appeal against his life sentence saw its broadcast delayed in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territoryfor six years, until 2001. In New Zealand the DVD release was classified R 18+ for graphic violence and offensive language.
Set in the 1970s and 1980s in Sydney, the miniseries concerns the relationship between controversial former Detective Roger "the Dodger" Rogerson and notorious criminal Arthur "Neddy" Smith. Rogerson and his colleagues were accused of giving Smith a "green light" to commit crimes without Police interference, with the relationship fraying when Rogerson orders hitman Christopher "Mr. Rent-a-Kill" Flannery to murder Police Officer Michael Drury. The murder of prostitute Sallie-Anne Huckstepp also features.
Blue Murder is narrated by the characters of Rogerson, Smith and Drury and focuses on the corruption allegations that plagued theNSW Police Force at the time. Rogerson and Smith achieved a kind of celebrity status during the Wood Royal Commission into Police corruption.
The screenplay was written by Ian David who has written extensively on the people and events featured. The miniseries was directed by Michael Jenkins and produced by Rod Allan.
Plot
The series begins with the arrest of Arthur "Neddy" Smith for attempted robbery. He is interviewed by Det. Sgt. Roger Rogerson, who instead of charging him employs him to protect various drug dealers. After serving a short prison sentence for other charges, Smith teams up with Graham "Abo" Henry and becomes a significant presence in the underworld. His association with Rogerson enables him to escape impending drugs charges and helps him to carry out other crimes unabated.
After Warren Lanfranchi, an associate of Smith's, robs drug dealers protected by Rogerson and attempts to shoot a Police Officer on the way to a robbery, Rogerson shoots him in front of fellow Officers. Lanfranchi's girlfriend, Sallie-Anne Huckstepp, vows revenge. Smith, who transported Lanfranchi to the murder and assisted the Police in court by giving a false testimony, is rewarded by Rogerson with a "Green Light", meaning he is allowed to commit any crime he likes, with the exception of assaulting or killing a Police Officer. Rogerson and Smith lead a criminal syndicate in Sydney, distributing drugs and murdering any potential witnesses to their crimes.
Meanwhile in Melbourne, undercover Detective Michael Drury sets up a drugs deal with dealer Alan Williams as part of a sting operation. Williams escapes after a botched Police chase but knows he will soon be caught and is terrified of being imprisoned. Rogerson, on behalf of Williams, tries to bribe Drury to drop the charges, but Drury refuses. In response, Rogerson and Williams contact notorious hitman Christopher Flannery to kill Drury. Flannery shoots Drury in his home but fails to kill him. The Police are unable to obtain any leads on Drury's assailant, but Drury reveals that Rogerson attempted to bribe him and Rogerson is charged.
Rogerson uses the lack of evidence and his corrupt associates in the NSW Police Force to escape conviction, but the negative image and increased Police attention caused by the affair begin to damage his criminal enterprises. His relationship with Smith becomes increasingly strained, to the point where he organises a failed attempt on Smith's life. Flannery and Huckstepp are both murdered when they begin to pose a threat to Rogerson and Smith, but Williams confesses his involvement in the Drury shooting in exchange for protection from Rogerson. Despite this new evidence, Rogerson again escapes conviction, but he is dismissed from the Police Force and arrested by the Australian Federal Police(AFP) shortly afterwards when he is caught depositing money in a bank account under a false name. Without Rogerson's protection, Smith's crime syndicate quickly falls apart and after killing a tow-truck driver in a drunken fight, he leaves enough evidence for the Police to arrest him.
In the final scene, a now-dismissed Rogerson meets Smith at his hide-out to discuss the situation. Rogerson tells Smith to keep a low profile while he uses his contacts within the Police Force to resolve the matter. However, as soon as Rogerson leaves, Police storm the house and arrest Smith and his associate.
As the credits roll, it is revealed that Michael Drury retired from the Police in 2000, Roger Rogerson served three years in prison and Neddy Smith received an indeterminate life sentence for multiple murders, which he is still serving.
Cast
Richard Roxburgh as Roger Rogerson
Tony Martin as Arthur "Neddy" Smith
Steve Bastoni as Michael Drury
Gary Sweet as Christopher Dale Flannery
Peter Phelps as Graham "Abo" Henry
Alex Dimitriades as Warren Lanfranchi
Marcus Graham as Alan Williams
Bill Hunter as "Black" Angus McDonald
Loene Carmen as Sallie-Anne Huckstepp
Blue Murder at the Internet Movie Database
External links
Viewers go for Blue Murder, but you'd hardly read about it
Sydney is a town where word of mouth can work wonders. The second night of Blue Murder did even better for the ABC than the first night.
Driven by enthusiastic reports about Tuesday's first episode of the true-crime saga, an extra 54,000 Sydneysiders tuned in to the ABC on Wednesday, bringing the total audience to 433,000—an amazing figure for any 90-minute show starting at 9.30pm.
But, if the ABC can possibly find a way to shoot itself in the foot, it will. If you looked at the Sydney ratings figures released by OzTAM yesterday morning, you would have found no mention of Blue Murder. Instead, the ratings showed that, in Sydney, Foreign Correspondent got 443,000 viewers and Lateline got 412,000—record performances for both shows.
An ABC spokesman explained that the person responsible for notifying OzTAM of changes in the national programming schedule was based in Melbourne and had not known that Blue Murder was running (in Sydney only) over two nights.
Sorry, Jennifer Byrne, but any pay rise you may get for more than doubling your Foreign Correspondent audience will have to be passed on to actors Richard Roxburgh and Tony Martin, writer Ian David and director Michael Jenkins.
By David Dale
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday, August 3, 2001
Blue Murder: a RE-IMAGINED history
Greg Levine & Stephen McElhinney
Erich Auerbach, whilst discussing the influence of Joyce and Proust?s use of reflected consciousness and time strata, makes an interesting comparison between a novel?s conception of time and a film?s:
a concentration of space and time such as can be achieved by the film (for example the representation, within a few seconds and by means of a few pictures, of the situation of a widely dispersed group of people, of a great city, an army, a war, an entire country) can never be within the reach of the spoken or written word. (Auerbach, 1991:546)
The interesting part for us is the phrase "a great city". In a few sequences a film can give you a version of the past far richer in detail than any history book in the same space of time. This paper will apply this idea to the tele-movie Blue Murder (1995), a quasi-fictional account of Sydney?s criminal milieu of the 1970s and 80s. Made in 1995 and screened on ABC TV in most parts of Australia shortly after, Blue Murder was not broadcast in NSW and the ACT until July 31, 2001. The 6-year delay was caused by a legal embargo placed on the mini-series because Neddy Smith, the main character depicted in the piece, was still on trial for the crimes the portrayed. We compareBlue Murder ?s representation of events in Sydney?s past with impressions of the present by visiting the haunts of the central characters and experiencing the space between representation and actual lived perception. This provides us with an insight into how the film?s narrative has compressed space and time; how Sydney?s past is recontextualised as a film and etched into the viewer?s consciousness, introducing a tension between depictions of the recent past, a vastly changed present and the fractured identity that results.
In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s, the media?s representation of crime in Sydney circled ravenously around a few key names, eager for the slightest sensation: Arthur "Neddy" Smith, Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson, Christopher Dale Flannery and Sally Anne Huckstep among other colourful local identities and celebrities. The tales that projected these names into Sydney?s various public spheres were not only fed upon by the media but also by pub patrons. Neddy Smith, a leading criminal figure of the time, was careful to keep his face out of the media for years, yet was still regularly recognised in pubs all over the city, inner and outer suburbs. According to legend, he would walk in and, on the strength of his reputation, strangers queued to buy him drinks. But pubs were a changing environment in those days. It was a time of transformation with the pub where you went to drink, buy stolen goods or get in a fight slowly submitting to the will of today?s post-industrial patron, who goes to the pub to socialise after a hard day?s data shuffling at the office.
With this in mind, a trio of seasoned knowledge workers commenced their tour. We started our research at the Star Hotel in Chinatown. Its proximity to the ?labour mile? of Sussex Street made it a traditional NSW Labor Party drinking hole, frequented by various characters employed by the party and the unions. Presumably connections were made here between shady politicians, strong-arm unionists and criminals who shared their taste for power and action. In Neddy Smith?s book, Neddy (2002), this was one of a number of pubs around the inner city where he allegedly kept money in the safe, guns behind the bar and met associates with various relationships to NSW criminal law. It is also where he reputedly shot a man in the heart at point blank range, spraying the wall with his insides. Is this a place where my research associates and I want to be on a Friday night? Based on the reputation of events that happened at the Star Hotel in the late 80s, it would be very reasonable to assume that this place would be far too violent for proto-knowledge workers like us.
Traditionally Sydney pubs like this one characterised themselves as havens for the working man. Even when they were primarily patronised by politicians, they were still constructed around the ethos that authentic culture is built upon the efforts of the blue-collar worker. This could have something to do with the central myths of Australian national identity being based on the myth of the "bushman", who Ward described as:
a practical man, rough and ready in his manners and quick to decry any appearance of affectation in others. He is a great improviser, ever willing to "have a go" at anything, but willing too to be content with a task done in a way that is "near enough". Though capable of great exertion in an emergency, he normally feels no impulse to work hard without good cause. He swears hard and consistently, gambles heavily and often, and drinks deeply on occasion. (1965:1-2)
Traditionally, academic types like us were categorised in relation to this national identity. That is, not workers but endurable if we behaved according to the norms of the ethos and donned its garb when traversing its terrain, structures and language. This has become problematic in recent times. Theorists are saying we now exist in an information society ? a society refashioned by "the massive social impacts of new information technologies of computing and telecommunications" (Lyon, 1988:vii). They argue that these days "the engine of much of the dynamics of economic activity and the source of much of the growth of added economic value can be attributed to knowledge" (Stehr, 2004:212). According to these theorists, the growth of societies like Sydney are now dependent on the efforts of knowledge workers.
How is this shift reflected in the Star Hotel? The working class?s move away from city dwelling began in the 1960s as factories moved to the outer suburbs (or off-shore) to make room for white collar office space. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the Star would perhaps have been having an identity crisis; white collar patrons who weren?t sure if they identified with the worker ethos or with the new suburban bourgeoisie chic. An ideal environment for a fashionably dressed, gun slinging, heroin dealer like Neddy.
In 2004, it is just like any other corner pub in Sydney, cloned through the combined effects of licensing laws, random breath testing and property speculation. The main bar is dominated by the TAB and its flock of elevated TV screens and the pokies are in the next room. Jackpots flash, horses scurry around distant tracks and Friday night footy lurches across the plasma screens. The traditional working class pub fare of gambling and sport still dominate; all that has changed is the mode of delivery and its associated atmosphere. On the night we were there the crowd was part after-work suits and part pre-dinner restaurant patrons; a far cry from the pub mentioned in the book Nedd y. The man behind the bar looked like he?d seen some action but was extremely polite and professional. If you hadn?t read the book you wouldn?t know this space once oozed trouble. Now it felt hollowed out and sanitised like so many buildings in post-industrial Sydney.
We talked about the work ahead in excited though hushed voices. We had to be quiet because we couldn?t help using our favourite Blue Murder quotes and trying to imitate the character?s voices and we didn?t want to fulfil the Australian stereotype of "intellectuals" and look like wankers. These days residents of Sydney are very aware of the events with which we were trying to relate. Pub patrons still feed off stories about Neddy, The Dodger and "Abo" Henry, though in new ways. In the 1980s and early 1990s, each name stood alone and the (inevitably embellished) associated story was passed on by word-of-mouth, usually started by someone who actually witnessed the events. Now, the stories are packaged rather than muttered from increasingly toothless mouths. The names are inseparable. You can?t hear about Neddy or the Dodger without hearing about Lanfranchi, Abo or even Chopper. This particular historic field has been compressed by the film Blue Murder and other true crime narratives. The actual events have been plucked from what Carlyle called a "Chaos of Being" (in White, 1975:144), and crammed together with a poetic narrative. Blue Murder wasn?t the first attempt to make these events history but, to paraphrase Auerbach, because of the fact that it is a mini-series, it is by far the most efficient in reaching a large audience and therefore the most influential.
It is unlikely that most television audience members would consider Blue Murder a historical document. It is a "dramatisation" of events, based on books written by Neddy Smith and Michael Drury, an ex-policeman, neither noted historians and therefore, given the assumptions of the role of the historian in our society, incapable of relating objective fact. The audience would probably be unable to imagine these non-historians' tales as part of the normative history of their community. Yet the audience would also probably not be able to come up with a good explanation for why historians get a particular claim on the "truth" of the past. The conception of the historian as a person who stands outside of culture, politics and life, looks on objectively and then delivers measured, scientific interpretations of events is still very popular today. This positivist tradition developed in the mid-1800s when writers such as Ranke began to believe that "the task of the historian was ?simply to show how it really was?" (Carr, 1986:3); to impartially portray facts as they happened. This attitude ignores the idea that "portraying" an event implies a narrative shaping of some sort, an argument made by many writers since. However, judging by the emphasis the Australian media have placed on the "History Wars" since the early 1990s (and the fact that some "populist" historians can still make a living on alterations of the fabric of history, tailored to be happily consumed in the better suburban homes and retirement villages) the positivist version of historical consciousness still holds sway over most of the Australian TV audience and consequently reproduces itself in the productions made for it.
A misconception that is often associated with positivist historical consciousness holds that the historian should be an apolitical observer and that good history is that which can be shown to have not taken sides. This often seems to be regarded as "the common-sense view of history" (Carr, 1989:3-4). It is a misconception because this position is impossible and becomes simply a rhetorical trick to sell a particular point of view. As Hayden White puts it, there is an "irreducible ideological component in every historical account of reality" (1975:21). While the tradition holds that the historian has access to the "truth", many writers have argued convincingly that there are many truths; no one truth can be held up as the truest. Indeed, an analysis of a truth can reveal more about the person claiming it than the historical event itself.
Hayden White?s theories of historical narrative are very helpful in this analysis. White points out that history serves a poetic function in society rather than simply being the source of facts about the past. He postulates four principal modes of historical consciousness on the basis of the ideological intention which informs each of them: Metaphor, Synecdoche, Metonymy and Irony (metaphor is representational, synecdoche is integrative, metonymy is reductionist and irony is negational) (White, 1975:31-38). Each of these modes of consciousness serve as the basis of a linguistic protocol which is used to prefigure the historical field and provide strategies for interpretation.
The historian?s choice of narrative mode is largely an aesthetic one and White suggests this is the underlying poetic function of history. These narratives stem from the impulse in the historian to collect events into stories; to trace similarities between facts and imbue them with meaning. On the surface, Blue Murder seems to follow the conventions of a fictional tragedy. The main characters are brought to their downfalls by the very qualities which make them interesting. However, if we analyse it as a history, it is a good example of real events drawn together into a narrative cast in the ironic mode. It tells a story of Sydney?s past which superficially seems to celebrate some mythical characteristics of the audience?s community while bearing an underlying message of self-criticism. The main characters demonstrate many archetypal traits that the audience recognises from the historical discourse of what Benedict Anderson has called their "imagined community" (1991). This is any community large enough that a member could never come face to face with the majority of the other members. Applied to a historical representation presented to a TV audience this could lead to both broad and specific difference of interpretation within one community. Specifically, the discourse ethics of representing crime could vary from one part of Sydney to another (perhaps circumscribed by the rings left by a schooner glass on a tabloid paper, or a teacup on a broadsheet - either history being factual within the stain). However, on a broader level certain things can have a more unified appeal on a larger, national level.
Near the beginning of the film, as Ned is being released from Long Bay, he tells us in a voiceover that he had the dash to "go out and get his" while most of the other inmates in the prison were "shit men" who bludged on the dole and had no guts, no moral fibre. This is an appeal to Ward?s archetypal myth of Australian character, that is, male individualists with little respect for authority and enough courage and initiative to make it on their own in the world. Familiar with the myth through their consumption of media, the audience can identify with these traits and get the feeling that Ned is someone to be admired for his entrepreneurial spirit. The tragic part is that Ned applies his initiative and courage to selling heroin, armed robbery, pimping, drinking and fighting. This gives the audience the sense that if only Ned was not so misguided he could be a real asset to the community. It is ironic that these character strengths are also his weaknesses and lead to his final downfall. This mode of historical narrative ties the events together to form a story which ultimately carries the message, "crime doesn?t pay" accompanied by a sly, ironic wink that adds, "but we always had a good time".
We will now use an ironic historical consciousness to continue the story of our research pilgrimage?
We soon gave up on the thoroughly safe Star Hotel. The denizens were far too interested in the poker machines and TVs to present us with any distinct local character and even our Blue Murderesque banter had become boring. We decided to get some Chinese food. Chinese food is a recurring theme throughout Blue Murder andNeddy. It seems that whenever Rogerson and Smith got together for lunch it was at a Chinese restaurant. In one particular scene they are waiting for their meals to arrive while Ned is trying to convince the Dodger that he should help him beat some charges. The food is very slow in arriving and the ever dynamic Rogerson is impatient. "Christ I?m hungry", he says loudly, the sort of man who doesn?t need to wait quietly. We strode into BBQ King hoping for a similar scene.1 Kept waiting for our food, we would talk business loudly and bemoan the woeful service. It was not to be. We were served very quickly and then efficiently moved out as we finished to make way for more patrons. We tried a few Blue Murder quotes, started singing, "Hey diddle diddle", but there was no point. The regular BBQ King hubbub was too loud for us to hear ourselves and our hearts weren?t in it - the food was very nice and even if there had been anything to complain about we wouldn?t have had the dash. Were we shit-men?
After that we strolled down to The Rocks , headed for the oldest pub in Sydney, The Lord Nelson. Along the way, the changes the city had been through since the 1980s were very noticeable. The most obvious is the construction boom. Up and down Sussex Street and Kent Street there are road works and building sites in abundance. In the 1980s and the early 1990s (when the film was shot), almost every block had at least one giant hole, barricaded by the high white walls that permeate our older memories of the city. Another sign of the coming of the information age, green bans have been overturned and the green light has been given to property development.
We had an uneventful quick top-up in the empty Captain Cook and then entered the Nelson. This pub is mentioned quite often in Neddy as one of Smith?s favourite drinking spots. The Lord Nelson claims to be Sydney?s oldest pub and has been authentically refurbished to what it was like when it first opened its doors (www.lordnelson.com.au, cited 20.7.04). How this accounts for the giant television screens and the central heating we couldn?t work out, but they are a micro-brewery. Which means they produce their own "authentic" Sydney beer and sell it to you in pints. They embrace the Australian working class beer drinking tradition, which they themselves have been a big part of for Sydney workers for over 150 years, yet the cheapest pints cost at least seven dollars; they don?t have schooner glasses and, while they stock something called Quayle Ale, they don?t sell Tooheys New. The place was full of expensive suits and thirsty cultural researchers such as ourselves, low rent workers of the information age, could not afford to stay there for more than one drink. We?d run out of chat by then and our eyes couldn?t help being turned upwards by the TVs. Rugby Union instead of Rugby League. We tried to imagine a Neddy-style fight breaking out here: sweeping aside the life-sized cardboard Bundy Bear we?d grab an inflatable baseball bat from the Bacardi Cruiser promotions girl and lay into the accountants who?d come in with their top buttons fastened and ties unloosened. But there was too many of them so we backed down. And the atmosphere wasn?t right; by embracing the cultural mythos of Australia, the Lord Nelson has become "unAustralian". We didn?t know how long this had been happening here; some reports say since the mid 1970s and the factories were gone before then. Now there are fetta and olives where a packet of "salt and vinegar" would have done. An ironic tragedy.
This is a path that a lot of city pubs have gone down while Sydney has become an increasingly post-industrialised node of the information society. They give the appearance of embracing the discourse of the historic Sydney while actually focusing on a completely different clientele and raison d?être. In The Rise of the Network Society, Castells (2001:28-69) describes an information technology revolution that took place between the mid 1970s and the late 1990s (a timeframe which roughly coincides with Neddy Smith?s rise and fall as an icon of the near weightless economy of heroin). Similar to the two industrial revolutions (steam then electricity) its effects were pervasive. The invention and maturity of technological systems and methods of production based solely on information transference led to changes at every level of society, from work to family life to government to globalisation to crime and organised crime. Capitalism has undergone massive restructuring, financial markets have become global, information systems have redefined the third world and created the information poor, while, at the same time, the relationship between women and the workforce has changed the nature of the family and sexuality. The media has become more personalised and politics has become more mediated. The gap between the rich and poor is widening and whatever was in between is vanishing. Even vice is no longer what it was; you can catch a government bus to the casino, prostitutes pay tax and you can get a drink anywhere on Easter Sunday.
Life has changed to the extent that "in such a world of uncontrolled, confusing change, people tend to regroup around primary identities: religious, ethnic, territorial, national" (ibid.:3). Social meaning and the formation of identity has fragmented to the extent that it is has been reduced to the desire to find a map. People can no longer find meaning in the places where it has traditionally been: the mainstream church, work, unions etc. In the network society, "identity is always an open, complex, unfinished game? it always moved into the future through a symbolic detour through the past" (Hall, 1999:43). As Foucault put it, "a certain fragility has been discovered in the bedrock of existence" and we are seeing "an insurrection of subjugated knowledges" (1984:201). The audience for Blue Murder lives in this post-industrial information society and, because traditional conceptions of historical truth have been subtly undermined as much as other touchstones of identity, construction of its identity could be influenced by the portrayal of events in the film.
Our next port of call was a place that does not appear in Blue Murder or Neddy, the Triple Ace Bar on Elizabeth Street in Surry Hills. Why? Because we had heard a rumour that Roger Rogerson still drinks there. But instead of bloody noses, spilt beer and scattered teeth, some young Japanese backpackers were playing drinking games.
Despite what has already been written here, we do not feel some romantic longing for the return of pub culture of the 1980s. An article appeared in "The Heckler" section of The Sydney Morning Herald (April 10, 2002), bemoaning the atmosphere and décor of the current white collar pub (or worse, the McDonaldized Irish chain pub), longing for the old days and concluding that " given a choice of drinking buddies I'd take Neddy Smith over the Corrs any day". We are not of the same opinion. The last person we would like to meet in a pub is a drug dealing, murderer who would beat you senseless if you looked at him the wrong way. But the chance to see the real, ?unrepresentational? as it were, Rogerson in the flesh would give us the final link in the theoretical hand-cuffs. To the viewing audience Rogerson is Roxborough, a man who cries when he reminisces about the show-down between Ray Kelly, a NSW police force legend, and Chow Hayes, an uber-criminal of earlier times. We wanted to know how the style of discourse which shaped Blue Murder has affected the man himself.
Sadly, he wasn?t there. The place is more TAB than pub and beige tiles predominate. The bistro was closed, though the restaurant upstairs looked interesting; hard to find anything else to say about the place. If he does drink there we couldn?t see the attraction. In fact, this was becoming central to our conversation. Apparently we are what writers such as Charles Leadbetter have called, "knowledge workers" (1999:1-2). That is, educated people with ideas who can work from anywhere, any time as long as they have a computer. Certainly, we?re the information rich, the only problem being that this hasn?t translated into the associated capital promised by Castells, Leadbetter and others. Is it just us who feel left out of the Sydney pub scene; who don?t feel at home in either the poker machine dominated, TAB bars or the boutique, chrome lined micro-breweries?
Manning Clark wrote that, by the 1980s:
all that seemed to survive was the idea of Australia as a place of "uncommonly large profit". History has blurred the vision of Eden, allowing Mammon to infest the land. A turbulent emptiness seized the people as they moved into a post-Christian, post-Enlightenment era. No one any longer knew the direction of the river of life. No one had anything to say?. (1987:500)
As mentioned earlier, the traditional areas of identification don?t hold as much sway as they used to and people have to look for new icons to cling to. Perhaps this is where Neddy and Rogerson fit in. Iconic 1980s men Rogerson, Mark "Chopper" Read and Warwick Capper do speaking tours at pubs around Australia that are equally popular at the Bridge Hotel in Balmain and Rooty Hill RSL. If the gaps between social strata are becoming bigger then Rogerson, Neddy and other elements from Sydney?s past could be some sort of common denominator. After all, Blue Murder was made with an audience in mind. Even though it was broadcast on a non-commercial station it still had to speak to a public. This effects the style of the discourse behind the relating of its tale. Its narrative potentially shapes to some degree the way the audience constructs its sense of community identity. This in turn has an influence on the way Sydney represents itself in the present and in what it is becoming. There are already cricket clubs from other states that plan their end of season trips around visiting pubs featured in Blue Murder. How long before the gangster chic becomes "the Blue Murder Theme Pub � ", perhaps staffed by the rogues? gallery of Australian actors who bought the characters to life?
The last pub on the official research crawl was the Random Bar . Before it was the Random Bar it was the Brendan Behan Hotel and before that, the Britannia. It was outside the Britannia, on the corner of Dangar Place and Abercrombie Street, where Roger Rogerson allegedly shot and killed Warren Lanfranchi. We walked up Dangar Place to see what it was like. In the 1980s it was an alley between disused factories, deserted relics of a blue collar past. In our imaginations an industrial wilderness, deserted as the gangsters face off and a plastic bag blows across the scene. Now it?s an alley between apartment buildings with washing hanging from balcony railings.
Inside, the Random Bar looks like a fading B movie actress, a decade or two post-prime, who has had one too many naïve facelifts. It?s going for a techno chic with its unbearably loud DJ and giant, anatomically correct statue of a lion. But, again, it wasn?t us and it definitely didn?t seem very Rogerson. Unlike the lion, he wasn?t all show - he had what it took. We tried to discuss issues of vital importance to our research ? is the only unAustralian crime disorganised crime? Would criminals like Neddy Smith, so hands on in his love of armed robbery, bother with it all today in an age of ATMs and credit cards? Has the information age?s electronic funds transaction dried up the loose cash he used to gain so much pleasure from violently stealing? Even his heroin trade would have taken a slide in popularity as party drugs took over. Where would we go to kick on? Where should we go to lose the ambivalence this mission had created in us? Were we shit-men or just alienated by an overly commercial pub scene?
We stumbled down to the Lansdowne as our last port of call. Assaulted by a wall of industrial metal as we entered, we climbed the staircase to relative quiet. A few chairs perched on the landing at the top of the stairs next to a baby grand. We sat down to catch our breath. Andrew opened the lid on the piano and found the thing was roughly in tune. We knew he could play so we demanded he do so to soothe our disturbed psyches. He played for about ten minutes ? sparse, bluesy improvisation, capturing our mood perfectly. Then he paused for a moment and applause came from round the corner where the bar was, followed shortly by the bartender. "Thank you, that was beautiful" she said, "but you?ll have to go downstairs, we?re closing up here."
