Category Archives: Australian police and policing

Festival deaths inquest: police pushed to release protocols after ‘unconscionable’ strip searches

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Counsel assisting coroner says public deserves to know ‘under what circumstances are police entitled to strip search patrons’

The New South Wales coroner will push for the state’s police force to release its strip search protocols as part of an inquest into drug-related deaths at music festivals.

Counsel assisting the coroner Peggy Dwyer told the court on Thursday that the inquest had yet to receive “police protocols” on when strip searches could be carried out in the state, but that she intended to pursue the matter .

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‘Drug of the moment’: 5% of year 10 students have tried MDMA, expert says

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Drug educator Paul Dillon says it’s ‘ludicrous’ to think pill testing will stop drug deaths, but Australia does need to try something

One in 20 year 10 students have tried ecstasy, an Australian drug educator has told an inquest into NSW music festival deaths.

“It just baffles me,” Paul Dillon said in Sydney on Tuesday. “Certainly amongst young people, MDMA is the drug of the moment.”

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Death in custody: police failed to see Indigenous man no longer needed restraining, coroner says

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Shaun Coolwell died in hospital after being handcuffed and injected with the sedative midazolam

Queensland police and paramedics dealing with an Indigenous man during a violent, drug-induced episode failed to recognise the sudden deterioration of his health, a coroner has said.

Shaun Charles Coolwell died in hospital after being sedated and restrained in his sister’s Logan home, south of Brisbane, in October 2015.

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Police excavate Brisbane property in search for US woman missing since July

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Partner assisting with inquiries as cold case disappearance of Priscilla Brooten becomes a homicide investigation

Queensland police are excavating the front yard of a home in Brisbane’s north where a missing American woman lived with her partner.

Priscilla Brooten was formally reported missing in December last year but the 46-year-old was last seen in July, in Bracken Ridge.

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Darwin shooting: man charged with four counts of murder

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Four men died and a woman was injured in this week’s shooting rampage in Darwin

Northern Territory police have charged the man suspected of a shooting rampage in Darwin with four counts of murder.

Four men died and a woman was injured after being shot in the leg on Tuesday night.

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AFP signals journalists could face charges for publishing secrets

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Acting AFP commissioner denies the government directed the investigations, which have led to raids on the ABC and News Corp this week

The Australian federal police have all but confirmed that ABC and News Corp journalists could be charged for publishing protected information after two dramatic days of raids which prompted outrage and drew international attention to Australia’s draconian secrecy laws.

The acting AFP commissioner, Neil Gaughan, held a press conference on Thursday to contain political fallout, denying suggestions the police had waited until after the federal election to execute warrants and claiming no contact had been made with the executive since they informed home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s office when the investigations started.

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Western Australian police stations to fly Aboriginal flag in reconciliation move

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Indigenous community welcomes plan but warns against prioritising symbolism over action

Western Australia will become the first state in Australia to permanently fly the Aboriginal flag outside every police station as part of an attempt to address long-standing divisions between police and Indigenous communities.

The proposal forms part of WA police’s first ever reconciliation action plan, released on Tuesday, which also includes a promise to increase Indigenous staffing levels in the organisation, develop protocols for delivering a Welcome to Country at police events, and “look into the feasibility of offering Aboriginal language lessons to staff”.

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Courtney Herron: woman murdered in Melbourne park died from ‘horrendous bashing’

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Victoria police said Herron, who had no fixed address, was killed in Royal Park on Friday night

Courtney Herron, a 25-year-old woman of no fixed address, has been identified as the victim of “a horrendous bashing” on Friday night that occurred before she was found dead in Royal Park in Parkville, Melbourne, Victoria police say.

The latest victim of violence directed at a young woman alone on Melbourne’s streets at night, Herron’s death has horrified Melbourne.

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Woman found dead in Parkville, Melbourne in ‘horrendous crime’

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The body, yet to be identified, was discovered in the area between the Melbourne Zoo and Royal Children’s hospital

A woman’s body has been found in Melbourne between the Melbourne Zoo and the Royal Children’s hospital, in what police have described as a “horrendous crime”.

They have cordoned off a large section of the Royal park in Parkville, encompassing North Park Tennis Club and the Flemington Road Cricket Oval, as well as Elliott Avenue.

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Cheryl Grimmer case: NSW won’t force prosecution of man previously charged with toddler’s murder

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Attorney general won’t appeal court’s decision to omit suspect’s confession to killing Grimmer, which was made when he was 17

The New South Wales attorney general will not intervene to force the prosecution of a man charged with the murder of toddler Cheryl Grimmer 49 years ago.

Mark Speakman said on Friday that he would not use his power to instruct the department of public prosecutions to appeal the supreme court’s decision to omit a crucial piece of evidence in the cold case.

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Sydney police officer charged with neglect of duty over sex offender complaint

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Complaint failed to get Anthony Peter Sampieri off the streets before he allegedly raped a child at a dance studio

A police officer has been charged with neglect of duty after a complaint about a sex offender failed to get him off the streets before he allegedly raped a child at a Sydney dance studio.

Anthony Peter Sampieri, 55, allegedly raped, choked and filmed a seven-year-old girl he held captive in a Kogarah dance studio bathroom in November.

