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NEWS: The Age - 18/10/2006 'Police officers convicted of drug trafficking'

johnboy

Bluelight Crew
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Finally the details are out:

One of the Victoria Police's darkest periods has returned to haunt it with five of its former drug squad officers convicted of drug offences.

A Victorian Supreme Court jury today found former Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Geoffrey Strawhorn, 51, guilty of supplying drugs to murdered underworld figure Mark Moran.

Reporting on the other four police officers' cases - heard in the same court this year - had been suppressed until today's verdict.

It was March 2003 when Strawhorn - a police officer for 30 years - was charged with drug trafficking.

Then two months later three drug squad officers were arrested and accused of conspiring to traffick high quality heroin worth $1.5 million.

The arrests occurred in the wake of corruption allegations against the drug squad which led it to being disbanded in December 2001.

More than three years after their arrests, officers Glenn Sadler, 41, and Stephen Cox, 42, were found guilty last month of running a multi-million dollar heroin ring. They are awaiting sentence.

They were drug squad detectives working together when they conspired with a trafficker to sell about 10kg of high quality heroin between May 1999 and December 2002.

The third policeman, Constable Ian Norman Ferguson, 38, was convicted in April of conspiring to traffick with the pair and is serving 12 years' jail with a minimum sentence of eight years.

After a three-month trial and eight days of deliberations, a jury today found Strawhorn guilty of supplying two kilograms of pseudoephedrine to slain underworld figure Moran.

But, Strawhorn - who was second in command at one of the drug squad's three units - was found not guilty of three charges of trafficking pseudoephedrine to the Bandidos bikie gang.

The 51-year-old was also found not guilty of making a threat to kill a police officer.

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on one count of drug trafficking.

Strawhorn pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

It was two years after the drug squad disbanded that Detective Senior Constable David Miechel was charged over the theft of hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of drugs from an Oakleigh East home, in Melbourne's south-east.

The house was at the centre of a major ecstasy ring Det Sen Const Miechel was investigating with the Major Drug Investigation Group.

The 35-year-old broke into the home and stole a large variety of drugs on September 27, 2003.

Accompanying him was police informer and criminal figure Terry Hodson, who was later murdered as part of Melbourne's gangland war.

Miechel was sentenced to 15 years' jail with a minimum term of 12 years in August.

Strawhorn will return to court on Tuesday, October 24 for a pre-sentence hearing.

original story here.
 
White knight who lost his lustre

By John Silvester
October 18, 2006 - 6:36PM


Wayne Strawhorn was once the White Knight of the drug squad. While most of the unit was locked in what appeared to be a losing battle against heroin dealers the experienced detective senior sergeant was making serious inroads into local amphetamine traffickimg.

He was tough, quarrelsome, secretive and battle hardened. A key member of the drug squad 1986 to 2001 he made many enemies - inside and outside the force.

When one of the the drug squad amphetamine detectives was arrested in August, 2001 a well known defence was heard laughing outside court and saying, "I hope it's Strawhorn." The barrister was nearly two years premature - in March 2003 Strawhorn was charged with threats to kill and drug trafficking offences.

But before he was embroiled in controversy his immediate superiors loved him because he got results. It would be many years before his methods were questioned and many more before he would be convicted of drug trafficking.

Strawhorn's method was to use controlled deliveries - police purchased amphetamine precursor chemicals - to trap drug producers in sting operations.

The drug squad bought so much of the anti-cold medication Sudafed it became the manufacturer's biggest national client, and was eligible for discounts.

Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon banned controlled chemical deliveries in 2001 and replaced the drug squad with the major drug investigation division.

His defenders argued said that if Strawhorn had corrupt relationships with criminals who made millions through drugs, why was there no clear money trail showing the widowed policeman lived well beyond his means.

They even held a fundraiser at a Fitzroy hotel, raising more than $5000 for his family.

He spent more than a year in virtual solitary confinement. One of the men he had jailed wrote to him via the internal jail system taunting him. Another, on the outside, sent him a postcard from the Gold Coast with the message "Remember what I said the last time we saw each other". It was more than four years earlier when the man was led from court after being convicted that he told Strawhorn, "I'll get you."

Strawhorn's neat grey hair grew long and unkempt. In prison inmates are given the job of jail barber and Strawhorn was not prepared to let any convict that close to his throat.

But it would be former colleagues who would bring him down. Two members of his amphetamine unit, both who were jailed for corruption, were key witnesses against him.

The once elite investigator who has sent many drug traffickers to jail now faces a long stretch in the same system convicted of the same offence.

original story here.

...
 
Detective faces 25 years in jail

19N_STRAWTHORN_FR_wideweb__470x282,0.jpg

Wayne Strawhorn in February 2005.
Photo: Shannon Morris

Peter Gregory
October 19, 2006

ONE of Victoria's top drug detectives faces up to 25 years in jail after he was convicted yesterday of trafficking commercial quantities of chemicals to the underworld.

Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Strawhorn was found to have supplied chemicals six years ago to the Moran drug clan, which has since been wiped out in Melbourne's gangland war.

His conviction is the biggest scalp for the anti-corruption Ceja taskforce, which uncovered widespread corruption in the drug squad, disbanded by Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon five years ago.

Following the Supreme Court jury's decision, it can now be revealed that four other drug squad detectives face lengthy jail terms for serious drug charges. Strawhorn, 51, was remanded in custody for pre-sentencing submissions next Tuesday before Justice David Habersberger.

After deliberating for more than eight days, the jury found Strawhorn guilty of trafficking two kilograms of the chemical pseudoephedrine, an ingredient used in amphetamines.

He was found not guilty of four other charges. Three concerned his alleged involvement in trafficking the chemical to the Bandidos motorcycle club.

The fourth was an alleged threat to kill an investigating police officer.

The jurors were discharged without verdict after failing to agree on a sixth charge, which accused Strawhorn of taking part in trafficking pseudoephedrine to the Bandidos.

The Office of Public Prosecutions will consider whether to present Strawhorn for a retrial on the remaining charge. Lawyers for Strawhorn said outside court they could not comment on whether he would appeal against yesterday's guilty verdict.