The way we represent the past, the style of discourse we use, inevitably becomes the way we look at the present. As Auerbach put it, "a change in our manner of viewing history will of necessity soon be transferred to our manner of viewing current conditions" (1991:443). As Nietzsche points out, humans are not a fixed form; they change constantly with the times because "there are no eternal facts, nor are there any absolute truths" (1994:15). As subjugated histories gain influence the power of mainstream history becomes fragmented and leaves a space for changes in the way we represent the past. Films like Blue Murder can therefore change the way we view the present. While it is a representation of Sydney that clearly reinforces traditional, "universal" Western moral norms, the audience can now only receive these messages with a sense of self-critical irony. Consequently, the only element of this film that actually has an effect on the present self-awareness of Sydney is its narrative mode. Present representations of the identity of Sydney?s "imagined community", effected by the film, become ironic and self-critical and, as a result, the pubs (and perhaps social areas in general, whether physical or virtual) become increasingly detached from any actual use value. They are more preoccupied with selling an image than creating a comfortable social space for people to consume alcohol. That is, alienation takes place. And this was the point our discussion reached at the Random Bar: how can you have alienation in an information society characterised by fragmentation where there is no unified subject? But we were too drunk by then to figure it out.
Acknowledgements
- The authors would like to thank Andrew Keese for his ideas, encouragement, piano playing and rounds at the bar and Amaya for giving us a lift home.
References
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Ward, R. (1965) The Australian Legend, Oxford University Press: Melbourne
White, H. (1975) Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe, Johns Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, Maryland
1 BBQ King itself was recently associated with the new crime of the 21 st century. Its co-owner was kidnapped by two Chinese nationals seeking a ransom from the other respected and successful owners.
Rod Allan (Producer) Errol Sullivan (Executive Producer) Penny Chapman (Executive Producer) Wayne Barry (Associate Producer)
PRODUCTION COMPANIES:
Southern Star Entertainment Australian Broadcasting Corporation
FINANCE ORGANISATIONS:
Australian Film Finance Corporation
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY:
Martin McGrath
EDITORS:
Bill Russo
PRODUCTION DESIGNERS:
Murray Picknett
COMPOSER:
Peter Best
CAST:
Richard Roxburgh (Roger Rogerson), Tony Martin (Arthur 'Neddy' Smith), Steve Bastoni (Michael Drury), Gary Day (Bill Crofton), Steve Jacobs (Mal Rivers), Peter Phelps (Abo Henry), Marcus Graham (Alan Williams), Alex Dimitriades (Warren Lanfranchi), Bill Hunter (Angus McDonald), Gary Sweet (Christopher Dale Flannery), John Hargreaves (Chester Porter QC), Ian Bliss (Bobby Chapman), Stephen Eley (Duty Sergeant), Richard Carter (Lyail Chandler), Joy Smithers (Debra Smith), Eleni Batley (Jaime Smith), Dion Mihajlovsky (Darrin Smith), Bruce Barry (Commissioner Abbott), Bogdan Koca (Lewis Roussos), Loene Carmen (Sallie-Anne Huckstepp), Ray Martin (Himself), Anthony Cogin (Steve Paully), Phillip Hinton (Ian Barker QC), Nicole Pottinger (Melinda Rogerson), Brigitte Lawson (Gillian Rogerson), Kris Bidenko (Joy Rogerson), Jim Holt (Brian Alexander), Jeffrey Rhoe, Jack Mayers, John Jarratt, Graham Rouse, Laurie Foel, Robert Morgan, Frank Violi, Peter Sommerfeld, Brendan Higgins, Tom Appleton, David Baldwin, Warwick Moss, Paul Sonkkila, Terrie Bowie, Skye Wansey, Aaron Jeffery, Marshall Napier, Erin Smith, Jake Blundell, John McNeill, Vincent Ball, Michael O'Neill, John Sheerin, Stephen O'Rourke, Geoff Morrell, Kristoffer Greaves, Sascha Huckstepp, Stephen Leeder, Ron Graham, Les Dayman, John Walton, Dennis Miller, Bryan Marshall, Neil Moora, Mervyn Drake, Barry Donnelly, Ricky Noble, Damian Monk, David Franklin, Ken Radley.
RELEASE DATES:
1. Episode one aired in Australia on ABC Television on 14 September 1995, with episode two airing on 21 September, except for NSW (see note below). The mini-series also aired in Croatia (27 December 1997) and Portugal (28 April 1999). 2. Released on videocassette and DVD formats in 2000 by REEL Corporation.
LOCATION:
Filmed largely on location in Sydney.
AWARDS:
Australian Film Institute (AFI) Awards (1996) Best Television Mini Series or Telefeature - Rod Allan (winner) Logie Awards (1996) Most Outstanding Achievement in Drama Production (winner) Logie Awards (1996) Silver Logie, Most Outstanding Actor - Richard Roxburgh (winner) Logie Awards (1996) Silver Logie, Most Popular Actor - Gary Sweet (nomination)
NOTES:
1. Also known as Corrupção E Morte (Portugal). 2. Due to elements of the story being seen as prejudicial to legal trials in NSW and Federal Courts, the series was unable to be broadcast in New South Wales or to be distributed on video until 2000. It was eventually allowed to be broadcast when the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) decided to drop charges against Neddy Smith over a 1983 murder.
Veteran BBC broadcaster Stuart Hall has admitted indecently assaulting 13 girls as young as nine years old.
The Crown Prosecution Service said he was an "opportunistic predator" and almost all the victims provided "strikingly similar accounts".
The CPS also said the victims, among them a 10-year-old and an 11-year-old, did not know each other and Hall's pattern of behaviour was "unlawful".
Hall, 83, admitted 14 charges of indecent assault and the offences took place between 1967 and 1985.
The former It's A Knockout presenter, who was also a regular football match summariser on Radio 5 Live, had previously denied any wrongdoing, telling reporters the claims were "pernicious, callous, cruel and above all spurious".
He said he had endured "a living nightmare" and but for his "very loving family" may have considered taking his own life.
He entered the guilty pleas last month at Preston Crown Court. However, they can only be revealed now after reporting restrictions were lifted.
In court, Hall calmly and repeatedly answered "guilty" when the charges were put to him at the hearing on April 16.
He admitted touching and kissing 13 young victims over nearly two decades, many were daughters of friends.
The Recorder of Preston, Judge Anthony Russell QC, told him he would be required to sign the Sex Offenders Register.
Hall was granted bail until his sentencing date on June 17 and the judge told him all sentencing options remain open including immediate custody.
Hall's barrister, Crispin Aylett QC, said: "The defendant is, of course, sorry for what he has done. Through me he wishes to apologise to his victims.
"He is not a man easily moved to self pity but he is only too aware his disgrace is complete."
Hall was told he must live and sleep at his Wilmslow home in Cheshire and have no unsupervised contact with girls under 18.
Hall did not comment on the case as he left court accompanied by his legal team, saying only to waiting reporters that he had a "terrible cold".
He was surrounded by a media scrum as he was led into a waiting car.
Outside court, Nazir Afzal, chief crown prosecutor for the North West, said: "We prosecuted Stuart Hall because the evidence of the victims clearly established a pattern of behaviour that was unlawful and for which no innocent explanation could be offered.
"His victims did not know each other and almost two decades separated the first and last assaults but almost all of the victims, including one who was only nine at the time of the assault, provided strikingly similar accounts.
"Whether in public or private, Hall would first approach under friendly pretences and then bide his time until the victim was isolated. He can only be described as an opportunistic predator."
Hall was facing 18 charges. A court order was lifted so that the pleas could be reported.
It was to avoid prejudicing a possible future trial on a count of rape and three separate counts of indecent assault which Hall had denied last month.
Peter Wright QC, prosecuting, said the Crown was satisfied the rape count could lie on file after it was given consideration at "the most senior level" of the CPS. The three other counts were merged with a charge Hall had admitted.
The BBC said it would not be featuring Hall again in its programmes. In a statement, the corporation said: "In light of today's events, Stuart Hall will no longer be contracted by the BBC."
Story on Detective Paul Wilson QUEENSLAND AUSTRALIA
The COMPLAINT ;
In 1988 in Airlie Beach Queensland on a Friday morning at approximately 8.50 am QUEENSLAND POLICE OFFICER Detective Paul Wilson,
( http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html),
of the Queensland Police hurled a 6 liter can of paint from the 2nd mezzanine floor, of the Airlie Beach Hardware Store in Shute Harbour road Airlie Beach, directly onto my head & neck as I was kneeling on the 1st floor inspecting cleaning products on the bottom lower shelf I required for my business that particular day.
The event was eye witnessed by a Australia\'s Most SENIOR Government Registered Accredited Accident & Safety Officer for the construction site of the New Daydream Island resort in the Whitsunday Islands.
QUEENSLAND POLICE Detective PAUL WILSON fled from the store via the side loading entrance, despite cries of protest from the accident & safety officer, who was shouting for every body too stay where they were in the store.
My injuries were extensive I suffered massive soft tissue damage & severe injury to my brain stem ( in the region of some 48 % + or more ), ( later intentionally underestimated in documents by my nefarious lawyers acting unbeknown to me for the interests of Queensland Government, v Insurance Company fraudulently documented the brain stem injury at only 24%).
The extent of my injury entirely reduced my capacity to speak & comprehend, six months after the injury I was barely able to move or speak at all.
{ Qld Police Union PRESIDENT Ian Leavers, cuts a *QLD Police Union DEAL with Townsville Judge Stuart Durward so QLD POLICE officer BENJAMIN PRICE responsible for Gutless Bashings of people in Handcuffs receives 9 months jail only and will be out in under six months for good behaviour & also kept isolated from other prisoners for his Safety. }
Directly after my attempted murder in Airlie Beach by QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON , http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY MEMBERS Cowling & Virgo lawyers Mr BRUCE VIRGO & Mr JAMES GREVELL all close business associates of QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON knowingly & intentionally filed fraudulent public liability insurance claims against the Airlie Beach Hardware Store for the serious injuries of Mr Matthew Banks. http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
Despite ongoing protests to the contrary by Mr Matthew Banks.
Cowling & Virgo lawyers & in particular Mr BRUCE VIRGO appeared to have a working $$$$$$$DRUG business relationship directly with QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON tha involved also the only known chartered accountant in Airlie Beach at the time doing their books.
Some five months prior to my injuries inflicted by QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON I was advised by QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON to get out of town or I would be having a, " VERY SERIOUS ACCIDENT ", as I had refused his demands to become involved in his cocaine importation empire with his business associates, Airlie Beach QUEENSLAND National Parks officer \" Marty \" the Chartered Accountant & QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY MEMBER lawyer Mr BRUCE VIRGO http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/
Such was the extent of my injuries & the manipulation & orchestration of the events by Airlie Beach & QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY MEMBER lawyer Mr JAMES GREVELL who convinced me I was going to loose any legal action & would have to pay all of the associated
legal costs of everybody amounting to Tens of Thousands of dollars & I should accept the VERY GENEROUS insurance company cheque for $5,600.00 who convinced me I was going to loose any legal action & would have to pay all of the associated legal costs of everybody amounting to Tens of Thousands of dollars & I should accept the VERY GENEROUS insurance company cheque for $5,600.00 http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/
About 48 hours after acceptance I was advised by the owner of the local newspaper I had been seriously swindled & to seek legal advise out of town, which I promptly did.
http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/
QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY MEMBER Lawyer in Gladstone Qld Mr Barry John Ross, advised me on my 1st interview that he had directly received " Serious Threats" regarding
any further pending legal action in relation to my
injuries. Such was the nature of these serious threats a concerned Mr Barry John Ross himself nervously personally escorted me to my vehicle that evening.
Contrary to my explicit instructions Mr Barry John Ross proceeded to seek professional negligence damages from the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY proceeded to seek professional negligence damages from the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY Insurance Company?.
I personally spoke to the second only Woman, Appointed Queensland Law Society PRESIDENT from 1988-1993 Mrs Quentin Bryce, (Today\'s Australian Governor General ), http://www.gg.gov.au/
QUENTIN BRYCE then the PRESIDENT of the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/
{*Quentin Bryce also recetly openly accused destorying evidence of a
PEDOPHILE ring in Queensland.} & made her fully aware of the facts regarding my injuries & who was directly responsible, ( QUEENSLAND DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON ).
AUSTRALIAS GOVERNOR GENERAL QUENTIN BRYCE STATED TO ME ;
" I PERSONALLY AM GOING TO SEE YOU GET JUSTICE, BE ASSURED OF THAT ! " .
Not at all satisfied with the response to my complaints given directly to the PRESIDENT OF
THE QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY Mrs Quentin Bryce then of the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY I made appointments & traveled to Brisbane to the Qld Law Society offices & spoke to them again.
The woman I spoke too in the offices of the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY claimed
QUEENSLAND DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON was a boyfriend of hers.
QUEENSLAND DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON was driving a Ford Falcon, I was instructed to get into the passenger seat & then Detective Paul Wilson put a pistol to the side of my head and said \" YOUR NOT GOING TO
GIVE ME ANY PROBLEMS IN THE SUPREME COURT?, ARE YOU NOW ? \".
I then promptly contacted QUEENSLAND QC Mr Tony Fitzgerald who was at that time
in command of the QUEENSLAND GOVERNMENT Fitzgerald Inquiry, I spoke to numerous people & submitted my concerns to the Fitzgerald Inquiry, nobody there seemed concerned. http://www.qld.gov.au/
Soon after shots were fired at night in front of my girl friend Doctor Alison Anne Morris residence.
Numerous dangerous attempts were made at speed to force vehicles I was traveling in on expressways from the road.
I spoke privately to Detective Martin Webb of the Sunshine Coast Police & he was very concerned regarding my personal safety & the safety of Doctor Morris.
Detective Martin Webb visited our residence to check our home security & by this stage he was deeply concerned for my welfare as I had advised him of all of the facts regarding my injuries.
Detective Webb was so concerned he registered me as a QUEENSLAND Police
Informant & said to me \" Anyone comes inside this house uninvited kill
them " & call me immediately & I will fix it up ! .
Detective Martin Webb also said to me Your life is in grave danger as you have seen too much & this corrupt QUEENSLAND POLICE OFFICER DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON will KILL you, one way or another & its Easier for them if your in Jail… who did nothing to protect his client Mr Mathew Lucas Banks
The QUEENSLAND POLICE SERVICES http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ in conjunction with the Queensland Law society http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/ & its then ; PRESIDENT Mrs QUENTIN BRYCE http://www.gg.gov.au/ were aware of the dire consequences of my Eye Witness AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ACCREDITED WORK PLACE ACCIDENT AND SAFETY OFFICER giving Evidence in the QUEENSLAND SUPREME COURT ] of Brisbanehttp://www.courts.qld.gov.au/1504.htm & his motives for Attempting to Murder Mr Matthew Lucas Banks who had previously eye witnessed Det Paul Wilson Murder a fellow Queensland Police officer in CANNONVALE AIRLIE BEACH. Along with the Fact a clear Link was established between the Queensland Police Services & Queensland Law Society\'s direct involvement in Importing vast quantities of cocaine into Australia.
QUENTIN BRYCE Todays AUSTRALIAN GOVONER GENERAL http://www.gg.gov.au/ had her Official Australian Governor Generals WEB Pages EDITED in October 2009 after my complaints regarding QUINTIN BRYCE \'s Acts were reported to the AUSTRALIAN SENATOR For NATIONAL SECURITY .
QUENTIN BRYCE\'S Offical AUSTRALIAN GOVONER GENERALS WEB pages had stated that QUENTIN BRYCE was PRESIDENT for the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/ in the early 1990\'s & those FACTS were removed in its place is written that QUENTIN BRYCE worked for Human Rights during this period of time.
Specialist WEB Engineers can still determin the Evidence
QUENTIN BRYCE'S WEB pages were EDITED and exactly what was removed and replaced : AUSTRALIAN GOVERNOR GENERAL QUENTIN BRYCE WAS Appointed as the 2nd
only Woman PRESIDENT of the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY FROM 1988-1993 We have HARD COPY Published Evidence of this FACT.
The Queensland Police Services http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ & Queensland Government http://www.qld.gov.au/ are entirely responsible for my injuries & my legal entitlement to compensation & damages with 14% compound interest from the date I sustained those injuries as Queensland Detective Paul Wilson was officially on duty at the time of my injuries.
The testimony of my eye witness Australian Government Accredited Accident and Safety Officer was Deliberately concealed right throughout all of the legal proceedings, despite Death threats made directly too that accident and safety officer.
The Supreme Court Judge http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/1504.htm deliberately concealed my evidence, ( no eye witness testimony or eye witness was called in my defense
& when I stood up and announced to the court the entire proceedings were a charade & that my injuries were sustained from my attempted murder by Queensland Detective Paul Wilson
I advised the BRISBANE SUPREME court http://www.courts.qld.gov.au/1504.htm of all of my experience in Airle Beach with the Judge repeatedly telling me to, \" Shut Up ! \" .... \"
Shut Up !! " ..........." Shut Up !!! " & exposed the entire truth of the matter to the court.
The Judge demanded the court stenographer strike from the
record all of my statements.
She refused & was screamed at by the Judge & claimed it was unlawful to tamper with court records, she was removed from the court room and another stenographer was bought in.
The supreme Court Judge instructed me to go sit with the court bailiff : { I was too be Arrested & Murdered in Jail }
I then told the Judge & Court Room I was a registered Police Informant and gave my informant ID & numbers too him.
I also told the Judge & Court Room I had placed detailed sealed documents regarding my experience and injuries with the press withinstructions to open them IF I did not return from court in 48 hours.
The judge instructed me to leave the bailiff & once again to take the witness stand where I had defended myself with NO legal council in a closed court for two days.
{ QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/ appointed lawyers in Gladstone Mr BARRY JOHN ROSS http://www.lawyers.com.au/byrne-v-a-j-co- http://www.byrnelawyers.com/
neglected to appear in the Supreme court to defend his Client Mr MATTEW LUCAS BANKS : }
At the residence of doctor Allison Anne Morris of
Alexander Headland on the Sunshine coast in late 1994 I was contacted by telephone on Doctor Morris unlisted number & as Doctor Morris listened in on the 2nd telephone we were advised by a woman in the Qld Law Society that I was going to be \" Set Up in Court \" by the Queensland Police http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ Insurance company & Queensland Law Society http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/ insurance company.
Numerous times The Queensland Ombudsman was alerted to the facts.
Numerous times The Queensland CJC was alerted to the facts.
Numerous times The Queensland CMC was alerted to the facts.
The Queensland office of the Premier PETER BEATTIE was alerted to the facts.
http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2010/09/24/258371_gold-coast-news.html { Mr Wilson said the Gold Coast needs a multi-disciplinary team made up of intelligence, accountants and lawyers to probe organised crime in the area, which he described as an exciting but \'\'toxic environment\'\' because of the potential for corruption.}
QUEENSLAND POLICE OFFICER DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON using the exact same
M.O he used to cover up QLD DETECTIVE Paul Wilsons attempted Murder of Mr MATTEW LUCAS BANKS in Airlie Beach in 1988.
Tendered to the CMC Hearings the unlawful use of ACCOUNTANTS AND QLD LAW SOCIETY LAWYERS to Act in conjuction with SPECIAL QUEENSLAND POLICE on the GOLD COAST ; http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
TODAY ; I am advised by specialist lawyers that in 1995 my compensation & damages claims for significant serious injuries sustained by QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON attempting to Murder me should have been for $750,000.00 + 14% compound bank interest from the Date of my injuries to the court Date in 1995 & I am advised by specialist lawyers that I am legally entitled to 14% compound bank interest until I am awarded my compensation and damages. http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
Due to the ongoing extensive injuries I sustained from QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
I lost my business & my ability too support myself financially & endured agonising endless pain & suffering to the extent I was suicidal.
Despite visits to specialist doctors over many, many years I could not find pain relief of any kind from medication.
The vast amounts of medication I was instructed to take caused me serious liver & kidney problems.
I was forced to seek extensive alternative medical treatment Acupuncture , Chiropractic & remedial massage three times per week just too maintain my ability to move & think.
Over the period of time from my injuries to the court proceeding my personal costs for this treatment exceeded Aust$75k.
At age 29 I was instructed by doctors on the Sunshine Coast I would never be able to work again & should take a full government disablity
pension,............ I was devastated.
Due to the serious nature of the threat from Detective Paul Wilson & the lethal actions of insurance investigators , & for her safety & well being I was forced to end a loving and caring
relationship with Doctor Morris.
Investigators under instructions from the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY
PRESIDENT THEN QUINTEN BRYCE TODAYS AUSTRALIAN GOVERNOR GENERAL ;
placed hidden Cameras & Microphones in " Doctor Alison Ann Morrises"
Residence eg on Alexander Headland Sunshine Coast in Doctor Morrises BEDROOM, BATHROOMS, Toilets, Loung Room, kitchen & in Doctor Morrise's Vehicles.
One *specialist Doctor of Mine stated to me in 1992 That he was Threatened by QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY INVESTIGATORS " That If he attended the Surpreme Court to give evidence for Mr Matthew Banks " , Investigators would *Inform the doctors Wife of the Specialist Doctors
numerous *Indiscretions with Females ".
Investigators Directly Under Instruction from The Australian Governor General Quinten Bryce then PRESIDENT of the Queensland LAW SOCIETY, were instructed to use' ALL' & "Any Means " to STOP my Eye Witness AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT ACCREDDITED REGISTERED WORK PLACE & SAFETY OFFICER * THE MOST SENIOR WORK PLACE & SAFETY SPECILIST OFFICER IN ALL OF AUSTRALIA " from Testifying in the supreme Court that in 1988 That Saftey officer Eye Witnessed QUEENSLAND DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON In the
Airlie Beach Hardware Store ATTEMPT To MURDER Mr MATTHEW LUCAS BANKS
at 8 : 45 am in the morning by hurling a FULL 6 litre Can of PAINT
from the second Floor onto Mr Matthew Lucas Banks while he was
kneeling looking at produce on a bottom Shelf.
Here is an extract re just one of my meetings with Det Paul Wilson, after that Attempted MURDER!.
I will tell you what Det Paul Wilson did to me after I was paralysed and had been in bed for months unable to move as much as a finger without Agony & Waves of endless Pain throughout my head that was like gigantic Waves crashing on a Beach just from moving a finger Tip ........
Det Paul Wilson came into my bedroom late at night in an apartment I shared & I heard his Voice Unable to move ! .
My flat mate now dead, { murdered by Det Paul Wilson I was Advised
on the Sunshine Coast by a resident from Airlie Beach in 1992} , I
heard her voice say to Det Paul Wilson
" You kill him in here and I will go to the press and TV and I will give you ALL UP......
QLD Det Paul Wilson came into my bedroom and sat on the floor next to my bed, cocained out of his brain and drunk and DUG his fingers and fists into my NECK that was bleeding into my spine and said to me, " I did not want it to be this way or end this way for YOU Matthew " I thought you would Die quickly ! ".
I never intended that you would suffer in agony like this.
For about fifteen minutes he Det Paul Wilson sat & DUG his fingers and fists into my bloated bleeding neck that was broken in three places.
That was a couple of months after he tried to murder me .
8 Long Years I spent in constant Endless Agony, until I had the Nerves in my brain stem that send pain signals to your Brain CUT.
22 Years I have spent Trying to put my smashed and wrecked broken body back together from my injuries sustained from my attempted murder by QUEENSLAND Det Paul Wilson.
I am now also forced from the threat of Detective Paul Wilson for the safety of m son & wife to reside outside Australia as an Australian Citizen, barely able to financially support them.
I am constantly recieving Death threats to my son & Wife in JAPAN.
I am seeking my original legal entitlement for compensation & damages for my significant serious injuries inflicted by QUEENSLAND POLICE OFFICER DETECTIVE PAUL WILSON http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
when he attempted to murder me in Airlie Beach in 1988 ; from the Queensland
Police Services & QLD Government Workers Compensation & QLD LAW SOCIETY for my entitlement PLUS my entitlment too 14% compound interest on that compensation & damages $750,000.00 from the date of my injuries sustained by Queensland Detective Paul Wilson ; until the Date it is paid to me.
My inquiries found that the \"maintenance of secrecy, the avoidance of scandal, the protection of the reputation of the QUEENSLAND Governmnet http://www.qld.gov.au/ the QUEENSLAND Law Society http://www.qls.com.au/content/lwp/wcm/connect/QLS/Home/ & the QUEENSLAND Police http://www.police.qld.gov.au/ and the preservation of its assets\" was more important than justice for the victim Mr Matthew Lucas Banks.
I was advised in person by the eye witness Accident & Safety Officer that numerous copies of his accident report are kept for his *personal Security after death threats b QUEENSLAND Detective Paul Wilson.
Any resident from Queensland that has been charged or arrested & imprisoned or threatened by Queensland Detective Paul Wilson to become one of his cocaine Mules or Dealers.
We have irrifutable evidence that citizens from Townsville were unlawfully & forceably conscripted by QUEENSLAND Detective PAUL WILSON into acting as cocaine mules under threat of Murder or false imprisonment.
Those who have been Wrongfuly Convicted & Imprisoned in Queensland should form Vigilante Groups & Met out their own Justice against the Queensland Police Regime
Have the Guts too stand Up Fight back ; 10,600 police in Qld and 3/4of them are Corrupt, Drug Dealing parasites, that dont have the guts to be criminals without the Queensland Police Uniforms or Badges & theSupport of the QUEENSLAND LAW SOCIETY\'S corrupt Judges & DRUG DEALING LAWYERS like Mr BRUCE VIRGO .
***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****
International & domestic investigative journalists have described a ,\" Closed Doors Star Chamber like Justice System functioning within the Brisbane Courts \" , Sanctioned by the Queensland Law Society,Queensland POLICE Queensland Government, Attorney General CMC, CJC, LSC, & Queensland Premier Anna Bligh .
The attempted Murder of Mr Matthew Banks by QUEENSLAND POLICE
Detective Chief superintendent PAUL WILSON ; http://www.goldcoast.com.au/article/2008/09/27/16815_gold-coast-news.html
in 1988 has been bought to the *attention of all of these Queensland Government Departments & NO Action has been taken despite the Legal Facts & that their is NO statute of Limitations For Attempted Murder in Queensland which has a Maximum sentence of Fifteen
years Imprisonment.
The Acts of the Law Society Member Lawyers Mr James Grevel http://www.grevellssolicitors.com.au/contact-us.php , Mr Bruce Virgo, Mr Barry John Ross http://www.lawyers.com.au/byrne-v-a-j-co- http://www.byrnelawyers.com/ are all clear Evidence of the close association between Queensland Police Services Corrupt Drug Dealing Police Importing cocaine into Queensland & being protected by the Law Society & a, " Closed Doors Star Chamber like Justice System", protecting these corrupt police.
Cocaine Imported into Qld by Queensland Police & Lawyers is distributed in a network along the entire Eastern Seaboard of Australia to the Melbourne Underworld, of which I have clear evidence.
Along with Detective Paul Wilson murdering a fellow Queensland Police officer in Nrth Qld in 1988 which I & a woman eye witnessed.
The coroners report on that murdered police officer today reads death by suicide :
The murdered police officers Wife is Entitled too know the Truth & be awarded the correct compensation as she was Aware Threats were made to her Husband prior too his murder.
Queenslanders will recall from the Mid l1970\'s too the 1980\'s where dozens of Deaths & Murders in custody of Innocent citizens falsely convicted in Boggo Road Jail took place.
The Queensland Police have formed in conjunction with nefarious Queensland lawyers a vast regime of power to secure their criminal network & see it is Free from investigation, which directly points too commissioner Atkinson & Senior Police having knowledge of this network.
