By Mike Head
23 October 2001
Since coming to office in 1995, Bob Carr, the Labor Party Premier of
New South Wales, has claimed that his government is cleaning up the
Australian state’s notoriously corrupt police force, while boosting
police powers and numbers under the pretext of protecting the public
from crime and violence, particularly drug-related.
Yet, when
the Police Integrity Commission opened an inquiry into police graft in
Sydney’s northern districts this month a very different picture began to
emerge. The Commission heard that there was “overwhelming evidence” of
“systematic corruption”. Police officers, including high-level
commanders, were videotaped giving the “green light” to major drug
dealers in return for bribes worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Their activities were not confined to accepting huge kickbacks—they
recruited dealers, set up new drug networks and pressured petty
traffickers to move into more serious dealing.
The evidence so far has focused on a single beach suburb—Manly—but the
district appears to provide a microcosm of life in and around the police
force. Tapes filmed with the help of a police informer show two
detectives protecting at least seven drug dealers, and being paid
monthly retainers or seizing large cash sums in the course of police
drug raids. Over an 11-month period, from January 24 to December 16 last
year, the pair stole or “taxed” $167,000 from dealers.
Tapes played to the inquiry showed police accepting bags full of
money, stuffing stolen funds in their pockets, dividing the spoils of
their crimes with superior officers and discussing their schemes in the
crudest terms. “It makes it a pleasure to come to work,” M5, an unnamed
police officer told his accomplices after taking his one-third share of
$30,000 allegedly left by a dealer. “That’s why I came back,” a
Detective Senior Constable replied. “Greed’s a bad thing,” joked
another.
In one case, the two officers intimidated a
small-time cannabis dealer, codenamed B5, into joining the area’s major
heroin syndicate. In return for protecting B5, they demanded a $15,000
lump-sum payment and $2,000 a month. B5 became part of a network
controlled by Vincent Caccamo, a confessed heroin dealer, who told the
inquiry that officers had taken at least $92,000 from him in bribes and
stolen money.
According to the tapes, police officers direct
drug trafficking through a system of franchises. In one taped
conversation, two drug dealers discussed their police protector. “You
either gotta pay him and go ahead or you gotta quit ’cause he’ll pinch
ya,” one complained. “It’s like paying rent, it’s like having a shop and
paying rent. That’s all it is,” his associate replied.
Corrupt
activities extend beyond the drug trade. Witnesses have told the
Commission that detectives organised a convicted housebreaker to rob
houses from Manly all the way to Palm Beach, at the furthest tip of
Sydney’s northern beaches. Other tapes reveal police discussing bashing
prisoners.
It appears that much more is to come. In his
opening address, the counsel assisting the Commission, Peter Hastings QC
said M5 would help to identify “hundreds of hours of recorded
conversations,” that had been gathered via listening devices and phone
intercepts. He gave notice that the material would extend beyond Manly,
the immediate scene of the “sting” operation conducted over the past two
years by the police Internal Affairs branch.
There was
“significant evidence” that police also watered down charges in return
for cash, falsified police records and perverted the course of justice.
So much material has been amassed that the acting commissioner in charge
of the hearing, Tim Sage, said he expected the inquiry to continue
through most of 2002. Thus far, 25 people have been arrested on 62
charges.
Between 1994 and 1997, a Royal Commission documented
widespread bribe-taking, drug-running and other corrupt dealings, as
well as scores of cases of police planting or fabricating evidence to
frame up innocent victims. In June 1996, the Carr government appointed a
senior British police commander, Peter Ryan, as NSW Police Commissioner
and made him the country’s highest-paid public servant. Carr declared
that Ryan, with the government’s full support, would root out the
corruption.
Instead, corrupt cops have not only survived but a
new generation of police drug traffickers—some in their early 30s—has
surpassed the so-called “old guard” of the 1980s and 1990s. “It’s not
the good old days,” Superintendent Gary Raymond, the Manly area
commander, told a drug dealer who called his office to complain about a
police raid on his home. “Don’t tell me about the good old days,” the
dealer replied. “It’s good, better and bigger than ever.”
Far
from fighting the “war on drugs” touted by Carr and Ryan, members of the
police force have become major players in the growing heroin trade,
which is now estimated to net $2.6 billion for dealers nationally—with
tragic consequences. In northern Sydney alone, more than 300 people have
died by overdose in the past decade.
Police-sanctioned
drug-running activities have also led to the frequent use of planted
evidence. M5 said that, while the Royal Commission was in progress, he
helped to dump in the Hawkesbury River a stash of firearms that had been
illegally assembled at a suburban police station for use in police
set-ups. According to M5, planted guns were used to jail at least one
accused armed robber. Earlier in the year, Police Minister Paul Whelan
admitted that police had fabricated evidence in “countless cases” and
promised to set up an “innocence panel” next year to review suspect
convictions.
High-level protection
It is
inconceivable that such levels of graft and abuse of power could exist
without being known in the highest echelons of the police force. Among
the officers directly named or charged are two Detective Sergeants, an
acting Inspector and the local Area Commander. Given the scale of the
proceeds, and the amount of police time spent on illicit activities,
more senior officers must have been involved as well.
According
to various media reports, police themselves have indicated that inquiry
evidence is the tip of the iceberg. All the evidence so far has come
from a single police informer.
For more than a year, there
have been indications of widespread corruption and abuse of power, as
well as allegations that Ryan has not pursued the offenders. Last
December, the Police Integrity Commission expressed “concern and
disappointment” at unsatisfactory police response to anti-corruption
proposals. At the beginning of this year, an audit of the police service
labelled the reform process “systematically limited” and criticised
Ryan for declaring that it was near completion.
Interviewed on ABC TV’s Four Corners
program, Ryan claimed that he was “very angry” that “traitors within
our midst” were “embarrassing us beyond belief”. His main concern was
the damage done to the image of the police force, complaining that
corrupt cops were creating “criticisms here and there, and disruption”.
At the same time, he baldly declared that “you’ll never eliminate
corruption” in the police service.
Nevertheless, Carr
immediately sprang to Ryan’s defence, claiming that his police chief had
been somehow “vindicated” by the revelations. Turning reality on its
head, he accused people “who were hounding and attacking and nagging the
commissioner” of “giving encouragement in many cases to corrupt cops”.
The
revelations are a particular blow to Carr, who has been in the
forefront of “law and order” politics nationally. He has systematically
whipped up fears of drug abuse and associated crime—blaming it, without
proof, on so-called ethnic youth gangs and alleged Asian and Lebanese
criminals.
Working hand in hand with Ryan, in the guise of
fighting drug traffickers, Carr has introduced draconian police powers.
These have included “drug house” laws making it a serious offence to
enter or leave declared “drug premises”, unprecedented police powers to
detain, interrogate and order body scans of people, and police authority
to order anyone in a public place to “move on”.
This
combination of racial stereotyping and boosting police powers is
designed to establish a repressive climate in working class areas, where
social tensions and political disaffection are mounting. The evidence
from the Police Integrity Commission, however, demonstrates that it is
the police themselves, not ethnic gangs and foreign-born criminals, who
direct many of the drug trafficking rackets.
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