Four other former drug squad members who have been convicted of criminal offences are:

■ David Miechel, who is serving a 15-year jail sentence, with a 12-year minimum, after being found guilty of drug trafficking, burglary and theft.

■ Ian Ferguson, jailed for 12 years, with an eight-year minimum, for conspiring to traffic heroin.

■ Stephen Cox and Glenn Sadler, who are awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of similar charges.

The jury verdict in Strawhorn's case followed three separate trials over 19 months that cost an estimated $6 million.

The first trial was aborted after a witness gave evidence that was not part of the case against Strawhorn. The jury at the second trial was discharged after failing to reach a verdict.

Strawhorn is the most senior of nine police to have been charged by Ceja. Six were members of the former drug squad. Others have been disciplined and, in some cases, moved to other duties. Ceja, a Victoria Police investigation, was overseen by the Ombudsman and later by the Office of Police Integrity.

Of the nine serving police charged, four have been convicted of drug offences in jury trials, three pleaded guilty to drug offences, and one, Joanne Ferguson, wife of Ian Ferguson, was acquitted of money laundering. One serving and another former officer are yet to be tried.

Eight former police and civilians, including a police informer, have also been convicted after investigations that were triggered by a criminal supergrass who taped his conversations with corrupt police.

The supergrass was well connected in Melbourne's underworld and a good friend of Mark Moran, who was shot dead at his home in June 2000.

Information supplied by the supergrass also led to arrests of underworld patriarch Lewis Moran and Tony Mokbel, who fled from authorities earlier this year while on bail. It has been alleged that Mokbel took out a $1 million contract on the supergrass.

Ms Nixon said Ceja's work had led to changes in corruption and drug investigations.

"I think it's important those who worked in the Ceja taskforce be given credit for working in a very difficult area," she said. "Investigating police officers is not easy, particularly when other members believe that these people are innocent and would often make the point that there was no evidence that these people had committed crimes or were corrupt."

Strawhorn was renowned for his protracted pursuit and bust of John William Samuel Higgs, who ran Australia's most sophisticated drug network. Higgs was jailed in 1999.

Central to the bust was the decision, urged by Strawhorn, to supply chemicals to Higgs through an informer, using a method which has since been abandoned. Strawhorn used informers or undercover detectives to provide chemicals to syndicates as a method of infiltrating them. During the controlled delivery operations, the drug squad was buying massive amounts of chemicals for undercover busts.

The then ombudsman, Dr Barry Perry, described the policy as "an unmitigated and foreseeable disaster". After the system was scrapped, police forfeited $281,416 to government consolidated revenue after a secret drug squad account was finally closed in 2002.

Ms Nixon scrapped the system in late 2001 and replaced the drug squad with the major drug investigation division.

With IAN MUNRO and JOHN SILVESTER

The Age
 
They were rotten to the core

guilty_1910_wideweb__470x141,0.jpg

Guilty: Ian Ferguson, Glenn Sadler and Stephen

By Ian Munro.
October 19, 2006

For the better part of two years, a Melbourne heroin dealer turned police informer enjoyed an extraordinarily privileged place in the city's drug scene.

Put simply, "Vinh", whose real identity is suppressed for legal reasons, was a prince among dealers, courtesy of a cosy relationship with corrupt drug squad detectives. This, despite the fact that a member of the Asian squad, who knew him well, believed he was a deceitful, dishonest criminal who would do anything to save himself.

Detectives Ian Ferguson, Glenn Sadler and their sergeant, Stephen Cox, ensured he had a steady supply of heroin by sharing with him the dope they seized in busts of other dealers.

Something like 10 kilograms of heroin, with a wholesale value of $1.5 million, passed through them and back to the street from mid-1999 until 2002.

Vinh failed to appear in court to face drug charges in April 2000 and failed to appear on aggravated burglary charges two months later.

While a member of the Asian squad was trying to track him down, Cox and Sadler were advising him to quit Melbourne for Sydney.

Cox and Sadler were introduced to Vinh through a heroin dealer called "David". They tried to recruit David to sell heroin for them for a share in the profits. The pair took him to strip clubs like Goldfingers and The Men's Gallery, as if to befriend him. The idea was that he would tip them off to other dealers they could bust and in return they would sell David a portion of what was seized to keep dealing.

But David rejected the offer of a "green light".

"They wanted me to purchase at least an ounce (from them), but if I needed more, it could be available . . . thereabouts of 121/2 ounces," he said.

One of those David informed on, however, was Vinh, and when Cox and Sadler made the same offer to him in August 1999 a corrupt business was born.

Cox was Vinh's first supplier, and Sadler and Ferguson followed.

Cox quit the police force late that year, but his two juniors maintained the supply, recycling seized heroin.

Sadler was deeply involved for 12 months from early 2000, a time when, according to investigators, immense quantities of the drug were dealt.

Ferguson was an ambitious young detective when he joined the drug squad early in 1997. By the time he was seconded to the National Crime Authority in 2000 he was bent. He joined in the conspiracy that was launched by his two colleages.

Their meetings with Vinh, in Bromby Street, South Yarra, took place in the shadows of the St Kilda Road police complex.

"There was a place across the road from the St Kilda Road police complex, at the back of Melbourne Grammar - what we used to call just the usual place we would meet," Vinh said. "So if either Steve Cox, Glenn Sadler or Ian Ferguson just said come on in, then that would be the place I would know to go to and it is in the vicinity of that area that we also met."

Initially, Vinh was given 30 grams of the drug at a time. Eventually, Ferguson passed on up to 350 grams at a time in exchange for $55,000 in cash. By prosecution estimates, up to 10 kilograms of heroin was trafficked to Vinh during his arrangement with Cox, Sadler and Ferguson.

Vinh told the court the drug squad became his prime supplier. At times it was his sole supplier.

Asked who he dealt with from the squad in 2000-01, he said: "Most of the time it would have been with Ian Ferguson, but I also dealt with Glenn Sadler on occasions . . . a very regular supply. In terms of percentage, at that point in time I'd probably say anywhere from 40 to 60 per cent of my suppliers were from there."

Ferguson took the commercial arrangement further, obtaining cost-price alcohol from Vinh, which he then supplied to police social clubs based at St Kilda Road.