When a justice system fails as it has in Queensland, then a Vigilante IRA style justice system formed by the Victims & Victims families isrequired to restore the balance of Justice implementing summery style executions of corrupt Drug Dealing Murdering Queensland Police.
Until the Queensland Justice system is restored and Law & Order is maintained :
The question must be Asked how many Queensland citizens have been falsely charged & Imprisoned by Detective Paul Wilson in his 38 years of so called service ?.
JUSTICE & The Australian Government must OPEN Police Charge Books from,DETECTIVE PAUL WILSONS 40 YEARS OF POLICE SO CALLED SERVICE IN QUEENSLAND & Determin the extent of the DAMAGE this Rogue Murdering Scum has done to society.
The Western Australian Car bomb Hanging LAW must apply to this
Queensland police officer Detective Paul Wilson ........Justice must
be seen to be done.
When it takes the Queensland Government Twenty two years & they still cannot Act too see justice for my case of Attempted Murder with the most credible Eye Witness Australia\'s Most Senior Government Accredited Registered Work Place Accident & Safety Officer , who saw
QUEENSLAND POLICE Detective Paul Wilson attempted too murder mewhile on Duty, then run from the scene of the Crime.
Saturday 18th December Queensland CMC FOI documents arrived in Japan after Ten Years of ASKING related to this complaint ;
those documents show NO CMC Investigations : Only that my residential address was searched and the IP Address of annomymous
Tips Offs to the CMC & CJC, The Queensland Government is grossly Defective & displays a
well established Addiction to Corruption at All levels of government & repression for justice for the victims of Crime Like Mr Matthew Lucas Banks.
Australian PM Julia Gillard ; Senator Penny Wong ; Senator Bishop ; Special Senator Gary Gray ; have all received copies of this complaint & ALL appear reluctant to Uphold Australian Laws or se the victim of this disgraceful display of government corruption receives his entitlement to compensation & Damages $750,000.00 & a full government pension back Dated to 1990 as he was instructed to take by doctors ; despite 22 years of pleading.
Labels: Anna Bligh, CJC, CMC, Commissioner Atkinson, Detecttive chief Superintendent Paul Wilson, Inspector David Hickey, LSC, Qld La Society..
Background of Assistant Queensland Commissioner - Paul Anthony Wilson
Extracted from Sworn Statement of Assistant Queensland Commissioner -
Paul Anthony Wilson which was provided to Queensland's Criminal Misconduct Commision (CMC)-
Assistant Commissioner Paul Wilson surveys his new
QUEENSLANDPOLICE SERVICE ROLE AS ASSISTAMT COMMISSIONER OF THE South Eastern Police Region (SER) OF THE QUEENSLAND POLICE
STATEMENT OF WITNESS
Occurrence no.:
Statement
Statement of WILSON. Paul Athony
Nameof witness: WILSON. Paul Anthony
Date of birth: Age: Occupation: Assistant Commissionerof Police
Police officer taking statement
Name of police officer: Rank: Reg. no.:
Region/Command/Division: Station:
Statement:
Paul Anthony Wilson states:-
I am an Assistant Commissioner of Police (A/C) presently the 'officer in charge' (OIC) of the South Eastern Police Region (SER) with my office located in the Surfers Paradise Police Centre (SPPC), Ferny Avenue, Surfers Paradise Gold Coast.
I assumed command of SER on Monday the 22 September, 2008.
Prior to SER command, I was the Assistant Commissioner in charge of the Northern Police Region (NR), with my office located in Townsville. I assumed command of the NR on Monday the 12 March 2007. I joined the Queensland Police Department as a police cadet on 14 January 1974 and was inducted as a Constable on 13 December 1974. After my initial first year of service at Moorooka Police Station, I was transferred duty therein early January1976 to Mount Isa Police Station commencing in December1975.
I commenced my plain clothes career relieving at the Mount Isa Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) in September 1976 and continued to perform temporary plain clothes duties until my appointment as a permanent plain clothes constable in 1979. Whilst stationed at the Mount Isa CIB I performed all duties associated with a very busy provisional city CIB. In December 1979 I was transferred to the then Brisbane Metropolitan CIB.
In January 1980 I commenced duty at the Homicide Squad and in January 1981 I commenced duty at the Break and Enter Squad. In December 1981 I was transferred to the Redcliffe Police District and until December I982 I performed detective's duties at the Redcliffe and Caboolture CIB's.
In 1982 I was transferred to the Proserpine CIB in the Mackay Police District, this being a one person CIB and I commenced duties at Proserpine in January 1983
This position was upgraded to Detective Sergeant in 1985 and I was successful in obtaining the position and commenced duties as the Sergeant Detective OIC I early 1986 at Whitsunday CIB (renamed Proserpine).
At the time of my promotion to Detective First Class in early 1991 as the OIC Mackay District CIB(which includes Whitsunday-Proserpine), the Whitsunday CIB had increased from 2 to 4 full time detectives. As the OIC of the Mackay District CIB, I was in charge of the detectives in MacKay city-both CIB and then JAB and district intelligence officers. I was also charge' of the detectives at Sarina, Moranbah, Bowen and Whitsunday.
ln December 1991 I was promoted to Detective Senior Sergeant and took command of the Sunshine Coast District CIB in the Sunshine Coast Police District. My office was at Maroochydore District Headquarters and I was in charge of the detectives at Noosa, Maroochydore, Nambour, Kawana, Caloundra, Landsborough and initially Caboolture. In early 1995 I was promoted to Inspector -North Region duty as a Regional duty officer (Inspector) in the Metropolitan Police Division within the MNR.
In April 1995 I commenced as a Regional duty officer (Inspector) in the Metropolitan (MNR) and later that year I commenced as the project officer for the Assistant duty as the Project (MNR) and later that I commenced as the Divisional Commander in the Valley ‘in charge’ of the Fortitude Valley Police Division within the MNR.
I remained in that position until early 2002 when I was promoted to Superintendant District Officer (DO) North Brisbane Police District (NBD0)- MNR.
As the District Officer of the North Brisbane District (DONBD) my office was at the Boondall police complex and I remained Command of Crime Operations at State Coordinator Operations promoted to Detective Chief Superintendent in this position until I was promoted to State Commission of Organised Crime (SCOC) position in 2005.
I remained at the State Crime Operations Command (SCOC) until taking up this position in early 2007.
In summary, my 36 year policing career to date has been as a detective, district officer, operations coordinator and regional assistant commissioner. I have been stationed at 6 provisional city CIB's, been the OIC of 3, major squads within the then metropolitan CIB, operations coordinator-detective in charge of State Crime Operations Command, District Officer at Fortitude Valley and North Brisbane and Regional Assistant Commissioner 'in charge' of NR and SER police regions. I have successfully completed all internal QPS police studies for promotion and appointment to these positions and ranks. I have also successfully completed external tertiary studies whilst performing these duties throughout the State.
The SER has three Police Districts and a Regional Command providing community policing to the local governments of Gold Coast, Logan and Scenic Rim. The geographical area is from the Queensland/New South Wales border to Eight Miles Plains in the north and west of Beaudesert towards Boonah in the Ipswich Police District SR.
Please find attached the organisational charts and maps for the SER:
ANNEXURE 1
The SER has a total staff of 1736-1442 swom officers and 294 staff members.
Regional Command - 159 sworn staff and 83 staff members.
Gold Coast District- 632 sworn staff and 107 staffmembers.
Logan District - 473 sworn staff and 88 staff members.
Coomera District- 178 sworn staff and 16 staff members.
As the Assistant Commissioner in charge of SER I am responsible for planning, organising, administering, coordinating and controlling all activities within SER within the guidelines established by the Services strategic plan. I am also responsible for the provision of effective law enforcement within SER consistent, with the objectives and polices of the QPS QPS.
Yearly budget for salaries are:
I currently have an annual budget of $136.9m.
2009 -$110m
2008- $94.25m ,
I had not been prior to taking up duties as the Assistant Commissioner SER on the 22 September 2008, in the SER during my career, but I had conducted a number of criminal investigations that involved investigations in both the Logan and Gold Coast police districts. As the Detective Chief for the SCOC from 2005 to early 2007 I was responsible as Operations Coordinator Superintendent (OCS) for major crime within the State, I also directed investigations that occurred in the Gold Coast during this period look into all organised viewing of police district investigations that occurred in the Gold Coast
a number of these from NR to SER,
When Commissioner Atkinson advised me of my reassignment to the CMC, (CMC) (in publication confidence, Enhancing obtain a copy of the Crime and Misconduct Commission confidence)- integrity in the Police Service (April 2008), which I did and duly read. I also met with the CMC Queensland. We discussed Felix Grayson the then A/C attached Assistant Commissioner QPS by the CMC authorised, had been Project Grayson which was now code named Grinspoon, Project Castella inform me of certain aspects to confidentially of Project Grinspoon.
A/C Grayson had previously been the Detective Chief Superintendentat of the CMC when I was the Detective Chief Superintendentat SCOC and we jointly overviewed some investigations into organised and major crime. In July 2009 NC Grayson retired and A/C Peter Barron commenced as the QPS NC at the CMC. Barron continued to confidentially brief me on Project Grinspoon and at 7.30arn Sunday 3l January 2010 A/C Barron briefed me on the visitations by the CMC at three Gold Coast police establishments and two private residences,
A/C Grayson had previously been the Detective Chief Superintendentat of the CMC when I was the Detective Chief Superintendentat of SCOC and we jointly overviewed some investigations into organised and major crime.
In July 2009 NC Grayson retired and A/C Peter Barron cofirmenced as the QPS NC at the CMC. Barron continued to confidentially brief me on Project Grinspoon and at 7.30arn Sunday 3l January 2010 A/C Barron briefed me on the visitations by the CM at three Gold Coast police establishments and two private residences,
Operations Tesco had commenced.
Upon receipt of that advice from A/C Barron I immediately returned to duty and took up the CMC investigators at the SPPC and directed that all necessary assistance be given. I also took up the Gold Coast Police District Officer Superintendent Jim Keogh, and we visited the Surfers Paradise Police Station and the Burleigh Heads Police Station where the detectives from the Gold Coast District Southern Investigation Group (SIG) operate from. In the months since these visitations in January 2010 my staff and I have fully cooperated with the CMC during the closed hearings concerning Operations Tesco.
Just prior to 2008 and since taking up command of SER on 22 September, 2008 as a result of confidential personal knowledge regional and district briefings I commenced a number of initiatives personal briefings, regional and district briefings I commenced particular risk Gold Coast police district operationally, prepare the Region in the identiff, and enhance to the very busy day to day and financial management, media and ethical practices. As well as attending of the region and the upcoming annual major public events my first major project was the operations creating of the new Coomera Police District which had been in planning for 5 years.
In October 2008 I directed to review the existing proposed Coomera District Plan and developed an entire new plan by the Board of Management and on time and approved
The new QPS plan was developed in January 2009 -on the 7 November the new Coomera police district commenced
After taking command of SER in conjunction with my management team I commenced to implement a Number of initiatives and key personnel appointments:
Regional
Five new SER senior management positions for detectives
One (1) Detective Superintendent,
two (2) Gold Coast District, one (1) Logan
Crime Coordinator(RCC), three (3) Detective Inspectors,
District and one (1) Detective Senior Sergeant for Coomera District.
These appointments have been vital to achieving the changes required in the respective plain clothes policing area.
A Regional Media Management Plan implemented to negate allegations of favouritism in the Gold Coast District.
Please find attached SER media management policy:
ANNEXURE 2
Strategic Ciminal Intelligence assessment of the Gold Coast District has been completed and is subject to regular review.
New crime investigative partnerships have been developed with State Crime Operations Command, CMC, Australian Federal Police, New South Wales Police and ACC. To date these new crime investigative partnerships had been achieving excellent results.
Decentralising Gold Coast District Criminal Investigation Branch away from the current Southern Investigative Group (Burleigh Heads) and Northern Investigative Group (Surfers Paradise) was commenced. Detectives are now located at Coolangatta, Broadbeach, Southport and Runaway Bay police stations as well.
A review of the current organisational structures and investigative practices within the Gold Coast police district was completed July 2010 -Project ABEO.
Review approved by Commissioner in May 2009-
In November 2009 the new Coomera Police District commenced operation within the SER.
The establishment of the Coomera District did impact upon the Gold CoastCIB/CPru due to decentralisation of staff into this new district.
A review of the Gold Coast CIB and CPIU risk management revealed that there were low numbers of the following processes, covert operations, registered police human sources (informants) as well as applications for confiscations of profits from crime.
A review of the SER Risk Management systems identified a need for the implementation of new policy associated with district risk management within the Region.
Please find attached the SER policy - management systems:
ANNEXURE 3
A review of SER Financial Management systems was conducted resulting in the commencement of new regional/district financial management polices and processes for the 20l0-11 financial year.
Please find attached the SER policy - financial management systems:
ANNEXURE 4
Dangerous Liaisons,
A report arising from a CMC investigations into allegations of police misconduct (Operation Capri) - July 2009 resulted in specific QPS Dangerous Liaisons Training and this commenced in SER in December 2009 and I personally opened and attended the last session at the Surfers Paradise Police Station.
During 2009 and 2010 I authorised the purchase of a large number of wireless computer connections so key supervising officers could have access to 2417 police occurrences. This access to the data base to supervise has been extremely popular amongst all regional supervisors as it allows them to access 2417 QPS activities remotely.
Crime and Misconduct Commission,
On Monday l1th April 2010 Mr Moynihan AO the Chairperson, Management QC and senior CMC staff visited the Surfers Paradise Police Station for a discussion with local police and toured the station
Commissioner Atkinson also attended. Afterwards Mr Moynihan, Commissioner Atkinson and senior CMC staff attended my office at the SPPC and received a lengthy information from me on a range of policing issues in SER, particularly the Gold Coast concerning operation Tesco. Other senior officers present who assisted were Chief Superintendent Holland, Superintendent Keogh and Inspector Haslam.
Please find attached the Agenda and PowerPoint presentation- CMC Chairpersons visit to SER on 19April2010
ANNEXURE 5
A new SER Plain Clothes Occurrence Sheet System was introduced in June 2010. This system delivers the ability to provide a greater accountability, enabling instant 24hr risk management of the occurrences, the ability to provide a greater accountability, enabling instant24hr risk management of occurrences, the ability to automatically generate monthly work performance sheets and incorporates a record of management and search capability. TheRegional IT Manager has played a very valuable role inDeveloping this system and others.
Please find attached the SER plain clothes occurrence sheet system:
ANNEXURE 6 ;
During 2009 the Plain Clothes Development Program was introduced throughout the Region in all plain clothes units. The RCC and District Detective Inspectors have played a very valuable role in developing this package.
Please find attached the SER plain clothes development program:
AI\NEXURE 7 :
During 2009 a Local Area Performance Review was introduced in SER for all Officers in Charge of stations and establishments. Chief Superintendent Hollands-Operations Coordinator of SER has been Responsible for the development and implementation of this performance review which has been very well received by OIC's andDO's in SER.
ANNEXURE 8 :
Training packages have been developed with the aim of 'enhancing integrity'. These packages are tailored for specific groups - Constables, Senior Constables, Sergeants and Senior Sergeants also including all plain clothes staff. Training will be delivered by local Commissioned Officers -Inspectors and will be compulsory throughout the Region commencing in July 2010. There have been a number of voluntary development days to date where 'enhancing integrity' was discussed with Senior Sergeants, and Chief Superintendent Hollands, SER Regional Educationand Training, SER PPM, RCC, District Constables
Projects
Inspectors, Inspectors, Detectives, District Sergeants, Senior Sergeants, Detectives Inspectors, RIO, Regional Detectives Officers have all played a very valuable role in developing these programs.
Please find attached 8 SER development of workshops programs for for plain clothes Senior Sergeants, Senior Sergeants, Senior Constables and Constables, including specifically for plain clothes personnel:
ANNEXURE9-16
Additionally, since the CMC visitations of 31 January 2010, I have personally addressed staff personnel within the South Eastern Region, in relation to the issues of integrity and operational professionalism usually were conducted over a 2 year period. In this regard I have conducted these sessions with these members at District and Divisional Management Team meetings..
Divisional Management Team Meetings.
The following strategies and recommendations have also been implemented at Surfers Paradise Police Station: Higher level of supervision on the shifts occurring on Friday and Saturdaynights, an Inspector on rotation from District and Regional Office has been positioned within the Surfers Paradise Police Station on a 2200-0600hrs shift; this shift time was identified as a high risk period.
In July 2010 I recommended to the Commissioner that new extra Senior Sergeants be appointed to Surfers Paradise Police Station as a higher level of supervision on a 24hr basis. The Commissioner approved and announced 5 new extra duty Senior Sergeants for Surfers Paradise Police Station on 26 August 2010.
A proactive strategy for the transfer/secondment of staff attached to Surfers Paradise Police Station into other Gold Coast and Coomera stations due to operational fatigue or excessive complaint history has been approved. This new system was approved by QPS HR/IR and Deputy Commissioner (Regional Operations) and commenced in August 2010 (there already have been some secondments occurring) has played a very valuable role in developing this policy and others.
Please find attached the SER policy on the transfer/secondment of staff out of Surfers Paradise Police Station:
ANNEXURE 17
The installation of an additional six (6) CCTV cameras within the Surfers Paradise Police Station
This now brings the total number of CCTV to twenty-six (26) cameras has occurred.
Are there ways that officers can avoid their supervisor knowing where they are at a given time? How is this risk managed?
Yes - without GPS tracking and if an officer tells his supervisor lies or misinformation the officer can hide for a short period - then shift inspections and welfare become involved so in most cases it can only occur for a short periods unless the supervisor is part of the misconduct.
The issue is managed by duty Sgt Stn, DDO, RDO and Comco at POC - by having inspections, welfare checks, shift and patrol objective for each shift, briefings and debriefings at the start and conclusion of shift.
In addition, the issue is managed through inspection of patrol logs, diaries and work performance sheets.
Have instances of the promotion of officers from a Gold Coast position to a supervisory position on the process is on 'merit'. Never too many bad referee reports due to policy of disclosure. Yes and no depends on the officer.
Selections
Gold Coast District traditionally does not get too many applications from outsiders. Often new officers, especially supervisors, find the lack of local knowledge hard to start with and this combined with the very busy work demands does have problems.
Personally I believe in 'new blood' and supervisors should be transferred to a District. There they can be moved to a number of stationsin which to progress career in a cluster so they are not staying at Surfers Paradise for 20+years.
E.G. Married officer in Brisbane with family, take wife and children to Gold Coast? It just doesn't happen. 7-8 regions/commands
Gold Coast made for less effective supervision? If yes how can this issue be addressed?
Issue can be addressed by greater supervision of supervisors by senior management. Management have to lead by example. Officer/supervisors need to be totally accountable.T here is urgent need to continue to rotate new Inspectors into SER. Accommodation is a big problem.
What role do supervisors have in changing the attitudes of staff to issues such as blue light taxis?
Critical, as they set the standard. Supervisor is the gatekeeper and leader of what happens locally on the shift and has great influence on younger officers. If a supervisor doesn't know what's happening in their division, they should be given a please explain? If they continue to enforce the policy it will work.
E.G. GCD CIB SIG supervisors enforced new policy of no 'blue light taxis', except one officer didn't accept new policy and tried to arrange a 'blue Iight Taxi' with a negative result.
There was a whole change in the attitude of the detectives.The fellow detective was reported and immediately transferred out. Excellent outcome for CIB!
If some officers on the Gold Coast are engaging in inappropriate behaviours and setting a poor example for junior staff, will their continued presence on the Gold Coast erode morale and public confidence
Yes- police morale presently is low in certain ways due to the uncertainty of the current lengthy process by CMC & QPS together with the exaggerated media coverage and the apparent small numbers of of discipline offences/misconduct/breach detected.
BUT operational performance, arrest rate, sick leave and over all community policing is excellent as there are still 250 persons per day appearing in the Southport MagistratesCourt.
There are still high numbers of 'complaints against police', thus large number of internal investigations for local supervisors to do. Surfers Paradise is a very busy station normally, high number of public arrests and complaints against police, but management at all levels has performed during the past 10-12 months and lead by example,
Public confidence on Gold Coast is traditionally strong towards police, mainly due to the demographics it's a credit to all that they are still performing at such a high level with good morale. Both team and behaviour have been greatly influenced during this period.
Public confidence on Gold Coast is traditionally strong towards police, mainly due to the demographics of the population, but in my opinion the actions of senior management and supervisors are paramount at the present time, the community will be look towards us/them for the way forward from this.
ASSOCIATIONS INAPPROPRIATE
The Commission has evidence that an Outlaw Motorcycle Gang has been extorting money from night clubs on the Gold Coast.
If police are socialising in these clubs and greeting and being friendly with members of these gangs publicly, does it reduce the likelihood of the public trusting police with information to combat the criminal activity of such groups?
Yes this type of inappropriate behaviour that have been developed by the Gold Coast QPS
(SCOC Biki and the new crime partnerships Force Hydra Squad)
into OMCG.operations some has been very successful & SERCIB's there Coast the Detectives will ensure that this behaviour doesn't reoccur. It is my opinion because of their covert nature that peer group pressure amongst public give very little information about OMCG's
The general 'scare factor' traditionally they create on the community, but with the introduction of TI and Anti bike powers and even more discrete covert, non confrontational the actions are becoming there public profile of OMCG's club legislation, are becoming in order. Whilst they are still very active in the crime scene, in the unlawful activities, it isn't any thing like it was five years ago on the Gold Coast.
GIFTS AND BENEFITS
That guidance is given to the officers of the South Eastern Region in relation to the receipt of gifts or benefits?
The QPS policy on receiving and giving of gifts and benefits - QPS Financial Management Practice Manual Manual, Section 10.5 is explained during all recently developed leadership workshops.
Is it acceptable under any circumstances for police officers to receive free drinks because they are police officers?
Night
In my view, not under any circumstances.
Locally I have personally addressed the Surfers Paradise Club Association and requested that they do not give free entry or free drinks to police officers at any time on or off duty. The Association accepted my adviceand agreed to report all maters of this nature to senior police.
This year and last year there have been a number of incidents where clubs have reported police (visitors/interstate to Gold Coast) for demanding free entry and drinks at Surfers Paradise Night Clubs.
These officers were charged by local police.
CULTURE
Please outline what strategies and initiatives have been undertaken in your region as a result of Operation Tesco?
As per the contents of my statement and a numberof initiatives listed in the annexures.
What issues are the strategies designed to address? And why do you believe that the strategies will be effective in addressing the issues?
As per the leamings in the Workshop material, the material has been developed locally by respected Senior Police Officers, delivered by them with a strong leadership commitment to change. As such it will have a greater effect than if out sourced. Credibility is very important when effecting change with operational Senior Police Management including myself are in process, and this in my opinion, has this.
Playing a strong active role and the desire of all local police to improve and there have been several good examples'
IN THE MATTER OF;
Operation Tesco
(Justiceof the Peace(Qual.)/Commissioner for Declarations's signature)
(Signatureof police officer preparing statement)
The crooked Charters Towers cops who escaped the Fitzgerald Inquiry
The crooked Charters Towers cops who escaped the Fitzgerald Inquiry
The disappearance of a lone hitch-hiker on the outskirts of Townsville in 1982 has led to the uncovering of one of Australia’s greatest rogue cops. Merv Henry Stevenson is an ex-stock squad cop and former Inspector of Police in Townsville. He emerged as the great untouchable from the far-reaching Fitzgerald inquiry.
On Wednesday, November 3rd 1982, a twenty year old man from Perth was on the trip of a lifetime around Australia when he mysteriously vanished. Tony Jones had no more than a few dollars on him when he rang his family in Perth from Townsville to organise a rendezvous with his brother Tim who was waiting for him 900km away in Mt Isa. They were meant to meet up and continue on to Perth, Tony hitching, Tim riding his push bike. Tony was never heard from again. His bank account was untouched and a dole cheque due a couple of days later was never collected.
With the police showing little interest in the matter, members of Tony Jones’s family flew to Townsville and so began one of the most publicized missing persons cases in Queensland, a case that has brought a tremendous amount of shame on the Townsville Police Force for their ineptitude at almost every turn in the ensuing 30 years. The family have been instrumental in pushing for a National Missing Persons Database, Missing Persons Week, and a number of other significant reforms.
They never stopped searching for answers and along the way appear to have uncovered a chapter of police corruption that is noteworthy as much for escaping the notice of the Fitzgerald Report as it is for the scale of its corruption.
A young firebrand investigative reporter, now a high-profile ABC presenter in Brisbane, exposed the sinister workings of a group of stock squad cops that were known as the Crooked Crooked Cattle Company, and in particular a man by the name of Merv Henry Stevenson, a man whose name has been mention in parliament by the likes of Bob Katter jnr and former premier Wayne Goss.
In 1992 on the 10th anniversary of the disappearance of Tony Jones, Perth private investigator Mick Buckley travelled to Townsville to follow-up a lead that the police had not only failed to follow-up on, but that had only been made known to the family some 7 years after the police became aware of it. Some years later the coroner was highly critical of Det. Chris Lill for failing to pursue this critical lead. He stopped short of calling it a cover up.
The lead came from a witness who believed he was drinking with the missing hitchhiker who entered the Rising Sun Hotel in Townsville with a man who had picked him up earlier and who suggested they get a meal there before driving to the next town, Charters Towers, to stop the night before going on to Mt Isa the next day.
The younger man sat next to the witness and said his name was Tony and that he was hitching out to Mt Isa to meet his brother before heading on to Perth were his family lived. The witness later saw a photograph of Tony Jones and was certain that this was the person he spoke to that day.
The man who entered with Tony was described as being neatly dressed like a station owner visiting the city, and his vehicle was described as a white or light grey Toyota ute with two 44 gallon drums tied in the back. The witness was able to remember this man’s appearance in great detail and provided Det. Lill with a great deal of information over the phone, even though it was another six months before Lill bothered to get him to make a signed written statement.
Private investigator Mick Buckley arrived in Townsville in 1992 after arranging with Lill for a police artist to draw up a sketch of the man the witness saw with Tony at the Rising Sun Hotel.
The following events took place.
Det Lill faxed the sketch and details to all police stations in the region. He called the Charters Towers station (137 km west of Townsville) to find out why they had not responded. They thought it was a joke. “You’ve sent us a drawing and description of Merv Stevenson!” Lill’s jaw dropped. “Jesus, you’re bloody right”.
The next morning Buckley arrived at the ABC radio station in Townsville to be interview by John Nutting. He was greeted by a man named Steve who asked him how the search was going. Buckley mentioned that he was chasing a guy name Merv Stevenson at which moment Steve excused himself. He picked up a phone on the reception desk and spoke to John Nutting in the studio. “Guess who they think it is?”. “Merv Henry Stevenson” came the reply without a moment’s hesitation.
After the radio interview Steve invited Mick Buckley back to his home nearby. The dining table was piled a foot high with documents and every wall was covered with aerial maps, title deeds and flow charts.
Steve went on to explain that he had been investigating Merv Stevenson for some time, along with other members of the so-called Crooked Creek Cattle Company.
