TRUST NSW POLICE? No thanks…
Some years ago, a young aboriginal lad — T.J. Hickey — was killed in Redfern when pursued by NSW Police. Somehow he managed to get impaled on a fence as a couple of police paddy wagons chased him as a suspect in a minor matter.
I wasn’t there and I don’t know anymore about what happened than anyone else does — including a coroner, police, and politicians.
Nor do I have any intimate knowledge of the recent actions by NSW Police which are resulting in ‘enquiries’ — including the death of a 95 year-old woman from tasering, various police shootings of members of the public, and various police bashings of citizens in public places, and so on — all captured on media.
But I do know something about a matter I was involved in that challenged the way I thought about police for all time, and why I never trust anything the NSW Police Service says.
On the 1st of May 2003, I was a fifty-four year-old, middle-class white Australian with five children. I also have significant physical disabilities from gunshot wounds in Vietnam which have left me permanently, manifestly disabled. For twelve years, I taught High school English before being medically retired.
Until that day, I had not been known to police as they say. Nor had I any record of violent behaviour. Not even an AVO against my name— a rarity these days.
And until that day in May 2003, I firmly believed that our police force represented all that was good about society. I had always taught my children and my school students to respect both the police and their authority. Like most other Australians, whenever police were involved in any sort of controversy, I automatically sided with the police, and accepted their version of events without question.
But in that one single encounter with the police that year down at Kiama, on NSW’s south coast where my wife and I had gone to celebrate my birthday, I lost all my respect for police, and I’ll never give them the benefit of the doubt ever again.
It was the start of a new learning curve for me.
All I’d done was stand my ground in a local bank — the IMB Building Society — over a matter concerning the operation of my banking account. I’d wanted to withdraw $20, but the teller demanded identification. Unfortunately, I’d left my driver’s licence at home, so we had a problem.
But I had withdrawn similar amounts from the same branch of that bank without needing identification a number of times previously. My signature in front of the tellers was all that was ever required of me.
Until this day when the teller demanded some ID. She stuck to her guns, I stuck to mine, explaining that I didn’t need it, hadn’t been asked for it previously, and that they very well knew who I was. The manageress entered the fray, and she sided with the teller.
She asked me to leave. I refused, believing the bank had a responsibility to sort the matter out, and the police were called.
I stood facing the cctv camera, and caused no ruckus.
Within two minutes, not one, not two, but three police officers burst into the bank, and without being given any opportunity to explain my side of the matter, I was told to “F…….move on!” by S/C Alan Pirie — a pugnacious, bully-boy who epitomised the cartoon caricatures of police.
Objecting to the manner of that officer, and refusing to move because my blood was up and was conducting a lawful transaction, I stood my ground. With some difficulty, S/C Pirie managed to get one handcuff on my left wrist, but couldn’t get my other arm down.
With the assistance of a second officer, they eventually got the cuffs on, and I was then dragged from the bank by all three officers, hauled across the pavement in full view of the public, and thrown into a police van despite the seriousness of my disabilities.
In the police van, handcuffed, unable to sit on the narrow seat or hold on, and rolling around on the floor, I was then given a rough ride around the hills and dales and roundabouts of Kiama, the coppers obviously enjoying themselves.
Later, with my wife wandering around Kiama not knowing what had happened or where I was, the police stopped the police van on an isolated part of the highway at Dunmore.
I fully expected the ‘flogging’ cops used to hand as as routine. That didn’t happen.
But only when they removed the handcuffs did they bother to ask me where I lived. I was livid and made it clear that I had every right to stand my ground in that bank as a customer, and they could be sure there would be ramifications for those three officers for what they’d done.
Realising they might have gone overboard, I wasn’t taken to a police station and charged with any offence. Instead, they let me out 500 metres away from my home across from the local shopping centre.
At no point was “duty of care” a concern. No intelligent use of the “discretionary powers” police are encouraged to display.
When I had tried to explain the nature of my disabilities to them in the bank when they attempted to handcuff me, S/C Pirie had said, “I don’t give a f…..what’s wrong with you!” And when I couldn’t pull my leg into the police van because of the way it is pinned at the hip, one of the constables simply slammed the steel door shut against my foot, telling me he’d “make it fit!”
The same officer later admitted in court that he’d seen my operation on Channel 9’s “R.P.A.” programme, and knew full well the extent of my injuries. He knew he had an easy mark that day. I guessed he’d been used to throwing people around.
A month later, knowing that I’d lodged a formal complaint against them, the police maliciously charged me by summons with ‘remaining on enclosed lands’ and ‘resisting arrest. The bank took no action whatsoever.