After Vinh featured on Crime Stoppers, Sadler cautioned him to lie low. Eighteen months earlier, still while Vinh was on the run, Ferguson bought a BMW sedan from him for $30,000.

It is unclear just how much profit washed back to the crooked police.

Sadler is believed to have received more than $100,000, and Cox, who instigated the arrangement, a relatively small $30,000.

But Ferguson and his wife Joanne, who were both charged with money laundering, benefited by almost $700,000, the Supreme Court heard. They bought cars and a boat, installed a swimming pool at their Lara home and repaid their mortgage.

But it was the dealing in heroin that most blighted the police.

"You committed the very crime which it was your responsibility to detect and eliminate," Justice Kaye told Ian Ferguson. "You blatantly and shamelessly betrayed your oath as a constable of police, and you flagrantly breached the trust which the community imposed in you.

"You betrayed those thousands of decent and dedicated men and women who selflessly serve the force and the community."

Ferguson was convicted of conspiracy to traffic heroin and of money laundering and sentenced to 12 years' jail with a non-parole period of eight years. His wife Joanne was acquitted. The couple has three daughters, aged 10, eight and seven.

Cox and Sadler have yet to be sentenced.

The Age
 
White knight's fall from grace
By Ian Munro and Peter Gregory
October 19, 2006

His is a fall from grace unlike any other in Victorian policing. Yet until yesterday's verdicts there has been no hint of despair in the measured, controlled manner of Detective Sergeant Wayne Strawhorn in his time in the dock of the Supreme Court.

A lightly built man with a hawkish profile, still trim in his middle years, he seemed at times only a watchful presence at his own trial rather than a man whose life hung in the balance.

He has had time to resign himself to his losses. Three years ago, aware that a corrupt drug squad subordinate was co-operating with internal affairs investigators he despaired: "Who knows what f----n' bullshit he's making up? . . .Well, I mean, my life in the police force is over."

A decade ago Strawhorn was at the peak of his powers, pre-eminent among drug squad investigators. It was he who was entrusted to bring a radical new method of investigation to the state - the so-called chemical diversion program - in which police supplied chemicals to criminals in order to trace them upstream to locate illegal drug laboratories.

Strawhorn studied the method in Britain, urged and oversaw its application here. It was a huge success. In three years from 1998, 58 criminal laboratories were located and dozens arrested.

Yet by May 2003, the Ombudsman was able to declare the chemical diversion program to be "an unmitigated and foreseeable disaster" that ushered in a period of unprecedented police corruption.

A jailed former drug squad detective, known only as Detective B, when challenged to explain his own actions at Strawhorn's trial blurted: "If you want explanations, I'll give you explanations. I worked in the drug squad. It was a cesspool. It was full of corruption."

According to the prosecution, Strawhorn used his subordinates, such as Detective B, former police contacts and registered informers, to make massive profits from unauthorised drug ingredient sales to criminal groups.

The beneficiaries of the illicit sales included the Bandidos motorcycle gang and the family enterprise headed by the late Lewis Moran. They, and missing drug boss Tony Mokbel, were alleged targets of a legitimate drug sales plan that Strawhorn imported after his study trip to England.

Under the legitimate plan, police would obtain the chemicals from genuine drug companies at a heavily discounted price, then supply them through a network of informers who infiltrated the criminal groups.

Surveillance squads of police would monitor the chemicals' journey, hopefully following them to the laboratories. Listening and tracking devices were employed, phones tapped and video cameras used.

Ray Elston, the prosecutor at Strawhorn's third trial, said the policy always was controversial with some police unconvinced it was a suitable form of investigation.

Pseudoephedrine, the substance at the centre of the prosecution, could be bought from manufacturer Sigma for about $170 a kilogram. But drug dealers were prepared to pay $10,000 a kilogram on the black market, providing huge profits to police from the sales.

Pseudoephedrine was sold to criminals in the form of cold and flu tablets. Hundreds of boxes at a time were needed to make kilograms of the powder ultimately used in methylamphetamine manufacture. Only once, in a tightly controlled operation that resulted in 60 arrests, did police make authorised purchases of pure white pseudoephedrine powder.

It was a series of purchases by another of Strawhorn's subordinates - former detective senior constable Stephen Paton, who like his colleague Detective B, has been convicted of drug charges - that alerted authorities to irregularities in the chemical diversion program.

Strawhorn knew instantly of the discovery of the irregularities since the Sigma company's security adviser, Graeme Sayce, a former drug squad colleague who later returned to policing called him as well as other senior officers in the drug squad.

"Saycey rang me and I remember it f----n' distinctly, it was December, late December, about the 20th, 2001," Strawhorn later recalled in a conversation detected with a police listening device. "He rang me 'cos he reckoned he'd actually got the contract with Sigma and was working with them looking after all their security, etc, and he said, 'Yeah, you know, you've got probably more in the last six months than you've probably got in the last two years from here.' That's when the balloon went up."

But Sayce was contacted by the police ethical standards department (ESD) about the deals. He had met Strawhorn to tell him about excessive chemical purchases, but had also spoken with a drug squad inspector, a contact from his days in the police force.

Strawhorn was angry and embarrassed that he missed the chance to tell his superior officer first about the unusual transactions. Further probes suggested that Paton obtained about 425,000 tablets with a potential black market value of about $200,000.

Paton was supplied pure pseudoephedrine from Sigma in 1999 and 2000. When pressed, he said the purchases were made under Strawhorn's orders.

An increasingly irate Strawhorn related the episode to a police informer in another conversation that was recorded by police. "But it was some, a month afterwards that ESD came to me and said 'Look, we've been out at Sigma and we've had a yarn to them and Paton's been obtaining pseudoephedrine. What do you know about that?'. . . And they showed me the details and I showed them the receipts and we wanted to go through all our records, but they had no idea themselves.

"So anything Paton's telling them, who knows what it is? Who knows what f----n' bullshit he's making up? . . .Well, I mean, my life in the police force is over."

In 1999 and 2000, the drug squad was diverting tablets to the Bandidos Outlaw Motorcycle Club, in an investigation that was mainly concerned with amphetamines sale and manufacture.

A police informer known as 4/199 had infiltrated the Bandidos and knew they were producing amphetamines from several factories.