Over a ten year period, pretty much the decade preceding the disappearance of the Perth hitchhiker, there were 10 mysterious suicides by associates of Merv Stevenson. Steve pointed at property lines on maps and at title deeds and other documents, and explained that each mysterious suicide resulted in money or property falling into the hands of Merv Stevenson. One of the those suicides was that of his defacto wife who shot herself in the head – twice.
As Steve described it, Det Warren Hansen, who was later to become Superintendent at Townsville, went to visit Stevenson to discuss the matter of his defacto wife who was dead with two bullets in her skull. In Steve’s words, they had a cup of tea and Hansen signed the death certificate – no suspicious circumstances.
He went on to say that Stevenson was part of the so-called Crooked Creek Cattle Company comprised of Charters Towers stock squad cops who were known to be involved in cattle duffing on a grand scale. There was the suggestion of drug dealing and other crimes. The mayor of Charters Towers at the time was involved in defrauding pensioners of antiques and other property.
It appears that a number of people entrusted to look after the interests of the citizens of Charters Towers were more intent on looking after their own interests – and acting with impunity it seems.
Let’s get back to the case of Tony Jones, missing for ten years at that point. It may appear to be something of a major breakthrough that an officer from his own station had nominated Stevenson as resembling the sketch of the man seen with Jones just hours before he disappeared. It was not just the resemblance to the sketch either, it was everything that the witness had described, his manner of dress, the sun scars on his forearms, the low crown hat, and his vehicle, including his habit of tying two drums to the rear, not just a single drum that would suffice most people. Remember the jaw dropping response from Lill when he realised that this was in fact a stunning likeness to Merv Henry Stevenson?
Despite front page headlines in the Townsville Bulletin stating that an ex-cop was a suspect in disappearance of Tony Jones, this line of enquiry was never pursued by the police.
In fact, Stevenson’s good mate Det Warren Hansen was quoted at saying at that time that the best lead that they had was a reported sighting of Jones nearly two weeks after his last phone call home on November 3, 1982.
A coronial inquest in 2001 failed to call Warren Hansen to give evidence despite him being initially in charge of the case and later Superintendent overseeing the case. The coroner should have found that Hansen’s statement to be nothing less than a cover up. Here’s why.
In the weeks following Nov 3,1982, there were several reported sightings of Tony Jones. These were confusing to his family, firstly because it appeared that the man witnesses described was travelling back away from Mt Isa towards Townsville, and secondly, it just made no sense at all that he would still be around and not contact them and not touch his bank account. His last known withdrawals were of around $10 on each of the two days prior to his last call home, suggesting he had no more than a couple of dollars on him on Nov 3rd.
What the family were later to discover was that Tony had shaved off a full beard just two days before arriving in Townsville on November 3. They made sure that each of the witnesses saw a photo of Tony without his beard and with features much clearer than the one that was being circulated by the media which showed him with a full beard. Each of the witnesses were quick to change to their minds upon seeing the photo. Not only did the man they saw have a beard but his features were much darker, more European looking. Later they were able to confirm that the man the witnesses had all seen was in fact an Italian man travelling in the opposite direction.
Hansen knew that there was no validity to these sightings, it was reflected in the police running sheet and it was described in the book Searching for Tony several years earlier.
For Jones to still be alive two weeks later and to not have touched his account or contacted his family, meant in fact that there was no reason to think he was not still alive today. It was a preposterous statement and its only purpose was to deflect suspicion of his old mate Merv with the suicidal missus with the two lumps of lead in her head.
How has Merv Henry Stevenson escaped investigation all these years?
Stevenson died in 2001. He was never investigated over the disappearance and suspected murder of Tony Jones.
What is more remarkable is that he has never convicted, or even properly investigated, for crimes that seem to be common knowledge in his part of the world. A journalist with an impeccable reputation investigated this man and found compelling evidence that he may have committed crimes of the most serious order. This was not hearsay or suspicion, these were paper trails and hard documents that showed that he was profiting nicely and often from otherwise healthy and sane people falling off the perch at the rate of one a year over a decade.
What’s more, this information was made public in the 1990s. If a man is accused by a radio station of murdering ten people, and he does not sue that station or that journalist, what are we left to think?
And if allegations are made such as those about Merv and the so-called Crooked Creek Cattle Company, and the police choose to turn a blind eye, what does that say about the culture of that police force?
It may well not have been Merv Stevenson that was seen at the Rising Sun Hotel with Tony Jones before his suspected murder, but given that there are no other names, no other leads in that long-standing case, why was he not investigated?
Stevenson is dead, so is his mate Warren Hansen. But who else from the Crooked Creek Cattle Company is still alive? Who remains in the police force as corrupt influences?
Tony Fitzgerald conceded that his inquiry would not catch every crooked cop, and that some that they did investigate were less guilty than some that they chose not to. I believe the crooked cops in Charters Towers, and doubtless in others towns in that region, operated with impunity during the 70s and 80′s, possibly still. There is a code of silence that kept them under the radar. There was fear in the eyes of those who were interviewed about Stevenson during the Tony Jones case and clearly he had friends in Townsville to support him when he was nominated as a suspect in that case.
There is a second inquest underway in the Tony Jones case. Counsel Assisting, Mark Le Grand, formerly worked on the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Will he be the man to break the code of silence, or will he be yet another in a long line of officials and men of the law who have simply looked the other way?
Mervyn Henry Stevenson is surely one of the great untouchables, the crooked cop who laughed at the Fitzgerald inquiry, who laughed at Wayne Goss when he asked questions, and who cocooned himself with self-serving cops who learned much from him about pure rat cunning and stunning chutzpah.
Let’s hope that the second coronial inquest of Anthony John Jones, to be heard by Qld state coroner Michael Barnes on a date to be fixed, brings the notorious deeds of Merv Henry Stevenson to the attention of the public and perhaps to someone who cares enough to scratch a little deeper.
Mervyn Henry Stevenson served as a Queensland police officer from 1947 until 1982. He started as a bush cop and ended up as the superintendent in charge of the Townsville Police District, though his retirement years were tainted with the spectre of corruption
Renowned bushman
Described as "the last of the corned beef and damper coppers", Stevenson made a name for himself as a horseman, cattleman and bushman.[3]He gained notoriety in 1950 at the northern township of Coen for tracking down on horseback a group of 12 Aborigines wanted for questioning over the murder of an indigenous police boy.[4] In 1965 he was promoted to detective sergeant and named officer-in-charge of the CIB stock squad based in Charters Towers.[5]
Corruption charges
Following his retirement, Stevenson's reputation was tarnished by the publication of a confidential police report prepared by Inspector John Huey, an investigator who would later head a special task force of the Fitzgerald Inquiry.[6] Huey's report was tabled in Queensland Parliament on 18 September 1984 by Opposition police spokesman, Mr. Wayne Goss.[7] Goss told Parliament police investigations into cattle stealing offences in north Queensland resulted in recommendations that charges be laid against Stevenson. The report also recommended the reopening of investigations into the suspicious suicide of Detective Sergeant Jack Connor at Mareeba and various drug-related matters because statements made by Stevenson indicated that he had not properly investigated these matters to the benefit of a fellow officer.[8]
Goss criticized Police Commissioner Terry Lewis (a man who was subsequently indicted and jailed for his role in various police corruption scandals that emerged a few years later during the Fitzgerald Inquiry) for vetoing the recommendations of the report.[9] He asked Parliament why the proposed charges against Stevenson were treated as "internal" charges requiring the approval of the commissioner before charges could be laid.
"In any other case involving any ordinary citizen, once the police officer forms the view that he has sufficient evidence to charge he goes ahead and charges the person and the matter comes before the court", Goss said. "Not so in this case. At the highest level a special procedure was directed and this resulted in no charges being laid".[10]
Stevenson lamented the accusations, saying: "In my time, I recovered stolen cattle worth more than $700,000. I was in more than 2000 criminal or quasi-criminal investigations. And right at the end of my career, here I am accused of being a cattle thief".[11]
Friends in high places
High-level supporters of Stevenson lauded his accomplishments. Assistant Commissioner Bill McArthur, a former stock squad officer himself, said: "I will say I wish there were more young Stevensons…in the police force today. They are excellent men and outstanding stock squad investigators…true blue horsemen, bushmen and stockmen".[12] McArthur subsequently removed Inspector Huey from the Stevenson investigation and, in 1989, during the Fitzgerald Inquiry, was questioned as to whether his friendship with Stevenson was the reason the investigation was halted.[13]
Inspector John Huey testified before the Fitzgerald Inquiry on 14 June 1989 that Stevenson had stopped another officer making a confession about the death of officer Jack Connor at Mareeba, adding that he had not included full details about Stevenson in his report because he believed that Stevenson "had friends in high places".[14]
Crooked Creek Cattle Company
The cattle duffing racket of Stevenson and other north Queensland police was mentioned in the Australian House of Representatives in 2006 by the Federal Member for Kennedy, Bob Katter.[15] He referred to it as ‘the crooked creek cattle company’. He told parliament he had given evidence about it when he was a senior minister of the Queensland government. He also acknowledged the very courageous actions of ABC journalist Steve Austin, who exposed the situation. Stevenson allegedly made financial gains from the supposed suicides of 10 people connected with him, including his de facto wife who managed to shoot herself in the head with two bullets.[16]
Missing Person Link
In 1992 Townsville police published an identikit sketch of a person wanted for questioning in relation to the suspected murder of a young West Australian hitchhiker, Tony Jones, who disappeared without trace in 1982.[17] On the night of the disappearance, the suspect, believed to be involved in the cattle industry, was allegedly dining with Jones at the Rising Sun Hotel and planning to give him a lift to Charters Towers.[18] The Townsville Bulletin reported that the identikit sketch matched a “former policeman”,[19] whose identity was subsequently confirmed during the 2002 coronial inquest into Jones’s disappearance as being none other than Mervyn Henry Stevenson.[20][21]
Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame
Stevenson avoided prosecution and was eventually inducted into the Australian Stockman's Hall of Fame in 2001.[22] He died of cancer on 16 December 2001 and was farewelled by a police guard of honour at his funeral in Townsville.[23]
^"Identikit issued after 10 years", Courier Mail, 2 November 1992.
^"Identikit issued after 10 years", Courier Mail, 2 November 1992.
^"Former policeman matches description", Townsville Bulletin, 4 November 1992.
^^ Transcripts of inquest into the cause and circumstances surrounding the death of Anthony John Jones", Townsville Coroner's Court, Ref. no. 20022002 T20/JOW M/T TSV6356.
^Armistead, Jane, "Inquest into 30-year-old case gives hope",Townsville Bulletin, 3 November 2012.
^"Fitting farewell for bush policeman", Townsville Bulletin, 22 December 2001.
^"Fitting farewell for bush policeman", Townsville Bulletin, 22 December 2001.
Sep 23, 2009 - Unless of course your name is Senior Detective Paul Wilson Qld Police's finest & your stantioned at beautiful tropical Airlie beach Qld. Hanging ...
Jun 26, 2013 - The Police service is protecting him. It's only a very persistent victim that is giving hope of justice. A POLICE officer who assaulted an elderly ...
Jun 27, 2013 - A POLICE sergeant who shot dead a mentally ill man should be prosecuted for lying to the Police Integrity Commission about the incident, the ...
Dec 21, 2009 - Qld Police Officer Detective Paul Wilson was also officially working at the time. The attempted murder...Blog Archive. ▻ 2012 (2). ▻ January (2).
Officers broke law to solve crimes Allegedly misused "informant fund"
Full coverage in The Courier-Mail
A SCATHING report on alleged police misconduct has revealed how some officers were so desperate to solve crime, they resorted to unlawful measures.
The Courier-Mail reports evidence gathered during the Crime and Misconduct Commission's investigation, known as Operation Capri, shows how senior-ranking police allegedly disregarded policies and procedures to achieve an incredible 86 per cent clearance rate for armed robberies.
In numerous examples detailed in the 142-page Dangerous Liaisons report, police bent the rules to remove prisoners from custody with the aim of obtaining confessions and evidence.
Central to the investigation was the alleged misuse of an "informant fund" set up by the Australian Bankers Association as a reward for information leading to arrests. Although 77 payments were made out of the fund, only 33 complied with the procedures established by police and the ABA.
"Evidence gathered during the operation suggests that opportunistic officers exploited both a lack of accountability and of supervision to take personal advantage of the informant funds," the report said.
Some of the allegations raised in the report also suggested some police in the Armed Robbery Unit:
• Forged the signatures of informants.
• Knowingly furnished false documents.
• Falsely claimed payments had been made to informants.
• Misappropriated money from the informant funds.
• Fabricated audio recordings and written receipts as evidence payments had been made.
In one of the most stunning cover-ups, officers fabricated an audio tape as proof of payment to an informant.
Although they claimed the tape had been made in a Brisbane cafe during a meeting of two police officers and an informant, the CMC investigation found it was had been recorded in the police headquarters carpark using an officer "posing" as the informant.
Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said that, while the intentions of those police involved were honourable – to solve crime – their methods were undeniably improper.
"Later rather than admit what had occurred, there were disingenuous response and false statements, accompanied in some cases by attempts to cover up accounts which made a bad situation worse," he said.
"Police must work within the framework of lawful procedures, not around or outside them."
Corruption is endemic within Australia's police agencies, and certainly within the Australian Federal Police and New South Wales Police, which between them cover the Sydney airports. It also embraces crime commissions and other institutions charged with responsibility for police governance on behalf of the public.
During the three years of research for The Expendable Project, the team uncovered a staggering amount of evidence to substantiate this statement. This included police involvement in most types of serious crime, and even in one instance, alleged blackmail of a government minister. We were approached periodically by individuals who clearly feared for their own welfare.
To illustrate the significant scale of this problem, we have posted below a number of videos, which are freely available in the public domain. For further reading, we have also recommended some of the documents and reports which are posted in the Expendable Library.
PUBLIC DOMAIN VIDEOS
The following selection represents just a small sample of the videos, both amateur and professional, which are readily viewable on YouTube and other social video networks. They are in no particular order, but they do serve to exemplify how widely known the corruption actually is, particularly with respect to Sydney and its airports.
In addition, a series of more focused investigations and hearings have been undertaken. For example, the 2005 public hearing by the Police Integrity Commission was documented in The COBALT Report:
This was particularly relevant to The Expendable Project, not only because the locale of the prime subject, Detective Sergeant Christopher John Laycock, included Sydney Airport, but because at least one of his close associates has been directly accused of owning the marijuana which was found in Schapelle Corby's boogie board bag.
But Laycock has never stood before a court on any of the matters referred to in the report. Equally staggering, the Australian media appears to have collectively forgotten about the revelations detailed within, which are supplemented by a number of additional external allegations. For further information view The Laycock Blog.
Another high profile case is that of former Assistant Director of the NSW Crime Commission, Mark Standen, who as an ex-AFP officer, had worked in the same office as AFP Commissioner Michael Keelty, in Sydney
Standen was found guilty of conspiring to import $120 million of pre-cursor drugs in 2011. For further information, view The Standen Blog.
ONGOING CORRUPTION
Despite the impression created by the enquiries cited above, the issue of serious corruption within Australian police agencies, and the disturbing nature of the multiple bodies which purport to enforce integrity, has never been fundamentally addressed by any Australian government.
The conclusion, that Australia is as indifferent to the chronic corruption within its police services, as it is to the abuse of the human rights of its citizens, is hard to avoid.
Schapelle Corby is a direct victim of this malaise.
Ind. man with 47 guns arrested after school threat Associated Press
CEDAR LAKE, Ind. (AP) — A northern Indiana man who allegedly threatened to "kill as many people as he could" at an elementary school near his home was arrested by officers who later found 47 guns and ammunition hidden throughout his home.
Von. I. Meyer, 60, of Cedar Lake, was arrested Saturday after prosecutors filed formal charges of felony intimidation, domestic battery and resisting law enforcement against him. He was being held Sunday without bond at the Lake County Jail, pending an initial hearing on the charges, police said in a statement.
Cedar Lake Police officers were called to Meyer's home early Friday after he allegedly threatened to set his wife on fire once she fell asleep, the statement said.
Meyer also threatened to enter nearby Jane Ball Elementary School "and kill as many people as he could before police could stop him," the statement said. Meyer's home is less than 1,000 feet from the school and linked to it by trails and paths through a wooded area, police said.
Police said in the statement that they notified school officials and boosted security at all area schools Friday — the same day 26 people, including 20 students, were shot and killed at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
On Saturday, officers served warrants at Meyer's home and arrested him. The statement said police had learned that Meyer kept many weapons in his older, two-story home and "is a known member of the Invaders Motorcycle Gang."
Officers searched the home, finding 47 guns and ammunition worth more than $100,000 hidden throughout the home. Many of the weapons were collector's guns.
Cedar Lake is about 45 miles southeast of Chicago.
A dispatcher with Cedar Lake Police said that the police chief was not available for interviews until Monday.
Lake County police spokeswoman Patti Van Til said Sunday that a SWAT team from the department assisted in serving Saturday's warrants.
Mark Standen, former assistant director of the NSW Crime Commission, arrives for hearing at the Downing Centre Court in Sydney. Picture: Frank Violi Source: The Daily Telegraph
Former top cop found guilty of three charges
Had pleaded not guilty to drug conspiracy
Follows trial that lasted almost five months
ONE of the nation's most powerful investigators has been found guilty of plotting to import drugs worth more than $120 million.
Mark William Standen remained unmoved as the jury of 11 handed down their guilty verdicts to three charges today, after a Supreme Court trial lasting almost five months.
The former assistant director of the New South Wales Crime Commission had pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to import and supply more than 300kg of the drug pseudoephedrine, used to make speed and ice.
Standen, 54, also denied using his role as a senior detective to pervert the course of justice.
The father-of-four spent 25 days in the witness box during his trial in a bid to explain the hundreds of hours of covert evidence gathered in a lengthy investigation.
He admitted discussing an "unlawful scenario" with his business partner and friend Bakhos "Bill" Jalalaty, that would involve the importation of drugs in a shipment of rice - but he never believed his buddy was serious.
However he also admitted telling plenty of lies - especially to AFP investigators during a four-hour interview done shortly after his arrest on June 2, 2008.
The Crown alleged Standen's relationship with British-born informant James Henry Kinch, became corrupt, leading to the pair joining with legitimate businessman Bakhos "Bill" Jalalaty to stage the daring operation.
The Crown claimed Standen, motivated by a "dire" financial state thanks to gambling and other debts, had agreed to help Kinch import the drugs for a significant slice of the profits.
Jalalaty's legitimate business, Crown Prosecutor Tim Game SC argued, provided an authentic "front" for the illegal drug operation.
The jury's verdict ended a trial that was originally estimated to last about two months - but instead went for close to five. The case was beset with delay, frustration and controversy, with jurors at one stage threatening mutiny.
In a letter to the trial judge and lawyers for both sides, the jurors detailed the heavy impact the trial was having on their lives, as it entered the 15th week - with no end in sight.
Standen, who has been in protective custody for the past three years, now faces life in jail.
Following a series of gangland killings of police informers, a former Federal Court Judge, Sir Edward Woodward, made the alarming comment that corruption in Victoria was at the worst level ever. His comments cannot be ignored: not only because they were made to the Criminal Bar Association, but because he was a former Royal Commissioner into the notorious Ships' Painters and Dockers Union.
Whatever the accuracy of his observation, there can be no doubt that in several states of Australia, there has been an alarming increase in police corruption which damages the hard-earned reputation of the Australian police forces.
What is not widely recognised, however, is the link between police corruption, organised crime and the drug trade.
The problem of corruption varies from country to country. Often it is due to factors such as a weak legal system; inadequate pay for public servants; and a lack of accountability and transparency in government.
For Australia and other Western countries where the rule of law is well entrenched and government agencies have well-established anti-corruption practices, it frequently appears in attempts by organised crime to subvert the police force Drug revenue
As the main revenue sources for organised crime are drugs and prostitution, these are frequently linked with police corruption.
The direct cost of drug-related crime is huge. A Parliamentary report last year said that drug crimes cost the country some $2.5 billion a year, although the effects extend far beyond the direct cost, in terms of lives destroyed, violence, and the undermining of public institutions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that illegal drugs - heroin, marijuana and designer drugs such as ecstasy - are the common link between Melbourne's gangland killings and police corruption, as Victoria's Police Deputy Commissioner, Peter Nancarrow, said recently.
The position in Victoria has been so bad that the Drug Squad was disbanded in 2001, but it has subsequently become even worse.
Apart from the gangland murder of people who offered to testify in court against corrupt police, others in anti-corruption units have been threatened by both organised crime and corrupt police.
Clearly, the illicit drug trade is intimately linked with both police corruption and organised crime. If drugs could be removed from the equation, the problems in both these areas would be substantially lessened.
The key problem in Australia is that public policy on illegal drugs is hopelessly confused, at a number of levels.
First, the links between organised crime, police corruption and drugs is obscured by the official policy of treating all forms of drug abuse (tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs) together.
This has been one of the central planks of the lobby which favours legalisation of drugs, on the Dutch model.
Australian governments have accepted this line, which finds its expression in terms such as "harm minimisation", a meaningless expression which actually means tolerance of the drug culture.
Yet there is very little in common between the problems of tobacco use, or even misuse of alcohol - the main "legal" drugs - and the illicit drug trade.
This confusion is perpetuated in the Federal Government's National Drug Strategy, which advocates a "harm minimisation" approach to both legal and illegal drugs, and views drug abuse as primarily a social and medical problem (which it clearly is with tobacco, at least), rather than a legal one (which is untrue, where heroin, marijuana and designer drugs are involved).
This approach was repeated in the recent House of Representatives report into drug abuse, Roads to Recovery, tabled in the House of Representatives in August, 2003.
Additionally, the legal approach to illegal drugs has been hopelessly compromised by policies of toleration pursued by various State governments. These include the legalisation of marijuana for "personal use" in some states, the widespread provision of free injecting kits for heroin addicts, legalised heroin injecting rooms, and the policy of giving heroin addicts access to methadone programs, without ensuring that they are heroin-free.
The result is that law enforcement programs are compromised by governments intent on accommodating the pro-drugs lobby. Additionally, police who lack clear guidelines to enforce an anti-drug policy, are subject to constant attempts to suborn them into accepting a share in the huge profits made by drug dealers, in other words, by organised crime.
If Australia is to deal with this problem, it will have to begin with a zero-tolerance policy towards illicit drugs, vigorous pursuit of drug traffickers, and forced rehabilitation of those convicted of illicit drug use, backed up by the power of imprisonment. Without this, it will be almost impossible to deal with the problems of organised crime and police corruption.
Peter Westmore is President of the National Civic Council
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Ken Lay says the number of leaked police documents found in a series of raids is enormous.
Victoria Police revealed earlier this week that files from its LEAP database were found at three properties, including one linked to an outlaw motorcycle gang.
A special task force has been set up to investigate the leak and one officer has been suspended without pay.
It has been described as one of the most significant leaks in the history of the organisation.
Chief Commissioner Lay told Fairfax Radio that 1,000 files and thousands of documents have been leaked.
"Each of those files may be made up of one, two or 10 pieces of paper. So there are up towards 10,000 of pieces of paper that we're working our way through now," he said.
Mr Lay says some of the people named in the files are police informers who are at risk of being hurt.
"The advice I had this morning was that there were two very high risk matters that we needed to nail very quickly and it would appear we have done that," he said.
"We just do what's called a risk assessment and we work our way through what the best way of keeping these people safe is."
Mr Lay says the anti-corruption agency IBAC has been consulted about the leak but police are controlling the investigation.
"IBAC aren't in a position to do that, with how they're structured, but how the process is protected is that IBAC watches this very closely," he said.
"We will be reporting to them on an almost weekly basis. We're probably in contact with them on a daily basis."
Mike has a background in political science, economics, history and finance, with a PhD examining the international political economy of corruption and organised crime. He is currently conducting research…
Richard Roxburgh played corrupt NSW Police detective Roger Rogerson in the ABC miniseries Blue Murder rne
I wrote this short piece (https://theconversation.com/good-cop-bad-cop-how- corrupt-police-work-with-drug-dealers-6271) last year on some ...
Shamed senior police officer Mark Standen is lead away from King St Supreme Court after being found guilty of attempting to import a massive haul of pseudoephedrine. AAP/
The Australia21 report on illicit drugs draws much-needed attention to many serious issues, including the major role played by corrupt police in drug distribution networks.
The role played by drugs in police corruption is complex, and bears consideration when evaluating the report and arguments for a change in policy.
The connection between the illegal drugs markets and police corruption is well known. Booms in illegal drug markets in the US in the 1990s, for example, corresponded with a rise in police corruption and violent misconduct.
Similar connections between drugs and police corruption are found in many countries, and Australia is no exception, as demonstrated by the recent conviction of Mark Standen.
Illegal regulation
There are two common situations in which officers abuse (or choose not to use) their power in such a way as to benefit from the drug trade, each of which is often rationalised as an attempt to at least do something about the problem of illicit drugs – a form of “illegal regulation”.
The first of these is the theft of drugs or money from drug dealers.
When police officers are tasked with policing the prohibition of illicit drugs, first-hand experience leads many to believe they are unable to eliminate the industry, or that the people they steal from are unlikely to be arrested or convicted.
In this context, police officers in the UK, the US and Australia have justified stealing from drug dealers as a kind of tax or charge – an attempt to try and make it harder for dealers to do business.
The second common kind of police corruption is “green-lighting”, whereby police agree to turn a blind eye to dealers or groups that adhere to certain rules (e.g. no violence, no selling drugs to children).
This often used with the professed intention of creating a level of control over the drugs trade. Anyone who has seen the ABC TV series Blue Murder) will be familiar with the events uncovered by the New South Wales Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Milloo Inquiry, which alleged that criminal Arthur “Neddy” Smith’s activities had been green-lit by officers including the former detective Roger Rogerson, and that police officers sometimes even assisted Smith in the commission of crimes.
Fans of US TV show The Wire will recall “Hamsterdam”, the free zone where drug dealing was allowed on the condition that the drugs or violence did not spill onto other streets.
The reality is less noble-minded or contained; in New South Wales, for example, green-lighting of different groups by different officers created increasingly organised territorially defined cartels, and did nothing to stop the growth of the drugs trade.
It’s all in the game
Apart from any rationalisation for their behaviour as having some kind of noble cause, officers in these situations also face substantial material incentives.
In the market for drugs the high levels of inelastic demand (particularly in the case of highly addictive substances) and high prices create an very lucrative industry, and officers involved in extorting or protecting dealers can make substantial sums doing so.
One New York police officer made ten times his annual salary in protection money from drug dealers – so much that he often forgot to collect his legitimate pay.
Tackling these problems requires considering the incentives that officers face to engage in corruption, not just weeding out the odd bad cop. Despite the persistence of “bad apple” explanations of police corruption, many officers who are found to be corrupt often began as officers with a good, clean record of successful work.
Draining the swamp
While there may, of course, be bad individuals, of greater concern is that all officers are working in a “bad barrel” or “bad orchard” which is itself a corrupting influence.
The fact, then, that more officers do not become entangled in such activity is a credit to their integrity.
Any policy response to the issues raised in the Australia21 report should take care to ensure it has a real effect on the market for drugs and that it makes it easier for such officers to maintain that integrity by considering the ramifications for police corruption.