What I learned from that point on, is that the blue uniform is not a symbol of integrity and honesty and decency. Not in NSW, anyway.
Instead, it protects thugs and cowards in their own ranks. It gives them licence to lie and perjure; the right to collude in respect of getting their stories straight; the freedom to ignore the basics of procedures and administrative tasks.
I learned that even when one of them is revealed to be an incompetent fool by his own commanding officer, he will still be protected by the same commander because that’s the way of it, and paper-shufflers at all levels will do the same in every “investigation”, all the way up the line.
As it is, I survived my encounter with the NSW police.
Fronting the court, I took those three police officers on — one man against the NSW Police Service. Tilting at windmills.
I came out on top. In dismissing both charges in Kiama Court on December 6th that year, Magistrate R. Walker saw fit to comment on the actions of the police as a “farce” and stated for the record that he had “had his suspicions” about the way police had treated me.
He dismissed the evidence of all three police officers, including an inspector, no doubt keenly aware of the inconsistencies in their statements, their collusion, and the blatant, obvious perjury.
Summing up, Magistrate Walker said:
Magistrate Walker was even more condemning of the police action:
But the lack of integrity displayed by the officers in court was to be matched outside of it, when their mates closed ranks in the investigative process. I’m not one to let sleeping dogs lie.
In lodging a formal complaint on the very same day I had been mistreated by the police, I stated that I relied on the bank video to verify my version of the events in that bank because I’d stood at the bank counter staring into it all the time, and fully expected that it would record what was transpiring. In her evidence, the manageress of the building society told the court she had certainly “activated it”.
That video never came to light.
Despite the fact that I subpoened that video myself, it was never provided by the bank, nor the police. They simply told the court that it didn’t exist.
An “investigating” officer later told me that the non-existent video was “inconclusive”, and that allowed him to conclude his investigation in favour of the police. The NSW Ombudsman accepted this without question.
So an ‘investiugating officer’ had seen the footage; but the police then ‘lost’ it. It never swaw the light of day.
The police, and the bank, had every reason not to want to locate that video.
Then, I was to learn that my letter of complaint lodged with the police on the day this happened had been retained at the police station for the officers to read, so that they could use it to prepare themselves for both the court case and the investigation that would follow.
I made the effort to visit the commanding officer of Warilla Police, and put my complaints to him personally. I was confronted not with any sensitive examination of the details of the matter, but a further closing of the ranks from the top. The commander acknowledged that one of the officers involved was “an incompetent fool”, and that he had been “trying to get rid of him for nine months”, but that he “had been hamstrung by anti-dismissal laws” and hadn’t been successful to date.
He then told me that, nevertheless, he would be “looking after” his officers, and that he himself would “be coming after me with everything at his disposal” for lodging the complaint. What that meant, though the commander wasn’t man enough to tell me personally, was that the matter had been sent back to the Director of Public Prosecutions for the investigation of the possibility of an appeal.
No appeal was granted.
The matter ended there.
I am not saying that all police officers in NSW are cowards and incompetents, but I have come across quite a few in recent years — and clealry, so have many other members of the public.
One of my own children was a police officer, and I know a number of others in the force that I’ve taught and played sport with — like Darren Kelly, Rob McMahon and Jason Kennedy, all of whom I regard highly, and who are highly regarded within the force— but they are exceptions.
Quite simply, some NSW police officers cannot be trusted, inside or outside a uniform, or in court.
And that’s a sad state of affairs.
POSTSCRIPT:
As for letting ‘sleeping dogs lie’ as the magistrate suggested, not likely.
During the hearing, S/C Pirie admitted to having ‘witnessed’ the signature of another officer on a witness statement. But it had not actually been signed by the officer who made it, and Pirie, during cross-examination, admitted he had falsely witnessed it.
So, in due course, I took the issue of S/C Alan Pirie witnessing that non-existent signature to the local court in a private prosecution.
I charged him with ‘using a false instrument’. (File No: 05/42/0225)
But I was in unfamiliar territory pursuing a legal matter, and the charge was dismissed.
Apparently there’s one rule for us, and one for the police.
So I lost — and had to pay the court costs.
Not one to walk away from a fight, I then appealed that decision in the District Court — and my appeal was upheld.
A barrister — Daniel Brezniak — was keen to sue the NSW Police Service for false arrest and assault, but I declined the offer. I felt that my daughter’s position in the Police Service would be compromised if I did.
Not pursuing that action was a mistake.