According to the prosecution, he learned that they wanted to avoid the hard work of extracting pseudoephedrine from thousands of cold tablets, and asked if he could supply the pure powder.

Elston said the operation relied on the sale of tablets, not pure pseudoephedrine.

He told the jurors: "Any diversion of that drug that went to the Bandidos was done illegally and without the authorisation of police command."

Elston said Strawhorn and the detective used 4/199, a career criminal acting as a go-between with the Bandidos, to make the first four illegal transactions. When approached by Strawhorn to act as a "chemical salesman to the underworld", 4/199 was in custody facing allegations of drug trafficking and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

The prosecution alleged that with Paton buying pseudoephedrine from Sigma, and 4/199 passing it on to the bikie gang, thousands of dollars were passing back to Strawhorn, but it was only in relation to chemicals supplied to the Moran family that Strawhorn was found guilty of trafficking.

Paton told Sigma that two kilograms of powder he bought from the company in May 2000 was for the National Crime Authority. Paton said he gave the drugs to Strawhorn who passed them on to a police informer.

The day after Mark Moran - the first of the clan to die in the underworld war - was killed outside his Essendon home in June 2000, Detective B was part of a drug squad team searching the bungalow of one of Moran's close associates. He said pseudoephedrine found there was in packaging similar to a bag he had given to Strawhorn about a month earlier.

Back at the drug squad offices, Detective B said he was testing the two-kilogram bag, and two smaller packages also containing white powder. He said Strawhorn dipped his finger into the larger bag, placed some powder crystals sticking to his finger into his mouth and declared: "That's pseudoephedrine."

In Strawhorn's defence, barrister Peter Morrissey argued that there was no evidence of his personal enrichment. A widower, Strawhorn had raised his children himself. His lifestyle was not extravagant.

Morrissey said the prosecution produced evidence - allegedly supporting Strawhorn's use of drug sale proceeds - that he had made share purchases worth thousands of dollars at a time. But he said Strawhorn had paid off his mortgage years earlier, and documented his financial transactions. It meant nothing that he had a little spare cash to invest.

The final allegation against Strawhorn stemmed from comments he made about ESD Detective Inspector Peter De Santo, the head of the Ceja taskforce.

Elston said Strawhorn realised he was under investigation and suspicion, and made threats in a conversation with a former police officer in March 2003. He did not know his associate had confessed his role in the drug trafficking, and was fitted with a listening device when the two men met on March 15, 2003.

After complaining that his life was ruined by Inspector De Santo's continuing investigation, Strawhorn told the informer: "My hope to get that 30-year pension is gone. They've fed me terribly and I will not rest until De Santo is dead."

Asked if he intended to kill De Santo, Strawhorn replied: "Yeah, I have to. It is the only way to get satisfaction."

He was acquitted of the charge of making threats to kill and of three drugs charges. As the "not guilty" verdicts mounted yesterday, his reserve broke and his eyes flickered towards the jury.

After hearing the jury pronounce him guilty of a single charge of trafficking in a commercial quantity of drugs, he sat at the rear of the court, dazed and staring into the middle distance.

Just once, he shook his head, like a man trying to recover his senses from a knockout punch.

The Age
 
heh, as if this isnt happening all over the show with like 40% of the drugs they seize..

fucking dogs.
 
Corruption here to stay: Nixon

Jane Holroyd
October 19, 2006 - 10:31AM

Victoria's top police officer says it is impossible to wipe out corruption in the force because there will always be officers who are tempted to operate outside the law.

Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon was speaking today after a Supreme Court jury handed down a guilty verdict on drug charges yesterday to one of Victoria's top detectives.

Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Strawhorn faces up to 25 years in jail after he was convicted of trafficking commercial quantities of chemicals to the underworld.

Four other former Victorian drug squad detectives have also been convicted of drug charges, it was revealed yesterday.

David Miechel is serving a 15-year jail sentence, with a 12-year minimum, after being found guilty of drug trafficking, burglary and theft.

Ian Ferguson was jailed for 12 years, with an eight-year minimum, for conspiring to traffic heroin.

Stephen Cox and Glenn Sadler, are awaiting sentencing after being found guilty of similar charges.

Asked on ABC radio whether the Victorian public should accept it as inevitable that police would have to undergo cyclical "clean-outs", Ms Nixon said: "I think that's the history really in policing. If you went back into the '60s and you looked back into the history of policing.

"I wish you could say we're not going to have corruption in Victoria Police but I cannot," Ms Nixon said.

"It's got 14,000 people in it who can be tempted and there are systems, and there are behaviours and there are standards that people betray."

Ms Nixon said corruption was being fought through various means in the Victorian force, saying legislation had been changed and new staffing practices put in place to ensure officers only remained in the drug squad for limited periods of time.

"What we have to do is keep working on that in a preventative, proactive way and then if we become aware of matters put people before the court and hopefully have them convicted."

original story here.

So the answer is to have people in the drug squad with limited experience in that area, so that drug policing can be even less effective. Brilliant!
 
Victoria's top police officer says it is impossible to wipe out corruption in the force because there will always be officers who are tempted to operate outside the law.

What does this say about the futility of the war on drugs? That the money a drug dealer can pay will always dwarf the salaries of those working in drug investigation squads. In an increasingly materialistic society (note what sort of things the policemen in this case spent their stolen funds on), there will always be temptation out there and there will always be crook cops willing to make a profit.
 
Nixon seeks random testing of officers
Ian Munro
October 20, 2006

POLICE Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon wants the Government to grant her the power to conduct random drug and alcohol testing of officers next year.

A plan for psychological, drug and alcohol testing of police working in the major drug investigation division was raised in the first report of the Ceja Taskforce in 2003 but has not progressed beyond encouraging police with drug and alcohol problems to seek help.

Ms Nixon said reform of the Police Regulations Act was needed to enable the testing to go ahead.

"We need legislation," she said. "I understand that the Police Regulations Act will be certainly on the agenda for the current Government, and if we had a change of government (at next month's election) then they would have to consider that legislation."

Police Minister Tim Holding said the Government would continue drafting new police regulations, but recent controversies over Office of Police Integrity hearings and the trials of drug squad members showed it was important "to get the balance right".