Andrew James McCracken you are a total disgrace! How can the public of south Australia have any faith in a policeman that laughs at his own daughter about being abused by a known and convicted pedophile and the daughter he adopted was raped,threatened and abused for many years.....I am alleging that Andrew James McCracken is also directly linked to the cover up of the murder of my mother and fabricating evidence and charges on me in order to help conceal my mothers murder from ever being exposed! Mr McCracken is a lowlife and will be exposed for his disgraceful conduct..........
Smashing police corruption in South AustraliaWhy did Andrew McCracken allow the pedophile that abused his daughter to get off "Scott free" and nothing was ever done to bring the known and convicted pedophile to justice??? Doesn't make any sense does it.....15 January
Smashing police corruption in South AustraliaOne thing that does make sense is Andrew James McCracken is involved in disgraceful misconduct and the protection of pedophiles from exposure in our courts and being brought to justice for their sick,twisted, evil crimes aginst women and children.....a pedophile supporting fukwit with a curly tail!
News Weekly, June 5, 2004 Following a series of gangland killings of police informers, a former Federal Court Judge, Sir Edward Woodward, made the alarming comment that corruption in Victoria was at the worst level ever. His comments cannot be ignored: not only because they were made to the Criminal Bar Association, but because he was a former Royal Commissioner into the notorious Ships' Painters and Dockers Union.
Whatever the accuracy of his observation, there can be no doubt that in several states of Australia, there has been an alarming increase in police corruption which damages the hard-earned reputation of the Australian police forces.
What is not widely recognised, however, is the link between police corruption, organised crime and the drug trade.
The problem of corruption varies from country to country. Often it is due to factors such as a weak legal system; inadequate pay for public servants; and a lack of accountability and transparency in government.
For Australia and other Western countries where the rule of law is well entrenched and government agencies have well-established anti-corruption practices, it frequently appears in attempts by organised crime to subvert the police force.
Drug revenue
As the main revenue sources for organised crime are drugs and prostitution, these are frequently linked with police corruption.
The direct cost of drug-related crime is huge. A Parliamentary report last year said that drug crimes cost the country some $2.5 billion a year, although the effects extend far beyond the direct cost, in terms of lives destroyed, violence, and the undermining of public institutions.
It is not surprising, therefore, that illegal drugs - heroin, marijuana and designer drugs such as ecstasy - are the common link between Melbourne's gangland killings and police corruption, as Victoria's Police Deputy Commissioner, Peter Nancarrow, said recently.
The position in Victoria has been so bad that the Drug Squad was disbanded in 2001, but it has subsequently become even worse.
Apart from the gangland murder of people who offered to testify in court against corrupt police, others in anti-corruption units have been threatened by both organised crime and corrupt police.
Clearly, the illicit drug trade is intimately linked with both police corruption and organised crime. If drugs could be removed from the equation, the problems in both these areas would be substantially lessened.
The key problem in Australia is that public policy on illegal drugs is hopelessly confused, at a number of levels.
First, the links between organised crime, police corruption and drugs is obscured by the official policy of treating all forms of drug abuse (tobacco, alcohol and illegal drugs) together.
This has been one of the central planks of the lobby which favours legalisation of drugs, on the Dutch model.
Australian governments have accepted this line, which finds its expression in terms such as "harm minimisation", a meaningless expression which actually means tolerance of the drug culture.
Yet there is very little in common between the problems of tobacco use, or even misuse of alcohol - the main "legal" drugs - and the illicit drug trade.
This confusion is perpetuated in the Federal Government's National Drug Strategy, which advocates a "harm minimisation" approach to both legal and illegal drugs, and views drug abuse as primarily a social and medical problem (which it clearly is with tobacco, at least), rather than a legal one (which is untrue, where heroin, marijuana and designer drugs are involved).
This approach was repeated in the recent House of Representatives report into drug abuse, Roads to Recovery, tabled in the House of Representatives in August, 2003.
Additionally, the legal approach to illegal drugs has been hopelessly compromised by policies of toleration pursued by various State governments. These include the legalisation of marijuana for "personal use" in some states, the widespread provision of free injecting kits for heroin addicts, legalised heroin injecting rooms, and the policy of giving heroin addicts access to methadone programs, without ensuring that they are heroin-free.
The result is that law enforcement programs are compromised by governments intent on accommodating the pro-drugs lobby. Additionally, police who lack clear guidelines to enforce an anti-drug policy, are subject to constant attempts to suborn them into accepting a share in the huge profits made by drug dealers, in other words, by organised crime.
If Australia is to deal with this problem, it will have to begin with a zero-tolerance policy towards illicit drugs, vigorous pursuit of drug traffickers, and forced rehabilitation of those convicted of illicit drug use, backed up by the power of imprisonment. Without this, it will be almost impossible to deal with the problems of organised crime and police corruption.
Peter Westmore is President of the National Civic Council
The story behind the police investigation that brought down Mark Standen, one of Australia's top crime fighting law enforcement officers.
He was considered a crime busting untouchable, a man at the heart of the nation's war on drugs. He had access to the very best police intelligence on organised crime both here and overseas. But some time in the past decade Mark Standen turned bad.
"I was shocked. I was really shocked. But then I started to think in retrospect, yeah I can understand how it happened." Defence Barrister
On Thursday 11th August, after a five month trial, a jury found Mark Standen guilty of conspiring to import and supply 300 kilograms of pseudoephedrine, a chemical that could produce $60 million worth of "ice", or crystal meth. He was also found guilty of perverting the course of justice.
Now reporter Marian Wilkinson tells the story of Mark Standen's rise and fall. Using evidence from the court case, audio records of phone taps and police interview tapes, she tells how a top crime fighter crossed to the dark side and how police on three continents tracked him and brought him to justice.
It is a tale of greed, duplicity and betrayal that has forced Australia's law enforcement agencies to re-assess what they are doing and who they can trust. Others are calling for a Royal Commission into the scandal over concern that it is still not clear how far the corruption associated with Mark Standen's activities may have spread.
Presented by Kerry O'Brien, "Standen: The Inside Man" goes to air on Monday 15th August at 8.30pm on ABC1. It is replayed on Tuesday 16th August at 11.35pm. It can also be seen on ABC News 24 at 8.00pm Saturdays, ABC iview and at abc.net.au/4corners.
Court hears former top cop Mark Standen told 'many lies'
FORMER top cop Mark Standen had "lied without pause" in a bid to explain his criminality, giving jurors a version that was "entirely implausible", a court has heard.
Crown Prosecutor Tim Game SC has begun his closing address to the jury, who will next week begin deliberations in Standen's long-running trial.
The former NSW Crime Commission assistant director, who gave evidence in his own defence case for 16 days plus a further nine in cross-examination, is accused of conspiring to import drugs with two other men, including former informant James Kinch.
He denies three charges, and claims instead he was effectively humouring his businessman friend and alleged co-conspirator Bill Jalalaty who had a string of whacky ideas that never came to fruition.
In addressing the jury today, Mr Game said Standen had told "a series of lies - complex and interrelated lies" in trying to convince the jury he was not guilty.
"It's not a nice thing to say but the Crown case is that (Standen) lied without pause for 25 days and transparently so," Mr Game said.
"(He told) many, many, many demonstrable lies involving quite complicated ins and outs of evidence (which) can be exposed as lies."
Mr Game said the Crown submitted that Standen's evidence was "entirely implausible".
Standen had admitted in his evidence discussing with Jalalaty an "unlawful scenario" in which drugs could be imported in a shipment of rice - but he never believed his friend was serious.
Mr Game asked the jury to examine the details of Standen's version, and said they would find it untenable and unsubstantiated.
"There was no 'unlawful scenario'," he said.
"The Crown case is that Mr Standen was a persistent liar over a very substantial period of time."
Mr Game's address is expected to continue for a couple of days, before Standen's barrister Mark Ierace SC begins his closing.
Justice Bruce James is expected to sum up to the jury early next week.
Posted by Shadow Catcher
Meet our new Assistant Commissioners
"For the ABC the trial would go on for another decade..."
Click below to see Vidoe of ABC archives...od the Fitzgerald Inquiry in May 1987....
When the Queensland government announced what was to become the Fitzgerald Inquiry in May 1987, I was anxious rather than elated. Four Corners had laboured for many months to demonstrate a link between organised crime and senior police. My expectation was a government orchestrated whitewash rather than the energetic purging of forces that had corrupted policing and politics. When the ABC was given standing before the Commission I was more comforted. Witnesses we relied upon became important to the Inquiry. For the ABC the trial would go on for another decade, by which time important reforms were already reaching beyond Queensland...
Media reports of police involvement in organised crime and the vice industry were the catalyst for Queensland's Commission of Inquiry into Possible Illegal Activities and Associated Police Misconduct, better known as the Fitzgerald Inquiry. The two-year inquiry revealed systemic corruption leading all the way to the State's premier Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. It produced more than 120 prosecutions, the deposition of Bjelke-Petersen, the suspension and imprisonment of Police Commissioner Terence Lewis and the ultimate demise of the National Party Government in Queensland after 32 years of continuous rule. What made the Fitzgerald Inquiry effective were the powers granted to the investigator and the broad terms of reference. Innovations such as indemnity from prosecution for key witnesses set a new pattern for inquiries in Australia. Royal commissions into policing were subsequently held in New South Wales and Western Australia but the extent of political connections uncovered in Queensland made that case unique.
Chris Masters' Four Corners report 'Moonlight State' is a seminal piece of Australian investigative journalism and is credited, alongside Courier-Mail reporter Phil Dickie's work, with prompting the Fitzgerald Inquiry. In this excerpt, former brothel owner John Stopford - later a witness to the Inquiry - describes paying off the licensing branch of the Queensland Police in order to run his business. He also recalls in the lead-up to a state election, delivering large cash payments to political parties on behalf of organised crime.
THE biggest corruption scandal since the Fitzgerald inquiry, with claims of police in major drug trafficking, is set to rock the force.
The allegations centre on the Gold Coast and are believed to concern some members of the Queensland Police Service, The Courier-Mailreports.
The Crime and Misconduct Commission is tipped to call a public inquiry into allegations Gold Coast police have been involved with organised crime gangs, including outlaw bikies, importing drugs and dealing them through some of the Glitter Strip's nightclubs.
More than 20 officers are understood to have been hauled before secret CMC hearings to forcibly answer questions or give evidence against allegedly crooked colleagues. Phone taps, listening devices and covert surveillance are believed to have been used to gather evidence.
"This will be the biggest corruption scandal since Fitzgerald," a senior police source said.
"It will unfortunately drag down the reputation of the police service once again."
A multimillion-dollar cocaine bust on the Gold Coast last year is believed to have helped spark the CMC probe, which has been running for several months.
The CMC is investigating allegations cocaine went missing from a Gold Coast police station.
The Surfers Paradise police station was raided on Sunday, as well as another Coast station.
On Monday, in a separate incident, a Surfers Paradise constable was stood down on full pay pending an investigation after a drug bust in Brisbane's Fortitude Valley.
The scandal follows last year's Operation Capri which resulted in the damning CMC report Dangerous Liaisons.
"This will make Capri look very small," the police source said. "We're talking about allegations of police involvement in importing drugs into Australia and distributing them through the Gold Coast nightclub scene.
"Police on the Coast, by nature, work pretty closely with the seedier side of the tourism industry and it would seem some may have fallen for temptation and dragged the rest of their colleagues down with them."
Another source said drug dealers were blatantly plying their trade in nightclubs - with off-duty police present.
It is believed key players have not been questioned by the CMC, leading to speculation a public inquiry was imminent. Yesterday, the CMC said suggestions of a "major drug trafficking investigation" were "incorrect".
But a spokeswoman said illegal drugs were part of an ongoing police misconduct probe, Operation Tesco, and would not rule out a public inquiry.
HE may have a North Queensland Cowboys jersey hanging on his wall but new Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Wilson promises he will be watching the Titans with interest next season.
Mr Wilson started his new post as the assistant commissioner for the southeastern region on Monday, the next logical step in an impressive 34 years with the police service after leaving Townsville two weeks ago.
Since starting out as a cadet in 1974, Mr Wilson has served throughout Queensland at both metropolitan and rural criminal investigation branches which have included Mount Isa, Brisbane, Redcliffe, Caboolture, Proserpine, Mackay and the Sunshine Coast.
However, the Gold Coast will serve as home for the foreseeable future and Mr Wilson said he was definitely looking forward to his stint here.
"I've never been stationed in the southeast region but I've done a lot of jobs down here as a detective over the years," he said.
"It's a unique location here in so much as it's an international tourist destination and as a result of that it's probably one of the most unique police environments in the country.
"Policing is the same the world over, it's just a unique environment here."
Mr Wilson has held a number of highly regarded positions over the years including three years as superintendent in charge of the north Brisbane police district and two years as detective chief superintendent on the State Crime Operations Command.
He said it was his time as a detective that had shaped him the most.
"Nothing daunts me in the job because I come from an operational background," he said.
"Being an old detective I have a keen interest in major criminal investigations to ensure, especially with homicides, that my staff get the right resources to ensure they are thorough investigations."
His dedication to his job has meant Mr Wilson and his family have had to travel all over the state -- the Gold Coast is just another notch on an impressive list of postings.
"When my wife and I left Townsville recently in our 30th year of marriage, it was our 15th change of residence in the job," he said.
"We have three adult daughters. This is the second occasion they didn't move with us but that's what it's been, a family journey. In fact, it's been an adventure."
It is this adventure that has helped keep Mr Wilson in the job so long, and perhaps even what has made him so good at it.
"I've lived all across Queensland. We've been a bit of a Leyland Brothers in moving around but I think the great adventure that is available to police officers and moving around this vast state, the life experience you acquire you bring with you," he said.
Mr Wilson has come to the Gold Coast just in time for some of the city's biggest events, which he said would present a new challenge for him.
"It's a good time to come because you see what's happening. I've come at the right time of the year to experience the major events of Indy, Schoolies, Christmas and New Year.
"I've previously been to all those events as a non-local police officer; now I come as the local police chief.
"I've already been to some of the planning events for the Indy event coming up and I look forward to meeting and working in conjunction with our emergency services and community groups in ensuring that public safety is paramount."
Mr Wilson said he looked forward to his time on the Coast and was passionate about policing after his 34 years in the business.
"I've still got a few years left in the job," he said. "I've been at it a long time, I should know what I'm on about."
Congratulations to our four new Assistant Commissioners announced today:
Assistant Commissioner Peter Crawford
Peter Crawford, the Chief Superintendent of Ethical Standards Command since May 2011, will become the Assistant Commissioner of the new Intelligence, Counter-Terrorism and Major Events Command.
Assistant Commissioner Crawford began his policing career in Beenleigh in 1987 before serving in Metropolitan South Region and performing a variety of plain clothes and detective roles in Logan District.
He was a Senior Sergeant in the Office of the Commissioner and State Crime Operations Command (SCOC) before being promoted to Inspector and Superintendent in SCOC.
Assistant Commissioner Alistair Dawson
Alistair Dawson, currently Chief Superintendent at the G20 Group, will return to Operations Support Command (OSC) as the new Assistant Commissioner.
Assistant Commissioner Dawson first served at Brisbane City Station in 1982. He spent time in the traffic branch and water police before being promoted to Sergeant and Senior Sergeant in Disaster and Major Events Planning.
He was promoted to Inspector for CHOGM in 2000 before serving in Southern and South Eastern regions. He was appointed as the Superintendent, Logan District Officer in 2007 before being appointed as Chief Superintendent of OSC in November 2010.
Assistant Commissioner Bob Gee
Bob Gee, currently Chief Superintendent of the State Traffic Support Branch, will be the new Assistant Commissioner of the Information Technology Division.
His first position was in Rockhampton in 1987 before transferring to Brisbane City Station. He had roles in Operations Support Command and Office of the Commissioner before being promoted to Inspector at Ethical Standards Command in 1999.
Assistant Commissioner Gee was then an Inspector in Metropolitan North Region before progressing to Superintendent at Ethical Standards Command. He was promoted to his current role in 2011.
Assistant Commissioner Gayle Hogan
Gayle Hogan has been promoted to Assistant Commissioner of State Crime Command (SCC).Assistant Commissioner Hogan began her policing career at the Academy in 1976.
She was sworn in to Brisbane City Station in 1978 before serving throughout Brisbane, Charleville and Mount Isa. After returning to Brisbane, Assistant Commissioner Hogan was promoted to Senior Sergeant at Toowoomba CIB in 1996 before serving at Ethical Standards Command, and becoming an Inspector performing various roles in Metropolitan South Region.
She was promoted to Detective Superintendent and then Detective Chief Superintendent at State Crime Operations Command in 2005 and 2011 respectively.
In addition to these promotions, a number of existing Assistant Commissioners will also commence new roles:
Mike Condon – Central Region
Steve Gollschewski – Road Policing Command
Peter Martin – Brisbane Region
Paul Stewart – Community Contact Command
Paul Wilson – Education and Training Command
Tony Wright – Southern Region
The following Assistant Commissioners will remain in their current roles:
Peter Barron – Crime and Misconduct Commission
Katarina Carroll – G20 Group
Paul Doyle – Ethical Standards Command
Clem O’Regan – Northern Region
Graham Rynders – South Eastern Region
The existing Chief Superintendents have been assigned as follows:
Minister for Police and Community Safety
The Honourable Jack Dempsey
New QPS Assistant Commissioners announced
Minister for Police and Community Safety
The Honourable Jack Dempsey
Thursday, May 09, 2013
New QPS Assistant Commissioners announced
Police Minister Jack Dempsey has welcomed the appointment of four new Assistant Commissioners into the Queensland Police Service (QPS).
The new executives will take up their posts as part of Police Commissioner Ian Stewart’s corporate restructure of the service due to be implemented on 1 July.
Mr Dempsey said he welcomed the announcement and looked forward to the contribution they will make in the service and the Queensland community.
“Peter Crawford, Alistair Dawson, Bob Gee and Gayle Hogan have already proven themselves as exceptional police officers and first class administrators and will undoubtedly make fine additions to the QPS executive,” Mr Dempsey said.
“The new Assistant Commissioners will also be responsible for assisting Commissioner Ian Stewart to implement his vision for the QPS which will see the service prepare and evolve for policing well into the 21st century.”
Commissioner Stewart also congratulated the new appointees and wished them well in their new roles.
“They are highly respected and professional officers who I am confident will lead the Service well into the future,” Commissioner Stewart said.
“I welcome them into the senior executive of the organisation,” Commissioner Stewart said.
Peter Crawford, the Chief Superintendent of Ethical Standards Command since May 2011, will become the Assistant Commissioner of the new Intelligence, Counter-Terrorism and Major Events Command.
Assistant Commissioner Crawford began his policing career in Beenleigh in 1987 before serving in Metropolitan South Region and performing a variety of plain clothes and detective roles in Logan District.
He was a Senior Sergeant in the Office of the Commissioner and State Crime Operations Command (SCOC) before being promoted to Inspector and Superintendent in SCOC.
Alistair Dawson, currently Chief Superintendent at the G20 Group, will return to Operations Support Command (OSC) as the new Assistant Commissioner.
Assistant Commissioner Dawson first served at Brisbane City Station in 1982. He spent time in the traffic branch and water police before being promoted to Sergeant and Senior Sergeant in Disaster and Major Events Planning.
He was promoted to Inspector for CHOGM in 2000 before serving in Southern and South Eastern regions. He was appointed as the Superintendent, Logan District Officer in 2007 before being appointed as Chief Superintendent of OSC in November 2010.
Bob Gee, currently Chief Superintendent of the State Traffic Support Branch, will be the new Assistant Commissioner of the Information Technology Division.
His first position was in Rockhampton in 1987 before transferring to Brisbane City Station. He had roles in Operations Support Command and Office of the Commissioner before being promoted to Inspector at Ethical Standards Command in 1999.
Assistant Commissioner Gee was then an Inspector in Metropolitan North Region before progressing to Superintendent at Ethical Standards Command. He was promoted to his current role in 2011.
Gayle Hogan has been promoted to Assistant Commissioner of State Crime Command (SCC).
Assistant Commissioner Hogan began her policing career at the Academy in 1976. She was sworn in to Brisbane City Station in 1978 before serving throughout Brisbane, Charleville and Mount Isa. After returning to Brisbane, Assistant Commissioner Hogan was promoted to Senior Sergeant at Toowoomba CIB in 1996 before serving at Ethical Standards Command, and becoming an Inspector performing various roles in Metropolitan South Region.
She was promoted to Detective Superintendent and then Detective Chief Superintendent at State Crime Operations Command in 2005 and 2011 respectively.
In addition to these promotions, a number of existing Assistant Commissioners will also commence new roles:
Mike Condon – Central Region
Steve Gollschewski – Road Policing Command
Peter Martin – Brisbane Region
Paul Stewart – Community Contact Command
Paul Wilson – Education and Training Command
Tony Wright – Southern Region
The following Assistant Commissioners will remain in their current roles:
Peter Barron – Crime and Misconduct Commission
Katarina Carroll – G20 Group
Paul Doyle – Ethical Standards Command
Clem O’Regan – Northern Region
Graham Rynders – South Eastern Region
The existing Chief Superintendents have been assigned as follows:
Brent Carter – North Brisbane District
Brian Codd – Ethical Standards Command
Steve Hollands – South Eastern Region
Mike Keating – G20 Group
Allan McCarthy – South Brisbane District
Paul Taylor – Far North District
The QPS will start the recruitment process for the two remaining Chief Superintendent positions (Logan District and Information Technology Division) in the near future.
Commissioner Stewart said the QPS had also advertised a new Deputy Commissioner position. Applications close on May 20.
“The position was provided for in the new structure that was announced on 7 January and will take effect on or soon after 1 July,” Commissioner Stewart said.
“The portfolio for the position is strategy, policy and performance. It will provide the building blocks of how police services will be delivered, managed, measured and reformed.
“This area has the capacity to reduce red tape and drive significant productivity improvements.”
[ENDS] 9 May 2013
Media Contacts: Danny Donald 0439 719 116 or Lea Emery 0417 226 114
Queensland police have embarked on a a crusade aimed at reducing violent crime and alcohol-related offences on the Gold Coast south of Brisbane.
Transcript
LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Is the Gold Coast the most dangerous place in Australia?
A spate of armed robberies and fatal shootings in the tourist city have police on the run and residents are asking why the city has become so violent.
Police are coming to the end of a month-long crime blitz called Operation Seymour and Peter McCutcheon spent a night on the beat.
PETER MCCUTCHEON, REPORTER: It's 11 o'clock on a Friday night at Surfers Paradise and police officers are out clubbing.
PAUL ZIEBARTH, QLD POLICE SUPERINTENDENT: The whole idea was we get our police out on the beat, in the clubs, importantly, all of the clubs, every club in Surfers Paradise will see the police in there with high vis' vests on.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: There are more than 100 drinking spots within two square kilometres of this strip. And the place is teeming with police. Not a good time or place to go driving without a licence.
The high visibility of police on party nights is part of a Queensland Government drink safe program, introduced as a two-year trial late last year. And the man overseeing this operation on the glitter strip is superintendent Paul Zebath.
PAUL ZIEBARTH: Everyone wants service to be safe, they want people to come in, enjoy 'emselves. They don't want the drunken element to go over the line and become offenders or perpetrators of crime.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: But in the outer suburbs of the Gold Coast, policing takes on a different role. These officers are preparing for night shift in the Coomera district as part of Operation Seymour, a month-long blitz on serious crime involving 50 extra police.
PAUL WILSON, QLD ASST POLICE COMMISSIONER: And it's intelligence-driven patrolling where they look at our hot spots, whether it be breaking and entering, stealing, theft of motor vehicles. One of the things we are liking to do is visit all the areas that are normally targets for our robberies, which our soft targets, and going to them, visiting the store owners, ensuring that we are having aggressive patrolling.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Assistant commissioner Paul Wilson explains the trigger for this blitz was a spike in armed robberies earlier this year. At one stage there were five shootings and three deaths in just seven weeks.
The game-changer was the fatal shooting of a police officer.
STEVE FLORI, INSPECTOR, COOMERA POLICE: The death of Detective Senior Constable Leeding was a blow to not only my staff, but the wider community.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: There were extraordinary scenes on the streets of the Gold Coast in June as tens of thousands paid tribute to a fallen officer and the effects of this tragedy are still being felt.
What do you say to officers after something like that?
STEVE FLORI: Yeah, that's a good question, isn't it? It's really - it's not a one-answer possible to that question. Different people have suffered in different ways. We're obviously supporting Damian's family and that will be ongoing.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Assistant commissioner Wilson admits the spate of shootings has affected morale.
PAUL WILSON: It certainly worries our staff that there's a lot of people armed with guns here. It's very serious and our police have to be operationally aware in everything they do.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: Since the shootings, Queensland Police have also set up Taskforce Resolve, a specialist squad tackling violent and serious crime in this part of the state. Yet for all this flurry of activity and extra resources, Queensland Police deny the Gold Coast is becoming more dangerous.
PAUL WILSON: Unfortunately, there has been shootings, but if you go back in the last several decades you will find that this area, like any other capital city, and it is the sixth-biggest city in Australia, that does have crime of this nature. And unfortunately, with the Gold Coast's international tourist identity and those crimes taking place, it does get a fair share of sometimes a little bit more publicity than it probably should.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: How confident are you that this is not a sign that crime is actually increasing here?
PAUL WILSON: Well technically the armed robbery raid of 2011 is the same of 2000.
PETER MCCUTCHEON: The worry is that bad publicity will ultimately affect tourism and undermine the Gold Coast's image as a place for fun, even if it is sometimes with an edge. And superintendent Ziebarth believes he's making progress in tackling drug and alcohol abuse.
Perception is important given that this is a tourist city. From you on the ground, have you noticed any change in the last year or so?
PAUL ZIEBARTH: Look, the interesting thing about the Gold Coast is the sheer volume of people. We've got a large population, sixth-biggest city, four million visitors a year. One of the key things for us is getting the community on board and public perception is something we need to work on.
LEIGH SALES: Peter McCutcheon on the Gold Coast.
top cop settles into new job- goldcoastnews sept 28th 2008
QLD Senator Peter Wellington & Assistant Police Commissioner Paul
Published on 9 Mar 2013
Senator Peter Wellington as a young rooky cop & The Queensland Assistant Police Commissioner Homicide Detective Paul Wilson stars in this Police Bashing film from Chanel Seven News Brisbane.
Corrupt Police stole the film from channel 7 Brisbane studios and thought all copies were destroyed.
The CJC obtained a Copy and recently the CMC Opened its doors to the Victims of Police corruption and copies of Files and other Police films were accessed.
Unlawful Police Bashings today the Queensland government is Lying that Senator Peter Wellington and Detective Paul Wilson gave evidence to the Fitzgerald Inquiry so are ***** Protected from prosecutions and have Immunity for criminal Acts .........And the Victims ? ......
The Queensland Government is saying to the Victims fuck you.........your not getting compensated despite an attempted murder in 1988 by Homicide Detective Paul Wilson ....where the victims neck was Broken in 3 places C2 C3 C5 ; Brainstem injury %72 : a Hole ripped into the victims Heart . Intentionally state government Denied Full Medical Disability Pension 1990 .
Police verbally State to Citizens " Your Under Arrest " .