OPI assistant director Graham Ashton said the office's long-awaited report on the history of police corruption in Victoria would be released in the next session of State Parliament.

Its release was delayed to avoid prejudicing the trial of former senior drug investigator Wayne Strawhorn, convicted on Wednesday of trafficking a commercial quantity of drugs.

Mr Ashton said a final report into the Ceja investigation, which prosecuted Strawhorn and four colleagues from the discredited drug squad, would also be released next year.

He said it may be another two years before the full benefits of investigations from Ceja were realised.

The police investigation had given the OPI, which was formed in late 2004, a useful insight into the environment in which it had to function.

"There's a large amount of intelligence generated. From our point of view, that intelligence will be useful for progressing our investigations," Mr Ashton said.

Ms Nixon said she hoped reform of the act would also clarify the commissioner's confidence powers, which could enable the police chief to sack police. She tried last year to use the powers against two officers, but both men succeeded in having the decision overturned by the Victorian Supreme Court. They later resigned.

The Age
 
Note there will be shock and horror on TT. Welcome to the real world, things are never what they seem.
 
You have to admire the cojones on this whistle-blower. I wonder if anything will come of this.

What lies beneath

Nick McKenzie
October 20, 2006

DETECTIVE Sergeant Bill Patten is not one for visible displays of emotion. But his eyes glisten and his body tenses when he recalls the late-night phone call from fellow anti-corruption investigator, Mick O'Neil.

It was 10pm, and O'Neil had just opened his letter box to find two police-issue .38 bullets. Engraved on the bullets were the names of O'Neil and his wife.

"Mick was just a blabbering mess," says Patten. "I still get the hackles up the back of my neck, just talking about it."

It has been two years since the phone call and almost five years since Patten, 47, became one of the first investigators to join the Ceja taskforce, whose work would uncover some of the worst police corruption — from drug trafficking to money laundering — in Victoria's history.

This week marked the official end of Ceja. With suppression orders lifted, the public learned that five drug squad officers had been convicted of drug trafficking. Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon praised the success of Ceja: "The investigators did a terrific job … and they put them before the court and I think that's the important part for the community to understand," she told ABC radio. But Patten, a policeman for 28 years, tells a darker, inside story of Ceja. He says he wants, for the first time, to "set the record straight".

According to Patten, the rot uncovered by Ceja went further than has ever been exposed. The response from force command to all that Ceja found led to missed opportunities to stamp out corruption; no senior officers have been brought to account; internal disciplining was "pathetic" and the official refusal to acknowledge links between corrupt police and the underworld was deceptive.

Patten tells, too, of the ostracisation, the harassment and the death threats against the men who worked in the taskforce, who were treated — and are still being treated, he says — as outcasts in a culture which often values loyalty above all. It is that betrayal that he has found so devastating. "We formed our own self-help group because we are the only ones who care for each other," he says. "The organisation doesn't care. We have just been cut loose."

Police officers are forbidden to speak publicly without authorisation, and Patten knows the risk he is taking. "I have been one of the most loyal, devoted police members for just short of 28 years," he says. "I gave the force 150 per cent to the detriment of my family. I have nothing to gain, but this is a public interest issue."

In early 2002, Patten told his boss at the Ballarat Regional Response Unit, Detective Sergeant Ronnie Cosgrove, that he had been approached to join a taskforce investigating police corruption. Police who investigate police are traditionally known as "the filth" or the "toe-cutters" and the now-retired Cosgrove, whose 33 years of policing included stints in the drug squad and internal investigations, warned Patten that he would be "walking into another world". "You become an outcast, I told him to have a damn good think about it and where he would end up. Sure enough, he ended up in shit creek," he says.

Patten was "one of the finest, hard-working investigators" Cosgrove had ever worked with, a "born policeman". Now retired senior AFP investigator Bill Laing, who was Patten's boss in the late 1980s during a joint taskforce targeting drug syndicates, says that "at the time he was with me, I couldn't speak more highly of him".

Patten spent much of his first two decades of policing in Melbourne's tough western suburbs, the breeding ground for a host of young petty crooks who would later emerge as armed robbers and gangland figures. Colleagues describe Patten as a man either loved or loathed; his intensity led to a stellar arrest rate, but also clashes with colleagues whom Patten considered lazy or uncommitted, including his superiors.

"All I wanted to do was do police work. I would put myself as someone who consistently worked hard, who consistently dragged the crooks in."

It was that reputation that led Ceja investigators to seek him out. In early 2002, Patten headed to Melbourne to meet Detective Inspector Peter De Santo, whose Operation Hemi had recently charged two detectives, Stephen Paton and Malcolm Rosenes, with drug trafficking. Patten was told police command wanted a taskforce to examine allegations about drug squad corruption that had spilled over from Hemi. It was the first time Patten heard the name "Ceja". He had no inkling that, in a matter of months, he would begin "stepping on landmines".

"As far as I was concerned, I went to do a job like any other job. We were told it was going to be a six-month test of the allegations to see if it had been all wrapped up by Hemi." Three years later, he was still there.

Patten was one of 11 recruits who began a covert intelligence probe into the drug squad practice of using criminal informers to supply raw chemicals sourced by police to drug-making syndicates. The "Controlled Chemical Diversion Desk" was a way of leading police to the so-called "big fish". It was a high-risk strategy but it was the potential for its abuse by police that Ceja was interested in.

The probe centred on claims that police corruptly sold huge amounts of chemicals to criminals and pocketed the profits and it took Ceja deep into Melbourne's criminal underworld. The task of corroborating or eliminating allegations was painstaking, given that many of Ceja's sources had little credibility. Ceja's eventual boss, Commander Dannye Moloney, called his team "the super-toe cutters", which members took as a reference to their thoroughness.

Their detractors thought otherwise; as Ceja's existence became known, its members were slagged as "promotion-seeking lightweights at the filth", according to one crime department source. Whispers turned into threatening phone calls and warnings to back off.

All up, the list of threats against Ceja investigators could have been dreamt up in a film studio: bullets in the mail sent to one investigator; another investigator's wife and young daughter followed; one detective's house was broken into, but nothing taken. A criminal was found with a list of police car registration numbers, including several belonging to Ceja officers. "Mental torment is the thing that can f------ break people," says Patten, "and we had threats that someone from the underworld was physically going to murder an investigator. Vulnerable is not the right word."

There is ongoing disgust among the Ceja investigators about a lack of support from police command. "The bullets Mick got in his letter box; Ceja investigated it, no one was thrown into the investigation to support us. We were investigating our own threats! I mean, spare me!"

The threats reflected the gravity of what Ceja was discovering. What started as 14 allegations against suspected corrupt police snowballed to more than 100. In one secret briefing to force command, 30 officers were singled out as possibly corrupt, including several who had left the drug squad and were working elsewhere in the force. Ceja's resources also grew; more than 40 staff members, including financial investigators and a barrister, fed into what ultimately became an almost five-year investigation into police drug trafficking, evidence planting, theft, drug taking and "green-lighting" (allowing criminals to commit crimes). "No one realised the gravity of what we found," recalls Patten. "It literally blew up in everyone's faces."

CEJA began to charge officers in 2003. Chief Commissioner Nixon committed to reforms, including overhauling drug investigation and informer management practices. But Patten says the reforms and Ceja's achievements fell far short of what Victoria deserves. "It has been five years now. Some of it (the corruption) is very significant and some of it has just gone out into the ocean. It is long lost.

"There are probably a dozen to two dozen policeman in the Victoria police who haven't been charged who I say are crooks or who turned a blind eye to corruption. Some are commissioned officers (above the rank of senior sergeant) and senior detectives."

Those never dealt with range from officers who had active involvement in corruption to those who turned a blind eye, "selling their jobs by leaking information, inappropriate (criminal) associations, to those who had knowledge but were not strong enough to stand up and be counted."

Some of Ceja's unfinished work has been passed on to police internal investigators at the Ethical Standards Department and the Office of Police Integrity for review or examination; the OPI has questioned some officers in private hearings on the basis of Ceja intelligence. But Patten insists the opportunity to properly examine much of what Ceja initially found has been lost. To properly investigate all of the taskforce's corruption files would have meant a trebling of resources. Even then, he says, it would not have been enough.

"There would have only been one successful way to investigate this stuff and that would have been a royal commission. No one else could walk away and say that Ceja was the appropriate investigative body to do the job. We did a good job, I'll still say that, but I say some of the rot would have been got rid off."

In opposing a commission, Nixon, the Ombudsman and the Government have argued that Ceja achieved more tangible results, while sparing the force the demoralising trauma that accompanies such a major government-ordered inquiry.

Patten responds that officers involved in corruption remain in the force, including in management positions. While he won't publicly reveal names or detail the evidence (he can be charged for leaking such information), he bases his comments on "various things like electronic surveillance".

"Once you have been exposed to what we were exposed to, at the level we were exposed to it, there is evidence to make a decision on (as to whether someone is corrupt) as opposed to sufficient evidence to convict them."

Several investigators, closely aware of Ceja's work, back up his claims and share Patten's frustration at the "pathetic" internal disciplining of some police, which sometimes amounted to a sideways shift and a confidential admonishment.

They include a sergeant with significant unexplained wealth and numerous ties to several criminals and corrupt police, and a detective superintendent with a long history of suspected corruption. Patten blames an unspoken culture of protecting commissioned officers for the failure to bring to account those under whose watch corruption flourished.

"My opinion is that the culture at the drug squad and various other areas of the Victoria Police, managers should be held to account for it. There were certainly some managers at the drug squad who should have been brought to account for things, but they weren't," says Patten.

Despite two interim reports from the state's Police Ombudsman (since renamed the Office of Police Integrity), the last released in June 2004, there has been no comprehensive outlining of the scale and scope of Ceja's work.

There has been no official public accounting of whether the drug squad ever planted evidence, despite the decision by Crown prosecutors to quietly abandon the cases of at least three high-level drug dealers because of corruption concerns.

Open to speculation remains the question of how the drugs "lost" by the squad and the green-lighting of criminals enriched and empowered the crime syndicates that featured in Melbourne's underworld war. (Despite attempts, Ceja never got to the bottom of links between police and organised crime figures, including murdered crime figure Lewis Moran and fugitive drug boss Tony Mokbel.) Patten says that links between police and the underworld are well established and that corrupt police became "huge powerbrokers".

"Their ability to offer immunity, legitimately or illegitimately, (to criminals) allowed a lot of drugs to be manufactured and trafficked and fed on to the street — that is amphetamines, heroin and ecstasy tablets." One of Patten's colleagues remarked that "a lot of people have died of drug overdoses because of their (the squad's) actions".

In 2003, the Ombudsman's interim report stated that he would "expect the dedication of these seconded (Ceja) members, in performing what is often an arduous and thankless task, to be further recognised in due course." Mindful of this view, police command signed off on a policy authorising Ceja investigators to be subject to regulation 21 transfers, which allowed them to be slotted into new positions of equal rank and bypass the usual merit-based process. Ceja members were "upgraded" while at the taskforce; along with another Ceja member, Patten attended detective training school (during the course, fellow attendees planned to create stubby holders depicting two rats). Welfare support was organised, including visits from a psychologist and team-building exercises. In late 2004, a special Ceja "thank-you" dinner was attended by Nixon and then police minister Andre Haermeyer. During the dinner, one Ceja detective told the gathering that Ceja had picked the Eagles' Hotel California as their theme song. It contains the line: "You can check in any time you like, but you can never leave."

THREE Ceja investigators have left the force due, at least partly, to unhappiness about the level of support offered. Others have taken sick leave. One complained to superiors of stress when, after attempting to leave Ceja, he was knocked back from seven consecutive job-selection panels. The anger continues now, Patten says, as Ceja members deal with resentment from other members about their regulation 21 transfers and upgrading.

"I don't just speak for myself, I speak for many other Ceja investigators who are too fearful of speaking out. They have been ostracised, they have been harassed, they have been criticised up until now in their current workplaces. We have not been supported in our introduction back into the work place."

Breaking point for Patten came after his regulation 21 transfer in November 2005 to lead investigator at Gisborne CIU, a small regional investigation unit, was under attack. The decision to go to Gisborne was always contentious, given that two former drug-squad detectives were based there. A police source describes Patten's move as akin to "placing his head in the lion's mouth".