The United Nations HUMAN RIGHTS Organization is very Specific about Beatings and Bashings of people " Under Arrest " & such Violations are considered " Torture " :
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman advocates Executive government corruption IF its Kept SECRET eh well hidden by NEW state Laws to protect people who really never did Testify to the Fitzgerald Inquiry ........But the QLD Govt Says YES They Did IF WE Say they did & the Tax Payers have NO choice but to believe the governments Gobbshite ! . Fascist Regime of closed Doors Court hearings to *Protect the executive corrupt members of Parliament.
POLICE STATE - Cops Arrest Boy For Standing Up Against His Bullies
The Police service is protecting him. It's only a very persistent victim that is giving hope of justice
A POLICE officer who assaulted an elderly homeless man in a mall seven years ago has failed to stop the Crime and Misconduct Commission trying to have him disciplined.
Bruce Rowe was assaulted in Brisbane's Queen Street Mall in 2006 when some police officers pinned him to the ground and Constable Benjamin Arndt kneed him.
Constable Arndt was found guilty of assaulting Mr Rowe and fined $1000, with no conviction recorded, after a private prosecution.
After the CMC referred a complaint from Mr Rowe to the Queensland Police Service, an assistant commissioner decided Constable Arndt needed only "managerial guidance'', and there was no disciplinary action.
The CMC has applied to the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal for that decision to be reviewed, on the ground that Constable Arndt should have been disciplined for misconduct.
Constable Arndt tried to strike out the CMC application, saying it lacked substance and the tribunal did not have jurisdiction to deal with it.
The tribunal heard when the CMC first investigated Mr Rowe's complaint, it found there had been an illegal assault and referred a report to the QPS for any disciplinary action.
In February, the QPS told the CMC that managerial guidance had been provided to Constable Arndt.
The officer was told no further action would be taken in relation to the complaint and no adverse reference would be put on his personal file, the tribunal heard.
Tribunal member Michelle Howard said the CMC Act allowed the tribunal to review specified decisions made about police officers if the CMC applied.
While Constable Arndt argued there had been no reviewable decision, Ms Howard found there had been a decision in relation to an allegation of misconduct regarding the unlawful assault.
On May 10, she found that it was a reviewable decision that was made within the appropriate time and dismissed Constable Arndt's application.
Gold Coast surf shop worker claims to be second man brutally bashed at Surfers Paradise police station
A GOLD Coast surf shop worker claims to be the second man brutally bashed while handcuffed in the bowels of Surfers Paradise police station.
Josh Gowdie, 21, is suing the Queensland Police Service for tens of thousands of dollars in damages.
He claims he was assaulted and thrown into a brick wall inside the Orchid Ave police station in December, 2011.
CCTV footage of the incident, obtained by Mr Gowdie's lawyers, was broadcast last night by Channel 9.
Mr Gowdie was allegedly bashed a month before chef Noah Begic claims to have been subjected to similar police brutality in the basement of the Surfers police station. He, too, is suing the police service for a six-figure sum.
"The police can't be allowed to get away with this sort of thing," Mr Gowdie told The Courier-Mail last night. "The two officers who did this to me are not fit to be in the police service."
Mr Gowdie said the incident happened in Surfers in the early hours of December 5, 2011, when he was "standing up for a female who got arrested".
He said police pushed, shoved and punched him in the street before hurling him against a brick wall in a passageway inside the police station. "I didn't do a single thing to deserve it," he said.
"I told them I'd had shoulder surgery and they (police) said they'd dislocate my shoulder again. "I suffered multiple injuries including cuts and bruising, grazes, claw marks and a chipped tooth and I still get flashbacks."
Mr Gowdie said he was speaking out now because he was frustrated at the slow pace of the police investigation.
A QPS spokeswoman said the investigation was ongoing.
A MAN allegedly bashed by police under the Surfers Paradise police station has launched legal action against the state of Queensland.
Noa Begic was arrested after a night out in Surfers Paradise in January last year and taken to the basement of the local police station, where CCTV footage appeared to show him being punched and thrown to the ground by officers.
The Courier-Mail posted exclusive footage of the incident on its website and all charges against Mr Begic were later dropped.
However, he has now taken legal action, engaging high-profile law firm Maurice Blackburn to sue the state of Queensland in a civil suit. He is believed to be seeking a six-figure settlement.
A close friend of Mr Begic said it was taking a long time for the mental scars to heal after the ordeal. "He was very anxious about police for a long while as you can imagine," said the friend. "He is trying to get on with his life and sees this as a chance to close the door on that chapter."
Two of the four officers allegedly involved in the incident remain suspended from duty while the Queensland Police Service's Ethical Standards Command runs its own investigation.
Mr Begic had been drinking with friends after finishing his shift at a Surfers Paradise restaurant when he was approached by police officers. He was arrested and taken to the basement of the nearby police station.
CCTV then appears to show a handcuffed Mr Begic being flung to the ground before being punched several times in the head by one of the officers as he is pushed into the back of a police wagon.
One of the officers is then shown pouring a bucket of water over what looks to be a puddle of blood on the basement floor.
Mr Begic was charged with being a public nuisance and obstructing police after he allegedly directed numerous loud and abusive comments towards officers patrolling the Surfers nightclub strip.
The charges against Mr Begic were thrown out last June. Mr Begic has also asked the Queensland Police Service to pay his legal costs from that court action.
The ethical standards investigation into the affair continues, while an investigation is also under way into an officer accused of leaking the CCTV footage to the newspaper.
Officer who failed to issue alert on sinking boat set to be demoted
A POLICE officer who failed to alert authorities that a boat was sinking in the Torres Strait before five people died is likely to be demoted, after a successful Crime and Misconduct Commission appeal.
A girl, four, and four other people drowned when the Malu Sara went down on the way from Saibai to Badu Island in October 2005.
Thursday Island Sergeant Warren Flegg was told the vessel was taking on water but did not tell rescue authorities that the boat was in distress until hours later.
After a disciplinary hearing an Assistant Commissioner found Sgt Flegg should be demoted to Senior Constable for two years, but suspended the order, subject to him completing training. In February last year a Queensland Civil and Administrative Appeal Tribunal senior member dismissed the CMC's appeal against that decision, finding that the sanction was appropriate.
But the CMC brought a fresh appeal, on the basis that a reasonable tribunal would have found the sanction "unreasonable or plainly unjust". The Commission no longer asked for Sgt Flegg to be dismissed.
On February 20 QCAT appeal tribunal members Justice Alan Wilson and Dr Bridget Cullen said a suspended sentence did not reflect the seriousness of Sgt Flegg's misconduct and it was "surprising". "His failure to pass on critical information as soon as practicable was a very serious omission, particularly when he was a trained search and rescue co-ordinator," Justice Wilson said. "The failure to discharge that duty persisted for some hours, compounding its seriousness."
Justice Wilson said in his view Sgt Flegg should be demoted to Senior Constable for two years from a date to be decided and be allowed to apply for a sergeant's position only after two years, under certain conditions.
I don't know much about this but a man claims that in 1988 he saw Qld. Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Wilson murder a uniformed police officer then leave the scene of the murder (in Airlie Beach North Queensland) looking like a suicide.
Shortly afterwards Wilson and underworld associates allegedly stole 2 tons of confiscated cocaine from Airlie Beach police station. When asked about the missing drugs, the cops simply said, "We can't find it. It's been lost..."
The witness was subsequently savagely beaten in an apparent attempt to shut him up. He has tried various avenues to draw attention to his matters but has hit a brick wall throughout, not very surprisingly.
The claims are in an eBook available on Amazon here ... which see -- JR
The Governor Generals Star Chamber [Kindle Edition]
A shocking true account of crimes perpetrated against the victim of Attempted Murder by Queensland Detective Paul Wilson in Airlie Beach North Queensland Australia in 1988 .
Every thing you thought you knew about Australian Police, the Law, Solicitors, Justice & the Australian Supreme Court is about to change forever.
As your taken step by step through the accounts that left a victim with his Neck Broken in 3 places a Hole torn into his Heart from blunt force trauma whiplash like effect of the blow intended to kill him, & a Horrific %72 Brain stem Injury, in a premeditated unprovoked cowardly attack while he was a Union Member & working.
Covered by Queensland Government Union Workers Compensation Scheme, the attempted murder Eye Witnessed By Australia's Most Senior Government Accredited Work Place Accident & Safety Officer.
The victim intentionally denied a full medical Disability pension by the Queensland Government in 1990 to keep Eye Witness evidence & the Detectives name & the Attempted Murder from court records.
Numerous Doctors of the victim threatened by Queensland Police, one female Doctor girl friend of the victim claimed to have been stopped in the evening on a lonely country road & was forced to enter the Detectives Police car, on arrival at her residence that evening shaken and in shock stated she would be HIV Tested the following morning.
A Queensland Senator Peter Wellington then a lawyer listened to the victims complaint details for more than one hour & responded to the complaint in two words " PROTECT YOURSELVES ".
Today the victim remains uncompensated unable to ever work again since 1990 and the Queensland Detective promoted to Assistant Commissioner uncharged by the Queensland Crime And Misconduct Commission or Queensland Government.
The entire Injustice orchestrated by the President of the Queensland Law Society, Quentin Bryce who when promoted to Queensland Governor used her Powers in charge of the Chief Justice of the Queensland Courts to implement a closed Doors STAR CHAMBER where the victim was forced to attend a Fraudulent, unlawful, Supreme Court action with no Eye Witness, no legal defense, no solicitors, & kept in the Witness stand for Two Days.
Wikileaks describes this written account as Scientific Journalism the first of its kind.
The Story that had Australian ABC journalist sent to the front line in Iraq.
International Investigative Journalist see's parallels between 1975 events & the purportedly Defunct NUGAN HAND BANK &
Australian PM Whitlam removed from office in 1975 by the Australian Governor General Sir John Kerr who was President of CIA funded LawAsia.
Qld Police Commissioner Stewart
An interesting email received:
Commissioner Stewart is currently under investigation by the Anti-discrimination Commission for acts of reprisal against police officer, Senior Constable Lyn Jones for participating in a public interest disclosure.
The public interest disclosure concerned a forensic officer from the Fingerprint Bureau Brisbane stealing from a crime scene. The incident was reported to senior management at the Fingerprint Bureau, Inspector Brendan Keleher and Inspector Tony Carstensen, who then bullied staff not to report the incident as they had both applied for promotion and "didn't want anything interferring in their promotional prospects".
After disclosing the incident to Ethical Standard Command, S/C Jones was advised by Senior Sergeant Blair Webber at the Fingerprint Bureau that the senior officers were "drumming up" complaints against her to "get rid of her". Five (5) months later S/C Jones was managerially transferred from the fingerprint bureau under allegations of complaints made against her. One (1) month later she was suspended without pay in relation to false complaints submitted by Sergeant David Reece, Sergeant Waldo Kowalsky and S/Sgt Blair Webber of the fingerprint bureau.
The complaints were investigated by Inspector Ray Rohweder who is a known associate and mate of S/Sgt Webber. Rohweder was also under investigation, at that time, for threating and bullying staff. After being found guilty of these offences, Rohweder was managerially transferred from Ethical Standard Command, but made sure he took S/C Jones' disciplinary file with him. Rohweder then continued to "drum up" complaints against her.
Three (3) years later S/C Jones is still suspended without pay on false complaints. To date, her disciplinary file is over 1000 pages as Inspector Rohweder collects statements from "rent a crowd".
CMC advised S/C Jones in March 2012 that "from the documents ESC had provided it was quite obvious that the QPS was trying to get rid of her as she had been labelled a 'trouble maker' for being a whistleblower".
The public should hear not only about the bad cops, but what happens to the good cops who dob them in. Officer who particpate in a public interest disclosures and tell the truth get bastardised by management, receive death threats and labelled "dogs". If we keep our mouths shut we get dismissed from the service for not dobbing them in. In other words, we're dammed if we do and dammed if we don't.
But S/C Jones is not one for being bullied by the "boys club" and has submitted a complaint to the Anti-Discrimination Commission for the QPS's acts of reprisal. I wish her luck, but she's more likely to "disappear" like S/Sgt Mike Isles before they'll let her win.
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
CMC says police officer got off lightly after 'forgetting' to act on tip-off
Qld. Police negligence leads to death
THE CMC has accused the police service of failing to appropriately discipline an officer whose inaction may have contributed to the death of a missing man.
Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal documents show that Barry Powell, 64, was still alive and would have been for at least another 24 hours when a local rang police to report sighting an abandoned vehicle at Wyandra in the state's southwest that belonged to Mr Powell on December 6, 2009.
His body was eventually discovered nearby in dense bushland five days later.
The temperature at the time the vehicle was abandoned was about 40C. He had been travelling with his dog, a black labrador, and at the time temperatures soared to more than 40C.
An internal police investigation found officer-in-charge of Augathella station, Sergeant Andrew Ernest Thomas, "failed to take appropriate action" after he was told of an abandoned vehicle.
"At about 8.30am on the 11th of December 2009 the body of Barry Frederick Powell was located in bushland approximately 650m northeast from his vehicle," Deputy Commissioner Ross Barnett said in a notice of formal finding dated November 20, 2012, lodged in QCAT.
"It is estimated Mr Powell was alive until the morning of December 8 2009."
Mr Barnett said Sgt Thomas failed to investigate or consider the likelihood that a person who abandoned the vehicle might need assistance and the consequences of them not receiving any, particularly after being "exposed to such environmental conditions".
Sgt Thomas received a two-year suspended sentence, so if any further acts of misconduct were committed, he would be demoted from sergeant to senior constable.
Sgt Thomas did not report the phone call to Charleville CIB until December 10 and a massive search involving SES and police on foot, horseback and motorcycles followed.
"Subsequent inquiries with the family of Mr Powell indicate that he was travelling from Western Australia to his residence in Hervey Bay following surgery," QCAT documents state.
"It is apparent from the evidence contained in the brief that Mr Powell was taking a considerable amount of medication for a number of pre-existing medical conditions."
In the hearing, Sgt Thomas said he "banged" his head on an airconditioner and forgot as other things "simply overtook" his mind.
He also argued the information he received related only "to a vehicle on the side of a road, not to a missing person" and he did not accept that a "sufficient nexus" existed between his failure to take appropriate action and Mr Powell's death.
"It logically follows that had you taken steps to have the report investigated, Mr Powell would have been located some time on 8th of December 2011," Mr Barnett stated in the disciplinary hearing.
However, due to the cause of death being undetermined and a ruling by the entomologist that the mPMI (minimum post-mortem interval) could not be provided because of "gross deficiencies in the collection of original evidence", Mr Barnett said he was unable to find clear "causal connection" between Sgt Thomas'
CLARIFICATION: THIS story originally said Senior-Constable Stephen Chapman was driving a vehicle involved in a pursuit with a motorcyclist in June, 2006. This is incorrect. Sen-Constable was in fact the senior officer in the car which was driven by Senior-Constable Hilton Buckley.
A GOLD Coast policeman has been fined more than $13,000 for misconduct relating to the death of a bikie during a high-speed police chase.
Senior-Constable Stephen Chapman was originally fined $400 in February by Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Wilson but the Crime and Misconduct Commission stepped in and lodged an appeal.
Yesterday the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal found the original penalty was "manifestly inadequate" and ordered Sen-Const Chapman to pay the fine off at $128 a week for the next two years.
The misconduct relates to a pursuit involving Craig Robert Shepherd, 26, a member of the Odins Warriors motorcycle gang, who died after his bike hit a rock wall on a tight bend at Beechmont Rd on June 16, 2006.
His passenger suffered permanent brain damage when the bike landed on top of her.
A coronial inquest in 2008 found that moments before the crash, Mr Shepherd was being pursued by a police car, in which Sen-Constable Chapman was the senior officer, at speeds of up to 160km/h.
Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Wilson had found Sen-Constable Chapman guilty of being untruthful during follow-up interviews and not complying with policies regard pursuits.
Sen-Constable Chapman, 48, had admitted contravening pursuit policies but contested the untruthfulness charge. He was fined $200 for each breach.
The CMC lodged an appeal with the tribunal on the grounds the penalty was manifestly inadequate and sought Sen Const Chapman's dismissal from the police service.
Sen-Constable Chapman and three other officers on duty the night Mr Shephard died also appealed against Mr Wilson's findings that they were untruthful in interviews by not declaring phone calls made about the incident.
While the officers were cleared of untruthfulness, in their QCAT judgment, Judicial Member James Thomas, QC, and Senior Member Richard Oliver ruled Sen-Constable Chapman's breaches were "serious" and while not serious enough to deserve his dismissal, a $200 fine was manifestly inadequate.
Instead, the tribunal ordered Sen-Constable Chapman's pay be cut for two years.
"He had an exemplary record of service prior to the incident, and pleaded guilty to the only charge upon which he has been subsequently found guilty," the judgment found.
"Notwithstanding this early plea, he has had the stress of five years' delay before determination.
"Taking into account all these factors, including the need to ensure that the police pursuit policy is respected, and attempting to maintain some consistency, we consider the appropriate sanction is the loss of two pay points for a period of two years."
Goldcoast.com.au understands Sen-Constable Chapman will seek leave to appeal against the decision.
Top cop settles into new job
Hayley Sultanie and Melissa Townsend | September 27th, 2008
HE may have a North Queensland Cowboys jersey hanging on his wall but new Assistant Police Commissioner Paul Wilson promises he will be watching the Titans with interest next season.
Mr Wilson started his new post as the assistant commissioner for the southeastern region on Monday, the next logical step in an impressive 34 years with the police service after leaving Townsville two weeks ago.
Since starting out as a cadet in 1974, Mr Wilson has served throughout Queensland at both metropolitan and rural criminal investigation branches which have included Mount Isa, Brisbane, Redcliffe, Caboolture, Proserpine, Mackay and the Sunshine Coast.
However, the Gold Coast will serve as home for the foreseeable future and Mr Wilson said he was definitely looking forward to his stint here.
"I've never been stationed in the southeast region but I've done a lot of jobs down here as a detective over the years," he said.
"It's a unique location here in so much as it's an international tourist destination and as a result of that it's probably one of the most unique police environments in the country.
"Policing is the same the world over, it's just a unique environment here."
Mr Wilson has held a number of highly regarded positions over the years including three years as superintendent in charge of the north Brisbane police district and two years as detective chief superintendent on the State Crime Operations Command.
He said it was his time as a detective that had shaped him the most.
"Nothing daunts me in the job because I come from an operational background," he said.
"Being an old detective I have a keen interest in major criminal investigations to ensure, especially with homicides, that my staff get the right resources to ensure they are thorough investigations."
His dedication to his job has meant Mr Wilson and his family have had to travel all over the state -- the Gold Coast is just another notch on an impressive list of postings.
"When my wife and I left Townsville recently in our 30th year of marriage, it was our 15th change of residence in the job," he said.
"We have three adult daughters. This is the second occasion they didn't move with us but that's what it's been, a family journey. In fact, it's been an adventure."
It is this adventure that has helped keep Mr Wilson in the job so long, and perhaps even what has made him so good at it.
"I've lived all across Queensland. We've been a bit of a Leyland Brothers in moving around but I think the great adventure that is available to police officers and moving around this vast state, the life experience you acquire you bring with you," he said.
Mr Wilson has come to the Gold Coast just in time for some of the city's biggest events, which he said would present a new challenge for him.
"It's a good time to come because you see what's happening. I've come at the right time of the year to experience the major events of Indy, Schoolies, Christmas and New Year.
"I've previously been to all those events as a non-local police officer; now I come as the local police chief.
"I've already been to some of the planning events for the Indy event coming up and I look forward to meeting and working in conjunction with our emergency services and community groups in ensuring that public safety is paramount."
Mr Wilson said he looked forward to his time on the Coast and was passionate about policing after his 34 years in the business.
"I've still got a few years left in the job," he said. "I've been at it a long time, I should know what I'm on about."
Claims about police corruption, including drug trafficking, are of deep concern and must be dealt with quickly, says Queensland Police Minister Neil Roberts.
"These are extremely serious allegations which obviously myself, the government and indeed the police service want to be investigated," he told ABC radio on Wednesday.
"We need to get to the bottom of it quickly and if these allegations are proven, these people need to be brought before the courts."
The new allegations centre on claims Gold Coast officers have been involved with organised crime gangs, including outlaw bikies, importing drugs and dealing them through big Gold Coast nightclubs, The Courier-Mail has reported.
The Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) was considering making the inquiry public and more than 20 officers have already been forced to give evidence against colleagues at secret CMC hearings.
Covert techniques including phone taps have also been used in the investigation, the paper says.
CMC officers on Sunday raided a number of premises in Brisbane and on the Gold Coast, including the Surfers Paradise police station and another station on the coast.
One officer has been suspended, pending further investigations.
Earlier this week, the CMC said speculation that criminal proceedings were imminent following the CMC's searches on Sunday were ill founded.
"The evidence gathered (Sunday) will be assessed as part of an ongoing police misconduct investigation that... was being progressed by the CMC in a covert manner," Director of CMC Misconduct Investigations Russell Pearce said.
"A police officer has been suspended on the basis of evidence discovered on Sunday morning, but no consideration has yet been given to bringing any criminal charges."
The fresh allegations follow last year's Operation Capri, which resulted in the CMC report of Dangerous Liaisons.
The report implicated 25 police in misconduct and detailed cases of informants being rewarded with cash, sex and unsupervised leave in return for evidence and confessions.
After the release of Dangerous Liaisons, corruption buster Tony Fitzgerald broke the 20-year silence that followed his own 1989 corruption report to criticise the ethics of Peter Beattie and Anna Bligh's Labor governments, as well as the police service.
"This will make Capri look very small," the police source told The Courier-Mail.
"We're talking about allegations of police involvement in importing drugs into Australia and distributing them through the Gold Coast nightclub scene."
Queensland Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek has called for a full investigation of the corruption allegations against Gold Coast police.
Mr Langbroek, the state MP for Surfers Paradise, said he had heard no allegations against police officers from his constituents, but he was interested in the anti-corruption watchdog's findings rather than anecdotes.
Mr Langbroek said drugs were an issue in Surfers Paradise, where there had been problems with bikie gangs involved in the trade.
But police were doing a good job of tackling drug crime, he said.
"They're all working very, very hard, and I have absolute faith in the integrity of the police service overall," Mr Langbroek said.
"But no doubt, amongst over 10,000 police officers in the state, there's always going to be temptation.
"People are human and it's important that we get to the bottom of these allegations."
He said any question marks over the police service were a serious matter.
"We need to make sure there aren't any bad apples there, but that's up to the CMC to work out," he said.
Mr Langbroek said he hoped the investigation would be completed quickly and that a public inquiry would be held if it was deemed necessary by the CMC.
7 News Australia broadcast finally exposing some of the well known police corruption, part of which involves illegal search warrants in the Queensland state police force. This is a widespread practice that goes way beyond the Gold Coast, has been going on for years, and this report is just a tiny tip of the iceberg of corruption. Even the Crime Commission ( and Argos) who's real job is to INVESTIGATE POLICE AND GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION does this exact "bogus search warrant" process to civilians, often in partnership with the regular police.of journalists (Crime Commission is also highly experienced in tampering with electronic evidence such as hard drives, memory cards etc to help manufacture convictions) Usually it's victims are people who speak out against corruption or illegal activity in the State government /judiciary or other departments and need to be discredited or taught a lesson. As spoken in the video, CMC can conduct "secret hearings" that breach basic legal rights such as the right to silence, right to legal representation - it is an offense to even TELL anyone including your family or solicitor that you have been ordered to appear at the secret hearing) that have been the basis of the justice system for generations. They also now have the power to hold secret interrogations of journalists (Arrogantly called "Star chamber for journalists" by the state government) , After 2 nights, this story was dropped like a hot potato and the press now avoid the topic. They don't want to be victims too - 21 October 2008.
CLARIFICATION: THIS story originally said Senior-Constable Stephen Chapman was driving a vehicle involved in a pursuit with a motorcyclist in June, 2006. This is incorrect. Sen-Constable was in fact the senior officer in the car which was driven by Senior-Constable Hilton Buckley.
A GOLD Coast policeman has been fined more than $13,000 for misconduct relating to the death of a bikie during a high-speed police chase.
Senior-Constable Stephen Chapman was originally fined $400 in February by Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Wilson but the Crime and Misconduct Commission stepped in and lodged an appeal.
Yesterday the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal found the original penalty was "manifestly inadequate" and ordered Sen-Const Chapman to pay the fine off at $128 a week for the next two years.
The misconduct relates to a pursuit involving Craig Robert Shepherd, 26, a member of the Odins Warriors motorcycle gang, who died after his bike hit a rock wall on a tight bend at Beechmont Rd on June 16, 2006.
His passenger suffered permanent brain damage when the bike landed on top of her.
A coronial inquest in 2008 found that moments before the crash, Mr Shepherd was being pursued by a police car, in which Sen-Constable Chapman was the senior officer, at speeds of up to 160km/h.
Police Assistant Commissioner Paul Wilson had found Sen-Constable Chapman guilty of being untruthful during follow-up interviews and not complying with policies regard pursuits.
Sen-Constable Chapman, 48, had admitted contravening pursuit policies but contested the untruthfulness charge. He was fined $200 for each breach.
The CMC lodged an appeal with the tribunal on the grounds the penalty was manifestly inadequate and sought Sen Const Chapman's dismissal from the police service.
Sen-Constable Chapman and three other officers on duty the night Mr Shephard died also appealed against Mr Wilson's findings that they were untruthful in interviews by not declaring phone calls made about the incident.
While the officers were cleared of untruthfulness, in their QCAT judgment, Judicial Member James Thomas, QC, and Senior Member Richard Oliver ruled Sen-Constable Chapman's breaches were "serious" and while not serious enough to deserve his dismissal, a $200 fine was manifestly inadequate.
Instead, the tribunal ordered Sen-Constable Chapman's pay be cut for two years.
"He had an exemplary record of service prior to the incident, and pleaded guilty to the only charge upon which he has been subsequently found guilty," the judgment found.
"Notwithstanding this early plea, he has had the stress of five years' delay before determination.
"Taking into account all these factors, including the need to ensure that the police pursuit policy is respected, and attempting to maintain some consistency, we consider the appropriate sanction is the loss of two pay points for a period of two years."
Goldcoast.com.au understands Sen-Constable Chapman will seek leave to appeal against the decision.
16 Aug 2011 - A POLICE officer said he would let a woman off for mail theft if she had sex with him, another three officers were caught stealing while on duty ...
6 Mar 2013 - THE head of the Crime and Misconduct Commission says an "administrative error" is to blame for thousands of sensitive files relating to the ...
5 Mar 2012 - 7 News Australia broadcast finally exposing some of the well known police corruption, part of which involves illegal search warrants in the ...
3 Feb 2010 - Some Queensland Police are allegedly involved in corruption centred on The Gold Coast. More than 20 officers to give evidence; Police links to ...
16 Apr 2007 - Retired police officer Col Dillon served more than three decades in the Queensland police force and is one of Australias most highly decorated ...
Police culture: Changing the Unacceptable. Celeste Lawson. In the 1980s a series of media investigations exposed police corruption in Queensland.
Jacintha Saldanha's Death: Australian DJs Behind Royal Prank May Face Police Probe
The two Australian DJs who pulled the prank call on the U.K. hospital where Kate Middleton was staying are now in hiding and may soon have to face police after the death of a nurse caught in the hoax.