Last September, the Police Association funded a still-unresolved Supreme Court challenge against Patten's transfer by two other members who argued it was unfair because it was not open to appeal and ignored questions of merit — Patten's upgrading to detective rank while at Ceja was used to attack his credibility as an investigator. Patten only found out about the court challenge when he overhead a conversation in a lift, indicative, he says, of the lack of support offered — either from the association or the force — to deal with the resulting uncertainty. "It was all just lip service. They gave us the 21s, Christine said she supports our 21s. But big deal. There is a culture that needs to be addressed and until it is addressed, how they expect people to go into internal investigations and come out and go on with their working lives is a joke."

Patten feels worn down, like there is "a huge tourniquet wrapped around my chest". He is considering resigning from a job he has held for 28 years. And he deeply regrets joining Ceja. "It has caused my family grief. It has caused a lot of other people grief. It has changed the direction of their lives and changed the direction of their careers. It has inhibited their careers. You become a leper."

Patten lives with his wife, Karen, who is also a police officer, and their two young children in a semi-rural setting in outer Melbourne. Ribbons from the local primary school swim meets adorn the fridge. The family's dog bounces around. It is an average family home.

But there is an oppressive air in the Patten household. It is fed by off-the-cuff comments during a tour of the house: "Look at where I live. If someone wanted to take me out, they had me." And there is fear about the price of speaking out, especially for his wife and children. Said one of his Ceja colleagues: "Bill will be cut off by the force."

Last month, Patten decided to take extended leave from work. On a Saturday, he drove to Gisborne police station and did five hours of paperwork — he says the station was already short-staffed and he was worried "about letting the blokes down". He then quietly packed up his desk.

"I drove away and it was one of the greatest feelings I had in my life. It was like letting the pigeon go, just letting it go and letting it fly. It was just unbelievable and I never second-guessed it."

original story here.
 
hoptis said:
What does this say about the futility of the war on drugs? That the money a drug dealer can pay will always dwarf the salaries of those working in drug investigation squads. In an increasingly materialistic society (note what sort of things the policemen in this case spent their stolen funds on), there will always be temptation out there and there will always be crook cops willing to make a profit.

Zigzactly!
 
The drug squad bought so much of the anti-cold medication Sudafed it became the manufacturer's biggest national client, and was eligible for discounts.
Very interesting piece of trivia. That is a shitload of Sudafed.
 
This isn't related to the others but it's another bent cop.

Jail for drug squad cop
October 23, 2006 - 3:08PM

A former Victorian drug squad detective has been jailed for at least three years for giving information to a heroin dealer about police investigations.

Mathew Bunning, 29, was sentenced today to a total six years and 10 months in jail for 10 charges of misconduct in public office, two charges of theft and one of possessing morphine.

Victorian County Court Judge Julie Nicholson said Bunning had become addicted to morphine after he was prescribed the drug for a serious back injury he received during an arrest.

She said his addiction helped explain his behaviour but did not excuse it.

Bunning used a computer program to obtain his colleague's confidential passwords then accessed information about police operations and undercover officers, which he passed on to a dealer who cannot be named, Judge Nicholson said.

She said he had breached the community's trust and betrayed the police force.

"The tragedy of the matter is that at one time you were indeed an esteemed member of the Victoria police force," Judge Nicholson said.

AAP

The Age
 
News: Esteemed cop turned to corruption

[EDIT: Threads merged. hoptis]

Esteemed cop turned to corruption
Monday Oct 23 17:54 AEST
A highly-regarded Victorian drug squad detective descended into corruption after becoming addicted to prescribed pain killers, a judge has found.

Mathew James Bunning, 39, became the sixth drug squad member this year to be found guilty of serious criminal offences.

But County Court judge Julie Nicholson said Bunning's case was separate to those of the five other officers.

Bunning became addicted to morphine after using it to treat a back injury he suffered during an arrest in the 1990s.

He later formed a "bizarre" relationship with a heroin dealer in which he would give her information about police operations, Judge Nicholson said.

Bunning pleaded guilty to 10 counts of misconduct in public office, two charges of theft and possessing morphine.

He was sentenced to six years and 10 months in jail, with a minimum of three years.

Bunning's crimes occurred between 2002 and 2004 when he gave information to the dealer, a former police informer whose name is suppressed.

In return, the dealer gave Bunning gifts, including a diamond ring and bangle for his now-estranged wife.

Bunning had used a computer program to capture the keystrokes made by his colleagues and steal their police database passwords.

Judge Nicholson said giving the information he gained to the drug dealer, who passed it on to her associates, had the potential to endanger a covert operative and a police informer.

Bunning also pleaded guilty to stealing a $4,750 watch while searching a house and to stealing prescriptions from his own GP.

Judge Nicholson said Bunning once had been an esteemed policeman but betrayed the public and the police force.

"You have been an experienced and trusted member of the police force in a position of authority and you abused that for your own personal gain," Judge Nicholson said.

"You had first hand knowledge of the evils of the drug trade and of crime," she said.

"You not only facilitated the drug trade but also accessed confidential information from the Victoria police force, releasing such information on a protracted and systematic basis."

Judge Nicholson said Bunning, who resigned some time after his arrest in October 2004, had been a respected officer who "went over to the other side".

Bunning also was fined $400 for possessing ammunition and an extendable baton.

Last week, former officer Wayne Geoffrey Strawhorn, 51, was found guilty of trafficking 2kg of pseudoephedrine to slain gangland figure Mark Moran.

Officers Glenn Sadler, 41, Stephen Cox, 42, and Ian Norman Ferguson, 38, have been found guilty of conspiring to traffic about 10kg of high quality heroin.

David Miechel, 36, was found guilty of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of drugs from a home.
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=154794

*sings* another one bites the dust *stops singing*
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Here's another one.

Police faked drug bust to sell drugs: court
October 24, 2006 - 12:48PM

Two former police officers staged a fake drug bust during a $120,000 speed deal so that they could on-sell the drugs, a Sydney court has been told.

A witness known only as APW2 said former NSW police officer Samuel John Foster had asked him to organise the purchase of one kilogram of speed from a dealer in Enfield in south-west Sydney in September 2002.

Foster, 41, and former Victorian police officer James Anthony McCabe would stage a drug bust during the deal and the men would split the drugs among themselves, APW2 told the Downing Centre Local Court today.

"He (Foster) said he would make it look like a drugs bust and I would be arrested," he said.

"He (Foster) would fix the paperwork for me ... and let the supplier go and we would split the money."

APW2 also told the committal hearing about another drug deal he helped organise for Foster and McCabe, involving up to 1,500 ecstasy tablets.

Foster and McCabe were attached to the National Crime Authority, later renamed the Australian Crime Commission, at the time of the alleged offences.

APW2 is giving evidence to a committal hearing for the pair.

Foster, who is facing 16 charges, sat quietly in the dock during today's evidence.

McCabe, 36, is facing two charges.

A warrant for his arrest was issued yesterday after he failed to show up to court.

His solicitor Gordon Elliot yesterday told the court that McCabe was in Cambodia.

The hearing before Magistrate Pat O'Shane continues.

AAP

Sydney Morning Herald
 
Light terms for corrupt drug police
By Natasha Robinson
November 25, 2006 12:00am

PROSECUTORS described it as the most serious example of police corruption in Australia, but two former Victorian drug squad detectives received sentences equivalent to only one-fifth of the maximum penalty yesterday for their part in a multi-million-dollar heroin trafficking ring.

After an investigation that involved a handpicked team of detectives, and a trial that lasted more than four months and cost millions of dollars, former detectives Stephen Cox and Glenn Sadler were jailed yesterday for seven and 10 years respectively.

But Cox may be out of jail in four years, and Sadler in six years, if they are deemed eligible for parole. The maximum penalty for their conviction of conspiring to traffic a commercial quantity of heroin is 25 years in prison.

During a plea hearing last month, prosecutors painted Cox, a former Army Reserve training officer and the most senior of the police in the conspiracy, as the worst of the convicted detectives.

He had "turned the first sod" in instigating the conspiracy, under which a drug informer was supplied with 5.5kg of heroin over two years.

As a detective senior sergeant, mentor and trained leader, his conduct in going over to the "other side" was worse than that of Sadler, who profited more.

"As an instance of police drug corruption, it was the most serious instance we have ever seen in Australia," prosecutor Michael Tovey told the Supreme Court plea hearing.

In sentencing yesterday, judge Stephen Kaye said Cox's active participation in the conspiracy was "significantly more limited than that of your two fellow conspirators", Sadler and Ian Ferguson, who was earlier sentenced to 12 years jail with a minimum of eight years. Cox, who pocketed $20,000 from the proceeds of the conspiracy, actively trafficked heroin for only a few weeks, but was "consulted" from time to time by his co-conspirators, Justice Kaye said.

Cox and Sadler are still facing pecuniary penalty orders, under which the police will attempt to recover Cox's $20,000 profits, and Sadler's $130,000 profits from the conspiracy.

Melbourne barrister and legal commentator Peter Faris yesterday described the sentences as "very light" considering the trust the community placed in the police.

"You could double the sentences and we would not say it was too high," Mr Faris said. "It's obvious other police might think it's worth their while (engaging in corruption) because the odds of being caught are so limited. There should be serious consideration given to an appeal."

The convictions of Cox and Sadler came just weeks before one of Victoria's most senior detectives, Wayne Geoffrey Strawhorn, was found guilty of trafficking pseudoephedrine to a Melbourne underworld figure.

Strawhorn, who during his tenure at the now-disbanded drug squad was the effective boss of the organisation, is yet to be sentenced.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has resisted calls for a royal commission following the convictions of about half the detectives who worked in the drug squad.

The state Government has announced a wide-ranging review of Victoria Police's internal investigation into corruption, conducted by a team of 30 detectives from the Ceja taskforce, after Ceja detectives warned that scores of senior police had either been involved in corruption or turned a blind eye to it, and had gone unpunished.

The Australian / News.com.au
 
Sydney Morning Herald said:
Ex-Vic cop jailed for drug trafficking

December 11, 2006 - 2:59PM

A former top Victorian drug squad officer who sold drugs to an underworld figure has been sentenced to seven years' jail.

After a three-month trial, a jury found former detective senior sergeant Wayne Geoffrey Strawhorn guilty of trafficking a commercial quantity of pseudoephedrine.

The 51-year-old was convicted of trafficking two kilograms of pseudoephedrine to slain underworld figure Mark Moran in May 2000, when Strawhorn was a senior police officer with the drug squad.

At the Victorian Supreme Court, he was sentenced to seven years' jail with a minimum term of four years.

The police officer of almost 30 years - who continues to deny guilt - was stony-faced as the sentence was handed down on Monday.

At the time of the offence, Strawhorn was a senior officer in a drug squad unit responsible for investigating clandestine amphetamine laboratories.

He was largely responsible for the introduction of the new investigation technique that involved undercover police infiltrating the drug world by selling precursor chemicals to illegal drug manufacturers.

It was through this set-up that he sold two kilograms of pseudoephedrine to Moran for $12,000, the court heard.

Strawhorn arranged for a junior police officer to purchase the pseudoephedrine from a pharmacy company, he then passed it on to another police officer and it finally made its way to Moran, the court was told.

Justice David Habersberger said Strawhorn's conduct undermined public confidence in the police force and betrayed the thousands of serving police officers.

The court heard Strawhorn was considered one of the most competent and highly skilled investigators in the drug squad.

"As to why you, with this most impressive record of dedication, competence, intelligence and integrity should have so drastically fallen from grace, by this isolated but very serious instance of offending, remains a mystery," Justice Habersberger said.

The judge said he believed the pursuit of money was not Strawhorn's prime motive and he accepted that the police officer believed that the drug exchange may help its undercover operation achieve success.

"Members of the police force are not above the law and it is simply no excuse that your serious breach of the law may have resulted from some misguided belief that in the end justified the means," he said.

His case comes at a time when the spotlight has fallen on the former Victorian drug squad. Five former drug squad officers have been convicted and jailed this year of drug offences.

SMH
 
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