Kate Middleton and Indian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, is thought to have taken her own life.
2Day FM hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig.
Questions have been raised by members of the Australian public whether MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad where involved somehow in the death ofIndian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who the UK media are claiming that she took her own life...
and it is noted that all media reports coming from the United Kingdom only ever call it a suspected suicide... but was it a murder by MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad
to make and example of the nurse who gave out the private information about Kate Middleton who was in a U.K. hospital...
Australian readers of INLNews.com and awn.bz who have read all about the murder of Thomas Allwood,
Above are true copies of a Criminal Contempt application issued London's High Court of Justice made By Thomas Allwood using his de-poll name John Carew-Reid
against David Cameron the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.. George Osborne the Chancellor fo the United Kingdom, the Uk Bordfer Agency and the UK Government and their Treasury Solicitors for preparing and presenting the above false and fraudulent doument ( Page 539 of above) to Master Bowles in the High Court of Justice to have Thomas Allwood's High Couirt claim for damages struck out.. a month before the gearing had been set down for hearing before Justice Vos on the 24th July, 2012 .. very convenienly Thomas Allwood was murdered in Broxburn Scotland on the 21st June, 2012...
INL News Under-Cover Investigative Journalist and co producer with Stephen Carew-Reid andthe INL News Group of Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Shows Have, on the 21st June, 2012 inBroxburn Scotland which is about an hour's drive from Edinburgh... and how the Scottish Lothian Borders Police and the Scottish Prosecution known in Scotland as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the world's media are clearly not looking closely enough the evidence brought out at the recent trial of Kyle Montgomery heard from the 19th November to the 26th November 2012 in Scotland's High Court in Livingston,who had been charged by the Scottish Lothian Borders Police for the murder of Thomas Allwood ..the evidence clearly indicates strongly that Thomas Allwood was not murdered by Kyle Montgomery who locals in Broxburn say is a well known local mentally depressed Scitzophrenic at around 2.20am on the 21st July, 2012 ... as implied by his father John Montgomery in his sworn evidence at by Kyle Montgomery's trial... when the much more believable independent evidence from two next door neighbours who have a common wall with John Montgomery's house in Galloway Cresent, Broxburn was produced at the trial that say they both heard and felt an enormous bang on their bedroom wall that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in...coming from John Montgomery's house at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012.... which was the loudest bang that they had ever heard coming from John Montgomery's house which they stated was like living next door to a pub with drinking, shouting, arguing and fighting went on all the time all hours of the day and night... they said in evidence that before the enormous bang there was loud shouting, screaming, arguing and fighting coming from John Montgomery's house... however as soon as the enormous bang happened that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in... there was complete silence coming from John Montgomery's house... and then they heard the back door quietly open and close ... which was first time that that door was ever opened and close without being slammed for the last couple of years since they lived next door to John Montgomery's house..... John Montgomery had given sworn evidence at his sons trial that after his son grabbed a bread knife from his kitchen draw and ran out the back door after Thomas Allwood, who was unarmed when he left the house a few minutes before, and that his son Kyle Montgomery came back into the house a few minutes later with blood on the bread knife admitting to his Dad, John Montgomery, that he had just done something bad... John Montgomery then said he took to bread knife with blood on it from his Son, Kyle Montgomery and calmly placed it back into the draw still with the blook on it... then Kyle Montgomery left the house and John Montgomery calmly had another drink and then fell asleep on the lounge and did not wake up until the police turned up and arrested him at about 5 am on the 21st June, 2012... another person who was at John Montgomery's house that early morning on the 21st June, 2012 was a lady known as Maggie whose name is Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name- a very well connected and influential family in Scotland with a famous politician George Galloway and a Freemason Scottish Police OfficerHugh Galloway of 7 Tower Place Johnstone Renfrewshire Renfrewshire 791being member of the family)...John Montgomery's family also are well connnected and respected in Scotland with war heros in the family and a Freemason Police OfficerAlexander Montgomery 51 Parkhead Rd Glen Village by Falkirk Stirlingshire 484
also a member of the Montgomery Family.... so it does not seem believable that John Montgomery would not have been awake and/or woken up with the enormous bang coming from his house at about 3.15 that the next door neighbours say was the loudest bang they had ever heard from John Montgomery's house and felt like their bedroom wall was going to cave in... so this clearly indicates along with other evidence that John Montgomery had lied on the witness stand and in doing so has implicated his Kyle Montgomery as the person who was likely to have made a fatal six inch stab wound in the right chest of Thomas Allwood through cloths with a bread knife that would have cerated edge and no sharp point for stabbing anyone through clothing which is only suitable for a sawing acting rather that a stabbing action...however at the same time implicating Kyle Montgomery as the likely person who made the fatal six inch stab wound in Thomas Allwood's right chest that cut through a main archery causing the death of Thomas Allwood... John Montgomery gave evidence which is believed by the jury could get his son off the murder charge his Son Kyle Montgomery was facing and to try and convince the jury that his son
Kyle Montgomery was only guilty of culperable homicide... which is like an accident homicide crime that resulted in the death of a person without intent in a drunken fight that got out of hand ... even though the bar maid gave evidence at the trial that Thomas Allwood was only drinking soft drinks that night... and Kyle Montgomery had been alcohol drinking heavily since about 1pm on the 20th June, 2012.....and so was his father John Montgomery drinking alcohol heavily since at least 8pm and likely most of the day since he received his government benefit cheque that day... in fact the jury based mainly on his father's evidence... very conveniently for all those Scottish Government officials involved in the investigation into the murder of Thomas Allwood.... and others... found Kyle Montgomery not guilty of the murder of Thomas Allwood and found Kyle Montgomery guilty of the lesser charge of Culperable homicide (accidental death) of Thomas Allwood....now the evidence that came out at the trial of Kyle Montgomery seems to clearly indicate that there were at least four people... maybe more in the house of Kyle Montgomery from 10pm on the 2oth June, 2012 and about 3.30 am on the 21st June, 2012... and in fact at least voices coming from John Montgomery's house that night and early morning were heard by the next door neighbours ....these seem to include...Thomas Allwood, John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name) and maybe others who did not want to make themselves known and kept reasonable quiet while at John Montgomery's house... the evidence seems to clearly indicate that at 2am to 2.30 am on the 21st June, 2012 when John Montgomery states was the time frame when his son Kyle Montgomery was meant to have gone out the back door and meant to have stabbed Thomas Allwood with a bread knife and came back with blood on the knife admitting he has just done something bad...making it fairly obvious to the at least three people left at the house which at the least included John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and Margaret Shedden (Galloway being her birth name)... that Kyle Montgomery had just stabbed Tomas Allwood outside in the back yard and/or a nearby street .. and that Thomas Allwood would be likely have been badly hurt from a stab wound and would have needed urgent medical attention.... regardless if was considered that stabbing of Thomas Allwood by Kyle Montgomery deliberate and/or in self defense... either way it would have been clear to these three people and anyone else that may have been at John Montgomery's house at that time, that they should call an ambulance and the police immediately to make sure that Thomas Allwood obtained urgent medical attention which if had been done then could well have saved the life of Thomas Allwood... sure the fact that neither of these people bothered to ring the police and/or an ambulance to try and get urgent help for Thomas Allwood at around 2.20-2.30 am...if what John Montgomery says id true.... they all should be charged with being responsible for the murder and/or death of Thomas Allwood as they seemed to just let him die on the street or the back yard.. and under Australian law could well be charged as accessories after the fact and at least charged with some serious charge that resulted in the death of Thomas Allwood... very similar to walking away from a serious car accident where it is clear someone had been seriously hurt and not calling the police and/or an ambulance....
Now... when one looks at the evidence of the two next door neighbours that say they both heard and felt an enormous bang on their bedroom wall that felt like their bedroom wall was about to cave in...coming from John Montgomery's house at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012.... which was the loudest bang that they had ever heard coming from John Montgomery's house... then the more believable truth is that at about 3.15 am Thomas Allwood was king hit by someone and/or some people with either a fist or fists and/or a hard object that was enough to knock out Thomas Allwood.. then the body of Thomas Allwood was carried outside while Thomas Allwood was still unconscious ...then someone stabbed Thomas Allwood... not with a bread knife but a sharp pen knife which made the deep six inch stab wound into the right chest of Thomas Allwood that cut a main archery so that Thomas Allwood was never wake up and would bleed to death... and then quietly they carried Thomas Allwood body to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left the body there at about 3.30 am where the body was found at about 4.45 am by three boys walking past at that time...the neighbour that had a window open looking right over where Thomas Allwood's body was found says you can hear a pin drop in her street and there was not one sound or noise in her street that early morning... and the only noise that was heard was the sound of the police at about 5am looking at the body and the murder scene... so it is clear that there was not fighting in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning and so screaming or cries for help from Thomas Allwood in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning.. why?... because Thomas Allwood was obviously carried and left there and was already unconscious having been knocked out before he was stabbed with the six inch stab wound and then stabbed and then carried to to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left there... private investigators employed by friends and family of Thomas Allwood have a strong belief that the evidence clearly suggests that Thomas Allwood was not murdered and/or even killed by Kyle Montgomery with a bread knife but was murdered by a contract killer well trained to know where and how to stab a person with one six inch stab wound with a very sharp and pointed pen knife which is designed to be able to kill some with just one stab wound.... the people in the world that are well known to be able to know how to murder someone with just one stab wound are agents and/or assets of MI5, MI6 and Mossad... and it is well known they work as agents for the state of the United Kingdom and the UK Prime Minister's Office to carry out murders of people like Thomas Allwood who was an undercover INL News Investigative Journalist who was working on a story to expose state of the United Kingdom and the UK Prime Minister, David Cameron and their Treasury Solicitors and Barristers for knowing being involved with having a false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document and having that false and fraudulent document presented to the High Court of Justice to stop Thomas Allwood from successfully claiming £500 million in damages claim for the wrongful arrest of USA Comedian Ronnie Prouty by the UK Border Agency on the 27th April, 2011 as a favour for the powerful Rupert and James Murdoch and their all powerful media group News Corporation as a way of commercially sabotaging the planned filming of the pilot fo the Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show in Edinburgh in April- May 2011 being co-produced by Thomas Allwood, Stephen Carew-Reid (the author of the well known bboks The Triumph of Truth -Who Is Watching the Watchers? and the original founder of the INL News Group-formerly known as the Australian Weekend News Publishing Group) and the INL News Group to create an international showcase of talented entertainers that perform at the 60 year old Edinburgh Fringe Festival each year... which has become the biggest arts festival in the world with over 3,000 Fringe shows being performed during August each year in Edinburgh....
Below is some the transcripts of what was said at a court hearing in London's High Court of Justice heard on the 24th July, 2012 where applications were originally listed to be heard by Thomas Allwood prior to his murder on the 21st June, 2012 in Broxburn, Scotland for criminal contempt applications to be heard against David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency and their treasury solicitors for knowingly having prepared a false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document and presenting such false and fraudulent UK Border Agency document to the High Court of Justice to try to stop Thomas Allwood from suing David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency for £500 million in damages caused to the filming of the Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show by the wrongful arrest of USA Comedian Ronnie Prouty on the 27th April, 2012 at Heathrow Airport as favour David Cameron and George Osborne's good friends at the time...Rupert and James Murdoch and their all powerful multi- billion media group known as News Corporation..the murder of Thomas Allwood on the 21st June, 2012 meant that would stop Thomas Allwood continuing with his criminl contempt applications against suing David Cameron the UK Prime Minister, George Osborne, the UK Chancellor, the UK Government, the UK Border Agency and their treasury solicitors and well as other criminal contempt applications taken out against barristers and solicitors involving another legal fight Thomas Allwood and his de-facto partner Valerie Butler where involved with at the High Court of Justice in their fight over their 25 acre family farm known as Haywicks Farm, Haywicks Lane, Hardwicke, Gloucester in the UK... where Thomas Allwood alleged that powerful and well connected s Freemason solicitors and barrister in Gloucester that Thomas Allwood called the Gloucestershire Legal Mafia (GLM) were involved with the preparing a false will in the name of Valerie Butler's father Herbert Butler and presenting that false will for a wrongful grant of probate so that partners of the Gloucestershire Legal Mafia (GLM) could wrongly obtain the title deed of their 25 acre family farm known as Haywicks Farm, Haywicks Lane, Hardwicke, Gloucester in the UK which they had planned to turn into a multi-million luxury real estate development ... Thomas Allwood also had a firm belief and was not scared to openly say...that Valerie Butler's father Herbert Butler was also murdered as part of the conspiracy he alleged to defraud his de-facto partner Valerie Butler of her rightful ownership of Haywicks Farm..
Some of the reasons why the Private Investigation Team employed by friends and family of the late Thomas Allwood to investigate who and why Thomas Allwood was murdered on the 21st June. 2012 in Broxburn, Scotland strongly believe that the powerful agents of the State of the United Kingdom such as MI5, MI6 and/or Mossad and/or some other professional contract murdered was and/or were involved in the murder of Thomas Allwood on the 21st June, 2012 include:
1. The Scottish Lothian Borders Police and the Scottish Prosecution known in Scotland as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the world's media are clearly not looking closely enough the evidence brought out at the recent trial of Kyle Montgomery heard from the 19th November to the 26th November 2012 in Scotland's High Court in Livingston,who had been charged by the Scottish Lothian Borders Police for the murder of Thomas Allwood ... seem to be risking their worldwide good reputation by quite openly protecting those at the house of John Montgomery on the evening of the 20th June, 2012 and the early morning of the 21st June, 2012 who according to the evidence of John Montgomery, and including John Montgomery knew that Thomas Allwood was likely badly wounded from a stab wound at about 2.20 am and did niot ring the police of an ambulance and simply went to sleep and left Thomas Allwood to die on the road just a street away from John Montgomery's house
2. Why is there a complete worldwide media block out.. except for one lone Scottish Journalist Vic Roderick who was the only journalist to cover the trial... who has now been silenced by the world mainstream media with what is called a "D Notice" on the reporting of the murder/death of Thomas Allwood who was an undercover INL News Investigative Journalist, Poet and TV Shows producer of the Fringe Shows have Talent TV Show...
3. Why is the a mentally sick person such as Kyle Montgomery whom the locals say is a well known Scitzophrenic which is capable to believing and/or repeating any story he is told is the truth.. being made a patsy for the death of Thomas Allwood.. .at about 2.20 am when the evidence clearly indicates that Thomas Allwood was knocked unconscious in the house of John Montghomery at about 3.15 am on the 21st June, 2012 and then carried out of the house and then stabbed with a six inch wound in the right chest cutting a main archery nd then carried to be let to die on Clarkson and Pyothall Road, Broxburn
With the more believable truth is that at about 3.15 am Thomas Allwood was king hit by someone and/or some people with either a fist or fists and/or a hard object that was enough to knock out Thomas Allwood.. then the body of Thomas Allwood was carried outside while Thomas Allwood was still unconscious ...then someone stabbed Thomas Allwood... not with a bread knife but a sharp pen knife which made the deep six inch stab wound into the right chest of Thomas Allwood that cut a main archery so that Thomas Allwood was never wake up and would bleed to death... and then quietly they carried Thomas Allwood body to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left the body there at about 3.30 am where the body was found at about 4.45 am by three boys walking past at that time...the neighbour that had a window open looking right over where Thomas Allwood's body was found says you can hear a pin drop in her street and there was not one sound or noise in her street that early morning... and the only noise that was heard was the sound of the police at about 5am looking at the body and the murder scene...
so it is clear that there was not fighting in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning and so screaming or cries for help from Thomas Allwood in her street that morning at 2.00-4.00 am where the body was found that morning.. why?... because Thomas Allwood was obviously carried and left there and was already unconscious having been knocked out before he was stabbed with the six inch stab wound and then stabbed and then carried to to the next streets Clarkson and Pyothall Roads and quietly left there... private investigators employed by friends and family of Thomas Allwood have a strong belief that the evidence clearly suggests that Thomas Allwood was not murdered and/or even killed by Kyle Montgomery with a bread knife but was murdered by a contract killer well trained to know where and how to stab a person with one six inch stab wound with a very sharp and pointed pen knife which is designed to be able to kill some with just one stab wound.... the people in the world that are well known to be able to know how to murder someone with just one stab wound are agents and/or assets of MI5, MI6 and Mossad...
Part of the transcripts of hearing before Justice Vos at High Court of Justice in London on the 24th July, 2012
Miss Love: The Border Agency matter.
Mr Justice Vos: I know, but I do not have any of the core papers in the Border Agency matter. What is the action no?
Miss Love: My Lord, it is HC11C04395
Mr Justice Vos: You see that is why, I have been through all the cases, and I do not have any papers in that except your letter and the correspondence.
Miss Love: Right
Mr Justice Vos: If I just pick it up. I have this much stuff on the UKBA, but it really is just your letter and a lot of historical material, and material concerning the famous INL News Group.
Miss Love: Mr Lord, we can remedy that situation _ I am sure your Lordship does not particularily want further copies of the correspondence, but certainly of the original claim form_
Mr Justice Vos: That is what I would like. So there was an application, was there, in that matter that was returnable today?
Miss Love: There was....
Mr Justice Vos: To do what?
Miss Love: If I could just start the procedural history, the claim by Mr Carew-Reid, which in essense was apparently a claim for damages in respect of treatment by the UK Border Agency of an individual known as Mr Prouty was issued on 9th December, 2011...
Page 6:
Miss Love: as you will see, it appears to be some hybrid of striking out and appealing the order of Master Bowles, an application for the cross-examination of myself and Mr Spanton, who was acting Treasury Solicitor and a generalised, if I might respectfully say so, rather difficult to grasp criminal contempt application..
Mr Justice Vos: It is another criminal contempt
Page 8:
Mr Geis: But the point was that Mr Prouty was refused entry into the UK and I've seen the forms that Mr Carew-Reid had, and there was one form which did not have a signature on. Now, I think this does cause for a bit of alarm and I think you should carefully consider this point and. if necessary, make an adjournment.
Mr Justice Vos: Thank you, Mr Gies...
Miss Lean: My Lord may have seen in the more recent correspondence from Mr Reid and INL that clearly they have concerns that this was a murder effected by MI5 or Mossad and/or other agents of the State, but as far as we are aware it is being dealt with as a criminal murder charge (murder of Thomas Allwood)
Mr Justice Voss: Yes, and who was Mr Allwood- apart from being a party to litigation, did he occupy some important position?....
Miss Lean: My Lord, for completeness, I should mention I am afraid among the many letters and emails from members of the INL News Group I do not have that one. I think I have seen some reference in the correspondence to Mr Allwood being involved with the INL News Group in some capacity so that may be the...
Mr Justice Voss: Right, but he was a associate and friend of Mr Carew-Reid, that is what it comes to?.... Right, thank you. Well Mr Carew-Reid himself says he was a friend of Mr Carew-Reid's side, I do not think we need to go further than that.....
Jacintha Saldanha's Death: Australian DJs Behind Royal Prank May Face Police Probe
The two Australian DJs who pulled the prank call on the U.K. hospital where Kate Middleton was staying are now in hiding and may soon have to face police after the death of a nurse caught in the hoax.
This morning, there are also new questions about whether DJs Mel Greig and Michael Christian, radio shock jocks at Sydney's 2Day FM broke laws after they recorded the private conversation when they pretended to be Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles.
British police have also contacted Australian police about a possible probe into the prank call, The Associated Press reported Sunday.
Rhys Holleran, CEO of Southern Cross Austereo, the parent company of Sydney's 2Day FM radio station said no laws were broken. The prank had been cleared by the Australian radio station's lawyers. Holleran said the DJs followed the company's procedures before broadcasting the call. "I think the more important question here is that we're very confident that we haven't done anything illegal. Our main concern at this point in time is what has happened is incredibly tragic and we're deeply saddened and we're incredibly affected by that," Holleran said Saturday. The hoax has caused public outcry after the death of a nurse, Jacintha Saldanha, who connected the pair to the Duchess' room.
Saldanha was found dead Friday morning after police were called to an address near the hospital to "reports of a woman found unconscious," according to a statement from Scotland Yard. Circumstances of her death are still being investigated, but are not suspicious at this stage, authorities said earlier. Lord Glenarthur, the chairman of King Edward VII's Hospital, the U.K. hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge was receiving treatment, condemned the prank Saturday in a letter to the Max Moore-Wilton, chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, the Australian radio station's parent company.
Glenarthur said the prank humiliated "two dedicated and caring nurses," and the consequences were "tragic beyond words," The Associated Press reported. Max Moore-Wilton, the chairman of Southern Cross Austereo, said in a letter to Lord Glenarthur Sunday that the company is reviewing the station's broadcast policies, the AP reported. "I can assure you we are taking immediate action and reviewing the broadcast and processes involved," Moore-Wilton said in the letter. "As we have said in our own statements on the matter, the outcome was unforeseeable and very regrettable." Saldanha came to England from India nine years ago, with her husband and two children. On Facebook, her 14-year-old daughter wrote this weekend, simply: "I miss you, I loveeee you."
Saldanha worked as a nurse at King Edward VII private hospital for four years. Her family lives 100 miles away in Bristol, but while on shift she slept in a residence for nurses. With no receptionist on duty overnight she answered the prank call and put it through. The hospital called her a "first-class nurse" and "a well-respected and popular member of the staff" and extended "deepest sympathies" to family and friends, saying that "everyone is shocked" at this "tragic event."
The duchess spent three days at the hospital undergoing treatment for hyperemesis gravidarum, severe or debilitating nausea and vomiting. She was released from the hospital Thursday morning. The hospital apologized for the mistake.
A man who stabbed a photographer to death in a drunken street brawl was caught after police found a blood-stained knife in a cutlery drawer.
A man who stabbed a photographer to death in a drunken street brawl was caught after police found a blood-stained knife in a cutlery drawer.
Kyle Montgomery, 24, denied murdering Thomas Allwood after a late-night drinking session but was found guilty of culpable homicide by a jury on Wednesday.
Jurors at the High Court in Livingston took four and a half hours to return a guilty verdict on the lesser charge.
Sentence on the first-time offender, of Winchburgh, West Lothian, was deferred until December 20 for background reports.
Mr Allwood, a 56-year-old photographer who worked for the Australian-based INL News Group, was stabbed in the chest during an incident on June 21.
Giving evidence in his own defence, Montgomery claimed he grabbed the knife to frighten Mr Allwood after being attacked by him at a house in Broxburn, West Lothian.
He said the killing was an accident and that he did not know the blade had sliced through the victim's chest and severed a major artery as he struggled with the victim.
Police who were called to the scene followed a trail of blood from Mr Allwood's body to Montgomery's father’s home. They found the knife, still stained with blood, in a cutlery drawer.
Montgomery was detained as he returned to the house from a nearby shop.
Mr Allwood was a photographer with the Australian-based INL News Group. Although he was born in Scotland, his family emigrated when he was a child and he spent most of his live in Australia.
A MAN accused of murdering an Australian journalist has claimed he must have stabbed the victim to death by accident.
Kyle Montgomery admitted that he armed himself with a kitchen knife and squared up to 56-year-old Thomas Graham Allwood.
He claimed in evidence at the High Court in Livingston that the blade was for his own “protection” and he had no intention of using it.
After being attacked twice by the victim, he said he just wanted to “scare him off” with the knife.
He struggled with Mr Allwood, who was armed with a metal pole or iron bar, but said he was unaware of inflicting the fatal blow which severed the main artery above his heart.
Montgomery, 24, from Winchburgh, West Lothian, denies murdering Mr Allwood in Broxburn on June 21.
In his closing speech yesterday, advocate depute Martin Macari asked the jury to convict Montgomery of murder. He said: “Whatever happened between those men, Kyle Montgomery had returned to the house to get a weapon.”
Derek Ogg QC, defending, said: “If he didn’t realise he’d caused that injury, he could not and did not have any criminal intent towards Mr Allwood.”
Judge Lord Doherty was due to deliver his charge to the jury this morning.
Comment from INL News Reader: Mary Gleeson
I have read all the published stories on the trial of Kyle Montgomery who was charged with the murder of INL Journalist Thomas Allwood, and all other previous media reports I could find on the web since Thomas Allwood was first reported on the BBC website on the 22nd June 2012 that he had been murdered in Broxburn, Scotland and that Kyle Montgomery was charged with Willfull murder of Thomas Allwood... and I have come to the conclusion that the way the evidence has presented at the trial of Kyle Montgomery and what evidence has been given by the witnesses the dots simply do not add up... and the trial has created more questions than answers..... when it seems clear that this Maggie lady, described as a female friend of Thomas Allwood and tJohn Montgomery, the father of the accused ..according to John Montgomery's evidence were in the house when Kyle Montgomery deliberately went outside to chase after Thomas Allwood with a bread knife... rather than jut locking lall the doors and windows of his father's house t make sure Thomas Allwood can not get back into their house....because they were meant to be in fear of him... then ring the police and say that Thomas Allwood was threatening Kyle Montgomery and had attacked Kyle Montgomery in John Montgomery's house ( all according the John Montgomery) and was continuing to bang on their door ... then the police would have come around immediately and arrested Thomas Allwood... who would then have spent the night in the police lock up.... where he would have woken up the next morning alive and be able to explain to a magistrate and/or the police what happened that night... no it all did not happen that way... John and Kyle Montgomery both claim that having removed Thomas Allwood from John Montgomery's house.... and expecting Thomas Allwood to have been unarmed....deliberately ran out of the back door of the house to the back garden for the purpose to chase Thomas Allwood with a bread knife in his hand.... instead of staying safe in his dads house and ringing the police.... now I read in the above article the unbelievable claim by Kyle Montgomery that Thomas Allwood "was armed with a metal pole or iron bar" and thus was acting in self defence after delieberately going outside to look for Thomas Allwood to attack him with a knife... other purpose would he have grabbed the knife and run outside with it for... it can only be to stab Thomas Allwood who he thought was unarmed... now Kyle Montgomery seems on the evidence had been drinking heavily since bout 1pm at his dads house and would have been very drunk by 2am the next morning and Thomas Allwood looks like a big man and Kyle Montgomery looks like a small thin boy... and thus could easily be over powered by Thomas Allwood even without Thomas Allwood have a metal pole or an iron bar to defend himself with from a vicious knife attack... we also heard from John Montgomery who said that Thomas Allwood had his son Kyle Montgomery pinned on the floor with his foot on his chest... which shows that Thomas Allwood had no problem in over powering Kyle Montgomery without any weapon of any sort.... then se have the unbelievable story of John Montgomery that at the same time the Thomas Allwood had his son Kyle Montgomery pinned to the floor by having his foot on his chest... Thomas Allwood was meant to have his hands around Kyle Montgomery's throat trying to strangle Kyle Montgomery... this is simply physically impossible for a tall big man to do at the same time as standing up with his foot on the person's chest....it is simply also unbelievable that that Thomas Allwood was armed outside with a metal pole or iron bar because if that was the case having already being told by John Montgomery that Thomas Allwood had no problem about being able to overpower Kyle Montgomery without any weapon, the how the hell is Kyle Montgomery going to be able fatally stab Thomas Allwood with just one six inch stab wound with a bread knife ( bread knife do not have pointy tips and just a cerated edge for a sawing action for bread or meat but not a stapping action) through clothing knowing the exact place to stab (single handed) a big man to kil him with one stab wound in the front chest ( not in the back) who is well aware that of the identity of the attacked and that the attcked is likely to attack because of a previous disagreement in the house.... and Thomas Allwood is also now armed with a metal pole or an iron bar.... which in one swing would have knocked small frail drunk Kyle Montgomery for six ... there is no way Kyle Montgomery is going to have any chance of being able to make that one fatal stab wound all by himself.... no normal jury is going to beleive this story.. so there seems no doubt what ever happened that morning Thomas Allwood must have been unarmed and Kyle Montgomery would have have to hav had some helpers... if it was really Kyle Montgomery that handed the fatal stab wound on Thomas Allwood...at about 2.15 according to the timing given by his father John Montgomery... then John and Kyle Montgomery and the lasy Maggie have to explain what the enmormous bang against the wall of the next door neighbours bedroom that cam from John Montgomery's house at about 3.5 to 3.15 am that felt to them that their bedroom wall was abourt to cave in... then after there being constant arguing, shouting and fighting etc before this enormous bang at about 3.05 to 3.15 am on the 21st June 2012.. everything from John Montgomery's house suddenly went quiet and for the first tikme ever... the back door was opened and wht and the door was not slammed which indicated clearly that someone or some people went out the door of John Montgomery's very silently and quietly... and the only logical deduction as to what the enormous bang against the wall was just before that nearly push the wall in from John Montgomery's side... was someone king hitting Thomas Allwood with a fist or a heavy object.. making him unconscious....then carrying Thomas Allwood out the door while he was unconscious... then may be making soem more bruses on his boy and then the one fatal stab wound ... all while he was unconscious.... and then carrying the body of Thomas Allwood quietly to where he was found on Clarkson/Pyothall Roads... at about 4.45 am by passers by... However if one is to discount that theory and ignore the enormosu bang at 3.05 to 3.15 am coming from John Montgomery's house... and just still to what John Montgomery sated on the witness stand under oath.. that his sone Kyle Montgomery grabbed a bread knife from the kitchen draw and ran out the back door( obviously to go to try and stab Thomas Allwood or at least chase after himw ith the knife) then coming back ten minutes later with blod on the knife and admitting he had done something bad... and John Montgomery not asking any more questions and calmly oputting the knife woth the blood on it back into the draw... having one more drink,,, the son leave the house and he falls asleep on the lounge...and is woken uop at about 5am by the police arresting him... so why didn't John Montgomery, Kyle Montgomery and/or Maggie ring the police and/or an ambulance at about 2.20 am which would haved saved the life of Thomas Allwood..
A man who stabbed his victim in the chest, resulting in his death has today been convicted.
At the High Court in Livingston today, Kyle Montgomery was found guilty of culpable homicide after killing 56-year-old Thomas Graham Allwood during a disturbance in Broxburn in the early hours of Thursday 21st June.
Members of the public found Mr Allwood's body in Clarkson Road and alerted police who launched a major investigation to identify his killer.
Detectives quickly traced and arrested Montgomery and charged him in connection Mr Allwood's death.
The 24-year-old is due to be sentenced on Thursday 20th December at Edinburgh High Court.
Detective Inspector Stuart Houston, who led the investigation said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
Thomas Allwood was born in Scotland but spent most of his life in Australia
First offender Kyle Montgomery will be sentenced next month for the killing
The monster who stabbed Thomas Graham Allwood in the chest in Broxburn, which resulted in his death, has been convicted.
Kyle Montgomery was found guilty of culpable homicide the High Court in Livingston. He killed 56-year-old Allwood during a disturbance in the early hours of Thursday, June 21.
Members of the public found Mr Allwood's body in the Clarkson Road/Pyothall Road area and alerted police. A major investigation to identify his killer was launched.
The 24-year-old is due to be sentenced on Thursday, December 20 at Edinburgh High Court.
Detective Inspector Stuart Houston, who led the investigation, said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
Kyle Montgomery found guilty of killing journalist Thomas Allwood
A man who stabbed a journalist to death in West Lothian has been convicted of culpable homicide.
Kyle Montgomery, from Winchburgh, denied murdering 56-year-old Thomas Allwood in Broxburn in June.
A jury at the High Court in Livingston took four-and-a-half hours to find the 24-year-old guilty of the lesser charge.
Sentence was deferred until 20 December at the High Court in Edinburgh for background reports.
Montgomery had said he grabbed a knife to scare off Mr Allwood after claiming he was attacked by him at a house in Broxburn.
He said the killing was an accident and that he did not know the blade had sliced through the victim's chest and severed a major artery during the struggle.
After the attack, Mr Allwood, who was a journalist with the Australian-based INL News Group, was found on Clarkson Road by members of the public.
Police who were called to the scene followed a trail of blood from his body to Montgomery's father house.
They found the knife, still bloodstained, in a cutlery drawer. Montgomery was detained as he returned to the house from a nearby shop.
Mr Allwood was born in Scotland but his family emigrated to Australia when he was a baby and he spent most of his life there.
He was involved in producing a TV show called Fringe Shows Have Talent, to showcase entertainers performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
Det Insp Stuart Houston, who led the Lothian and Borders Police investigation, said: "It is my sincere hope, that following today's verdict Mr Allwood's family can begin to move on with their lives and put this horrendous ordeal behind them.
"I would also like to thank the members of the community who came forward and assisted with this investigation.
"Lothian and Borders Police are committed to tackling violent crime and by working closely with our partners at the Crown Office, ensure that offences of this nature are investigated thoroughly and those responsible are removed from our communities."
Killer who stabbed man to death had bloody knife in cutlery drawer
STV 28 November 2012 16:45 GMT
Associated Press/Carolyn Kaster, File - FILE - In this Nov. 16, 2012, file photo, President Barack Obama acknowledges House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio while speaking to reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, as he hosted a meeting of the bipartisan, bicameral leadership of Congress to discuss the deficit and economy. Admnistration officials say President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner met Sunda, Dec. 9, 2012, at the White House to discuss the ongoing negotiations over the impeding "fiscal cliff." Spokesmen for both Obama and Boehner said the two men agreed to not release details of the conversation, but emphasized that the lines of communication remain open. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)
Stock market is a wild card in fiscal cliff talks
By By CHARLES BABINGTON | Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress and the White House can significantly soften the initial impact of the "fiscal cliff" even if they fail to reach a compromise by Dec. 31. One thing they cannot control, however, is the financial markets' reaction, which possibly could be a panicky sell-off that triggers economic reversals worldwide.
The stock market's unpredictability is perhaps the biggest wild card in the political showdown over the fiscal cliff.
President Barack Obama's re-election gives him a strong negotiating hand, as Republicans are increasingly acknowledging. And some Democrats are willing to let the Dec. 31 deadline pass, because a rash of broad-based tax hikes would pressure Republicans to give more ground in renewed deficit-reduction negotiations.
A chief fear for Obama's supporters, however, is that Wall Street would be so disgusted or dismayed that stocks would plummet before lawmakers could prove their newfound willingness to mitigate the fiscal cliff's harshest measures, including deep, across-the-board spending cuts that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta says could significantly damage the nation's military posture. SomeRepublicans believe that fear will temper the president's insistence on a hard bargain this month. Obama and GOP House Speaker John Boehner on Sunday held their first meeting between just the two of them since the election, and spokesmen for both emphasized afterward their lines of communication remain open.
The so-called cliff's recipe of major tax hikes and spending cuts can actually be a gentle slope, because the policy changes would be phased in over time. Washington insiders say Congress and the White House would move quickly in January or February to undo many, but not all, of the tax hikes and spending cuts.
Financial markets, however, respond to emotion as well as to research, reason and promises. If New Year's headlines scream "Negotiations Collapse," an emotional sell-off could threaten the president's hopes for continued economic recovery in his second term, even if Republicans receive most of the blame for the impasse.
"Nobody can predict the markets' reaction," said Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn.
Some Republicans are surprised that the White House has not made clearer efforts to reassure Wall Street that if the Dec. 31 deadline is breached, the worrisome pile of tax increases and spending cuts would not hit all at once.
A few liberal commentators are making just that case.
"If we go past the so-called fiscal cliff deadlines and all the resulting budget cuts and tax increases come into force, the administration can minimize the damage," Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote last week. "Obama can publicly announce he is delaying any cuts, on the theory thatCongress will eventually vitiate some of them. And he can make sure the bond markets know of his plans well in advance. ... Everyone (especially Wall Street) should calm down."
Some financial bloggers agree. "Although it would be bad to let the spending cuts and tax hikes fully go into effect, if this thing is addressed in early January, things will be okay," wrote Business Insider's Joe Weisenthal.
So far, the stock markets have stayed calm. The S&P 500 index is up 12 percent for the year.
That might be because investors agree that a temporary trip over the cliff wouldn't be too harmful. Chastened lawmakers, the thinking goes, would quickly minimize the economic damage with a deficit-reduction compromise that eluded them in December.
Or, it's possible that investors view the most pessimistic tones surrounding the fiscal cliff talks as posturing that will give way to a last-minute deal. If that is the thinking — and if the Dec. 31 deadline instead is breached — Obama's fear might come to pass: The expectation of a deal might produce a significant decline in stock prices if it doesn't occur.
As bad as that sounds, some liberals think it will be necessary to force many Republicans to drop their opposition to higher tax rates on the wealthy that Obama says are crucial to trimming the deficit.
Rep. Peter Welch, a Vermont Democrat who says temporarily going over the cliff wouldn't be so bad, noted what happened on Sept. 29, 2008. The House surprised investors by rejecting a proposed bailout of the crisis-stricken financial sector. Republicans strongly opposed the plan despite then-President George W. Bush's support. The Dow plunged 777 points, its largest one-day point drop ever. Four days later the House, shaken by the market reaction, passed a slightly modified bailout bill.
Welch said a similar market meltdown next month, in the event of a fiscal cliff impasse, "is what will force members of Congress eventually to act." Few lawmakers in either party are eager to predict how the stocks and bonds markets would react to a failure to reach a fiscal cliff accord by year's end. "Let's not pretend the markets fully understand the politicians, or the politicians fully understand the markets," said Rep. George Miller, D-Calif., who has served in Congress for 37 years.
How the 'Mayan Apocalypse' came from a New Age magic mushroom trip
The 'prophecy' does not stem from the Mayans at all. Instead, the beliefs come from two New Age books in the Seventies and Eighties, says a British academic.
Jose Arguelles, author of The Mayan Factor (Image: Wikimedia)
The so-called 'Mayan' prophecy actually comes from New Age writers in the Seventies and Eighties (Image: Rex)
People who are expecting the world to end on December 21 - the so-called 'Mayan Apocalypse' - should be in for a pleasant disappointment.
The 'prophecy' does not stem from the Mayans at all - or date from thousands of years ago.
Instead, the beliefs come from two New Age books in the Seventies and Eighties.
The two books predict outcomes as surreal as a 'upgrade' to human consciousness predicted by a spirit from the seventh century. The date itself comes from a prophecy based on a magic mushroom trip.
“December 21st will be just another Friday morning,” said Andrew Wilson, Assistant Head of Social Studies at the University of Derby. “A hippy guru called Jose Arguelles associated the date with the Mayan calendar in a book called The Mayan Factor in 1987. But it's an obsolete form of the calendar, which had not been used since the year 1100AD.”
“He claimed to be channelling various spirits, including the spirit of a Mayan king from the seventh century. He predicted a ‘shift in human consciousness’ - mass enlightenment.”
The actual date of December 21 first appeared in an earlier work - a 1975 book by Terence McKenna, a writer known for his descriptions of “machine elves” seen while under the influence of drugs.
The date appeared in McKenna's ‘Timeline Zero’ prophecy, and was based on McKenna’s own mathematics, the Chinese I Ching and a magic mushroom trip.
McKenna later met Arguelles and the two became, Wilson says, part of a circle of New Age authors who cited each other’s work, lending the ‘prophecy’ an air of believability.
“The significance of December 21 2012 in ‘New Age’ circles emerged from the work of ‘ethnobotanist’ Terence McKenna as he travelled deep into the Amazon in the 1970s,” says Wilson. His calculations of a ‘zero time wave’ suggested the world would go through a large change on December 21.”
“Arguelles, who had a long-held interest in Native American spiritualties, was inspired by McKenna’s work. He popularised the date in connection with the ‘long count calendar’ of the Mayan people in his new-age circles.”
As the belief has evolved, it has become associated with other, wilder predictions - such as the idea that Earth will be hit by a ‘rogue planet’, Nibiru, or swallowed by a black hole.
“There is no central belief,” says Wilson, “It varies from the ideas that Earth’s magnetic poles might shift, to the idea of a ‘galactic council’ visiting Earth. There’s no one, definite idea - it mirrors the New Age beliefs from which it comes.”
“It’s become part of a lot of religious movements. For instance, ‘The Galactic Federation of Light’ believes that ‘Planet X’ will make a close pass by the earth in 2012 – causing a deep transformation of human life on Earth.
“What this and other apocalyptic dates have in common across new religious movements is that they are often predicted to occur within a believer’s lifetime - making their beliefs urgent and important,” said Wilson.
“However, most people who believe in the significance of December 21 2012 have tempered their predictions of an apocalypse to, instead, signifying some significant change in humanity. Whether that is a change in culture or a world-wide event - most believers in an apocalypse won't be preparing for an earthly end but looking forward to an imminent transformation."
“A lot of people look to this story for reassurance - about the financial climate, or even about fears of, for instance, the Large Hadron Collider.”
“What’s been popularised is the dramatic stuff - but I am definitely still doing my Christmas shopping as normal this year.”
Wilson’s paper, ‘From Mushrooms to the Stars’, will be published by Ashgate in 2013.
Georgia details nuke black market investigations
By By DESMOND BUTLER | Associated Press
This June 24, 2012 photo shows the Hotel L Bakuria in Batumo, Georgia, Black Sea coast near the Turkish Border. In April 2012, three men gathered in secret at the hotel to talk about a deal for radioactive material for sale. The Georgian seller offered cesium, a byproduct from nuclear reactors that terrorists can use to make a dirty bomb.But one of the Turkish men made it clear he was after something much more dangerous: Uranium, the material used to make a nuclear bomb. The two Turks and the seller businessman Soslan Oniani, were convicted in September, 2012 in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each. Despite years and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remain active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. (AP Photo by Desmond Butler)
This undated handout photo provided by the Georgia Interior Ministry shows components for four cylinders containing radioactive substances seized in Batumi, Georgia on April 10, 2012. Police, who have been tracking Georgian Businessman Soslan Oniani, for over year, monitored him in a hotel room meeting with two Turskish citizens, trying to sell to sell the cylinders with the materials which included cesium-137 and strontium-90. The two Turks and the seller, Oniani, were convicted were convicted in September, 2012 in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each.
Associated Press/Georgia Interior Ministry - This undated photo provided by the Georgia Interior Ministry shows part of a seizure of radioactive substances including iridium-192 and europium-152. Police in Kutaisi, Georgia arrested two people involved in the smuggling in February 2011. The investigation led police to track a third man, Soslan Oniani, who would be arrested in April 2012 trying to sell radioactive material to two Turkish men. Despite years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against the illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remains active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. The radioactive materials, mostly left over from the Cold War, include nuclear bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, and dirty-bomb isotopes like cesium and iridium. (AP Photo/Georgia Interior Ministry)
BATUMI, Georgia (AP) — On the gritty side of this casino resort town near the Turkish border, three men in a hotel suite gathered in secret to talk about a deal for radioactive material.
The Georgian seller offered cesium, a byproduct of nuclear reactors that terrorists can use to arm a dirty bomb with the power to kill. But one of the Turkish men, wearing a suit and casually smoking a cigarette, made clear he was after something even more dangerous: uranium, the material for a nuclear bomb. The would-be buyers agreed to take a photo of the four cylinders and see if their boss in Turkey was interested. They did not know police were watching through a hidden camera. As they got up to leave, the police rushed in and arrested the men, according to Georgian officials, who were present.
The encounter, which took place in April, reflected a fear shared by U.S. and Georgian officials: Despite years of effort and hundreds of millions of dollars spent in the fight against the illicit sale of nuclear contraband, the black market remains active in the countries around the former Soviet Union. The radioactive materials, mostly left over from the Cold War, include nuclear bomb-grade uranium and plutonium, and dirty-bomb isotopes like cesium and iridium. The extent of the black market is unknown, but a steady stream of attempted sales of radioactive materials in recent years suggests smugglers have sometimes crossed borders undetected. Since the formation of a special nuclear police unit in 2005 with U.S. help and funding, 15 investigations have been launched in Georgia and dozens of people arrested. Six of the investigations were disclosed publicly for the first time to The Associated Press byGeorgian authorities. Officials with the U.S. government and the International Atomic Energy Agency declined to comment on the individual investigations, but President Barack Obama noted in a speech earlier this year that countries like Georgia and Moldova have seized highly enriched uraniumfrom smugglers. An IAEA official, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to comment, said the agency is concerned smuggling is still occurring in Georgia.
Four of the previously undisclosed cases, and a fifth — an arrest in neighboring Turkey announced by officials there — occurred this year. One from last year involved enough cesium-137 to make a deadly dirty bomb, officials said.
Also, Georgian officials see links between two older cases involving highly enriched uranium, which in sufficient quantity can be used to make a nuclear bomb. The AP's interviews with the two imprisoned smugglers in one case suggested that the porous borders and the poverty of the region contributed to the problem. The arrests in the casino resort of Batumi stand out for two reasons: They suggest there are real buyers — many of the other investigations involved stings with undercover police acting as buyers. And they suggest that buyers are interested in material that can be used to make a nuclear weapon. "Real buyers are rare in nuclear smuggling cases, and raise real risks," said nuclear nonproliferation specialist Matthew Bunn, who runs Harvard's Project on Managing the Atom. "They suggest someone is actively seeking to buy material for a clandestine bomb." The request for uranium raises a particularly troubling question. "There's no plausible reason for looking for black-market uranium other than for nuclear weapons— or profit, by selling to people who are looking to make nuclear weapons," Bunn said.
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Georgia's proximity to the large stockpiles of Cold War-era nuclear material, its position along trade routes to Asia and Europe, the roughly 225 miles (360 kilometers) of unsecured borders of its two breakaway republics, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and the poverty of the region may explain why the nation of 4.5 million has become a transit point for nuclear material. Georgian officials say the radioactive material in the five new cases this year all transited through Abkhazia, which borders on Russia and has Russian troops stationed on its territory. Abkhazia's foreign ministry said it has no information about the Georgian allegations and would not comment, but in the past it has denied Georgian allegations.
Russia maintains that it has secured its radioactive material — including bomb-grade uranium and plutonium — and that Georgia has exaggerated the risk because of political tension with Moscow. But while the vast majority of the former Soviet Union's nuclear arsenal and radioactive material has been secured, U.S. officials say that some material in the region remains loose. "Without a doubt, we are aware and have been over the last several years that not all nuclear material is accounted for," says Simon Limage, deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation programs at the U.S. State Department. "It is true that a portion that we are concerned about continues to be outside of regulatory control."
U.S. efforts to prevent smuggling have prioritized bomb-grade material because of the potential that a nuclear bomb could flatten a U.S. city. But security officials say an attack with a dirty bomb — explosives packed with radioactive material — would be easier for a terrorist to pull off. And terrorist groups, including al-Qaida, have sought the material to do so. A study by the National Defense University found that the economic impact from a dirty bomb attack of a sufficient scale on a city center could exceed that of the September 11, 2011, attacks on New York and Washington.
The U.S. government has been assisting about a dozen countries believed to be vulnerable to nuclear smuggling, including Georgia, to set up teams that combine intelligence with police undercover work. Limage says Georgia's team is a model for the other countries the U.S. is supporting. On Jan. 6, police arrested a man in Georgia's capital, Tbilisi, and seized 36 vials with cesium-135, a radioactive isotope that is hard to use for a weapon. The man said he had obtained the material in Abkhazia. In April, Georgian authorities arrested a group of smugglers from Abkhazia bringing in three glass containers with about 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of yellowcake uranium, a lightly processed substance that can be enriched into bomb-grade material.
"At first we thought that this was coincidence," said Archil Pavlenishvili, chief investigator of Georgia's anti-smuggling team. "But since all of these cases were connected with Abkhazia, it suggests that the stuff was stolen recently from one particular place. But we have no idea where. " Days later, more evidence turned up when Turkish media reported the arrest of three Turkish men with a radioactive substance in the capital, Ankara. Police seized 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of cesium-135, the same material seized in January in Tbilisi.
Georgian officials said the suspects were residents of Germany and driving a car with German plates, but that the material had come from Abkhazia. Turkish authorities said the men had entered Turkey from Georgia. Information provided by German authorities led to the arrest in June of five suspects in Georgia with 9 vials of cesium-135 that looked very similar to the vials seized in January. The Batumi investigation started after the arrest of two men in the city of Kutaisi in February 2011 year with a small quantity of two radioactive materials stolen from an abandoned Soviet helicopter factory, according to Georgian officials. The men said that a businessman, Soslan Oniani, had encouraged them to sell the material. Police interviewed Oniani and searched his house, but found insufficient evidence to arrest him, according to officials. Still, they kept monitoring him through phone taps and an informant. Georgian officials say Oniani was a braggart, who played on his relationship with his cousin, Tariel Oniani, a well- known organized crime boss convicted in Russia of kidnapping.
Early this year, Soslan Oniani started talking about a new deal. Through surveillance and phone taps, police learned of the meeting in Batumi and monitored it. While no money passed hands, the men discussed an illegal deal, which is sufficient for prosecution in Georgia. Tests by Georgian authorities later revealed that one lead cylinder held cesium-137, two strontium-90, and the fourth spent material that was hard to identify. All are useful for making a dirty bomb, although the material in the cylinders alone was not enough to cause mass casualties, according to data provided by Georgian nuclear regulatory authorities. The arrested Turks denied knowing they were negotiating for radioactive substances. They claimed to be musical instrument experts, who had come to Batumi seeking to buy violins. A skeptical interrogator asked them if they were familiar with the famed instrument maker Stradivarius.
One man said he had never heard of him. The two Turks and the seller, Oniani, were convicted in September in a Georgian court, according to officials, and sentenced to six years in prison each.
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The Georgian smuggling cases suggest that the trade in radioactive materials is driven at least in part by poverty and the lingering legacy of Soviet corruption in a hardscrabble region. Georgian officials say that because of U.S. backed counter-smuggling efforts, organized crime groups seem to have concluded that the potential profit from trade in these materials doesn't justify the risk. But individuals sometimes conclude they can make a quick buck from radioactive material. For instance, in one newly disclosed case last year, authorities arrested two Georgian men with firearms, TNT and a lethal quantity of cesium-137. One was a former Soviet officer in an army logistics unit, who told police that at the end of his service in the early 90s, he had made a second career stealing from the military.
"He openly said: 'I was a logistics officer and my second duty was to steal everything possible," according to Pavlenishvili. The man kept the cesium for years before he and a relative tried to sell it last year to a Georgian undercover officer. He did not try to sell the weapons or explosives. Poverty and corruption also appear to have played into three smuggling incidents in 2003, 2006 and 2010 that involved bomb-grade highly enriched uranium.
In 2003, an Armenian man, Garik Dadaian, was arrested when he set off a radiation detector provided by an American program at a checkpoint on the Armenian-Georgian border. Days later, the man was released and returned to Armenia under murky circumstances.
Dadaian's name resurfaced in 2010 on a bank transfer slip in the pocket of the two smugglers arrested with highly enriched uranium. The men had obtained the material from Dadaian and were offering it as a sample of a larger quantity. Police say forensic analysis suggests the uranium may have come from the same batch seized in 2003. Russian investigators suspected Dadaian got the nuclear fuel from a manufacturing plant in Novosibirsk, Russia, where several disappearances of material have been documented. Pavlenishvili said Dadaian bribed prosecutors to win his release and take some of the uranium. The two smugglers in the 2010 case were Sumbat Tonoyan, a dairy farmer who went bankrupt, and Hrant Ohanian, a former physicist at a nuclear research facility in the Armenian capital of Yerevan. The AP interviewed both at a prison about 25 miles (40 kilometers) outside Tbilisi, where they are serving sentences of 13 and 14 years.
In separate interviews, each man blamed the other for the idea of smuggling uranium, and talked of financial hardship. Ohanian said his daughter needed urgent medical care that he couldn't afford, and Tonoyan said a bank had seized his house after his dairy factory collapsed. "I didn't have a job and I couldn't pay the bank," he said in Russian through an interpreter. The men also claimed they believed the material they were selling was to be used for scientific work, not nefarious purposes. Ohanian said a Georgian contact, who was also arrested, told him relations with Moscow were so bad that Georgian scientists could not get the uranium they needed from Russia on the open market. "I feel guilty because I behaved like an idiot," he said. "I should have known and I would never do something like this again."
Follow Desmond Butler at //twitter.com/desmondbutler
Questions have been raised by members of the Australian public whether MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad where involved somehow in the death ofIndian-born mother-of-two Jacintha Saldanha, 46, who the UK media are claiming that she took her own life...
and it is noted that all media reports coming from the United Kingdom only ever call it a suspected suicide... but was it a murder by MI5, MI6 and/or their well known murder partners Mossad
to make and example of the nurse who gave out the private information about Kate Middleton who was in a U.K. hospital...
Australian readers of INLNews.com and awn.bz who have read all about the murder of Thomas Allwood,
Australian readers of INLNews.com and awn.bz who have read all about the murder of Thomas Allwood,
INL News Under-Cover Investigative Journalist and co producer with Stephen Carew-Reid and the INL News Group of Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Shows Have, on the 21st June, 2012 in Broxburn Scotland which is about an hour's drive from Edinburgh... and how the evidence brought out at the recent trial of Kyle Montgomery,
who had been charged by the Scottish Lothian Borders Police for the murder of Thomas Allwood seems to clearly show that the Scottish Lothian Borders Police
and the Scottish Prosecution known as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the UK Government are: not interested the fact that their own prosecution witnesses agree that they did not ring the police and/or an ambulance when it was discovered that Kyle Montgomery has allegedly placed a 6 inch knife wound into the right chest of Thomas Allwood allegedly at about 2.15 am on the 21st June, 2012 ... and just let Thomas Allwood blead to death until he was found by three boys at 4.45 am two streets away...
David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (whom he and his treasury solicitors was about to be exposed by Thomas Allwood at a High Court of Justice hearing London on the 24th July, 2012 for criminal comtempt of court); the Scottish Lothian Borders Police and/or the Scottish Prosecution known as the Procurator Fiscal's Office and the UK Government have not offered any official statement saying how sorry they are that Thomas Allwood was murdered on the 21st June, 2012..if fact they seem to be celebrating Thomas Allwood's death having appeared to have branded Thomas Allwood an enemy of the United Kingdom just for wanting the truth to be publicly known and for people who have wrongly victimised by the law obtain some fair justice...
None on the main stream international media have bothered to even report the murder of Thomas Allwood, INL News Under Cover Investigative Journalist, poet and co-producer of the Fringe Shows Have Talent TV Show and other feature films....as there seems