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Coalition’s proposed anti-corruption body flawed and weak, police veteran warns

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Chris Douglas calls for federal integrity commission to be handed wide-ranging powers

A long-serving former senior federal police officer has warned that the Coalition’s proposed integrity commission is flawed, weak and would “not be capable of responding to current corruption threats”.

Chris Douglas, a 31-year veteran of the Australian federal police, has called for the integrity commission to be handed wide-ranging powers, including the ability to recruit informants, use undercover operatives, make arrests and deploy wire taps.

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Australian agencies had ‘no reason to restrict travel’ of Christchurch accused, MPs told

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Senior home affairs official says no major changes planned to ‘scientifically calibrated’ focus on terrorism after attack

Australian security agencies had no information to suggest the man accused of the Christchurch mosque massacre should be placed on a watchlist or prevented from leaving the country, a Senate committee has heard.

However, there were no major changes being made to Australia’s “scientifically calibrated” focus on different types of terrorism, the home affairs department secretary, Michael Pezzullo, said.

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Lawyer X informed for police for 19 months after she was official source, inquiry told

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Police continued to receive information from Nicola Gobbo until 27 August 2010, royal commission told

Police were still using Nicola Gobbo, the woman known as “Lawyer X”, as an informant for 19 months after she was deregistered as a confidential source, a royal commission has heard.

Gobbo, 46, was a registered police source in 1995, in 1999, and from September 2005 to January 2009, informing on a number of her own high-profile gangland clients, including Tony Mokbel.

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Queensland to repeal police discipline system set up after Fitzgerald inquiry

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Exclusive: Civil liberties experts sound alarm, saying ‘police have given us no reason to trust that they can investigate themselves impartially’

Queensland is poised to repeal the police disciplinary system established after the landmark Fitzgerald corruption inquiry, prompting concerns from civil liberties experts that the proposed changes have “fundamental” flaws.

Legislation to establish a new police discipline system was tabled in the state parliament last month, after years of pressure from the influential Queensland police union. The bill has bipartisan support and will likely pass later this year.

The police union president, Ian Leavers, has hailed the demise of “the old punitive police discipline system” established in 1990, in the immediate aftermath of the Fitzgerald inquiry.

The new system encourages the use of “management strategies” rather than formal sanctions for police misconduct and misbehaviour. Officers can no longer have their salary reduced. Complaints are to be “streamlined” to ensure they do not take longer than 12 months.

Related: Queensland police accused of 'whitewash' over investigation into shredded rape file

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The Killing Times: the massacres of Aboriginal people Australia must confront

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Special report: Shootings, poisonings and children driven off cliffs – this is a record of state-sanctioned slaughter

• A massacre map of Australia’s frontier wars – interactive

The truth of Australia’s history has long been hiding in plain sight.

The stories of “the killing times” are the ones we have heard in secret, or told in hushed tones. They are not the stories that appear in our history books yet they refuse to go away.

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The Kid and The Choirboy – the harrowing story of George Pell’s victims

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In this extract from Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell, one boy’s family tell Louise Milligan the cataclysmic effect abuse had on him

This is the story of two teenage boys sent on scholarships from what were then Melbourne’s inner suburbs to a Catholic boys’ school – St Kevin’s College. St Kevin’s is in Toorak, Melbourne’s most exclusive precinct.

The school is wedged between the Kooyong Tennis Club and the Yarra River, and closed behind grand iron gates with gilded lettering. The boys wear boater hats and navy blazers, candy-striped with emerald and gold. While the area the boys came from has now gentrified, in the 1990s it might as well have been a different planet.

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Deeper, wider, longer: lawyer X inquiry reveals corruption of justice system | Richard Ackland

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As the identity of Informer 3838 remains under wraps, the royal commission into police informants exposes a scandal that worsens by the day

It’s a matter of pride for lawyers that they are free and able to work both sides of the street. In particular the cab-rank rule for barristers dictates as much. One day as a prosecutor, next for an accused; for the state and against it. And in the civil sphere there’s much swapping of hats while working for plaintiffs and alternatively for defendants.

Now we have the Victorian police informer and former barrister known variously as Lawyer X, Informer 3838 or in judicial proceedings as EF, working “both sides of the street” to new and previously unexplored levels. She was shopping her clients to the police who were prosecuting them, notably when she acted as counsel for Melbourne crime figure Tony Mokbel and his associates while simultaneously providing information to the police about her clients. About eight years ago Victoria police paid her almost $2.9m in compensation for her troubles.

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Aiia Maasarwe: 20-year old Melbourne man charged over Bundoora killing

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The Greensborough man has been charged with one count of murder and will appear at the Melbourne magistrates’ court

The Victorian police have charged a 20-year-old man with the murder of Palestinian student Aiia Maasarwe.

Maasarwe, a 21-year-old an Israeli national from the predominantly Arab city of Baqa al-Gharbiyye had been in Melbourne for six months, and was attacked just after midnight on Tuesday, Victorian police believe.

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Victoria police falsified breath tests to meet ‘unachievable’ targets, inquiry finds

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Police ramped up breath testing target from 3.2m to 4.5m but had a ‘perverse’ incentive to limit the number of drunk drivers netted

An independent investigation has branded Victoria police’s widespread practice of falsifying breath tests as an “ethical failure”.

The former police chief commissioner Neil Comrie’s inquiry was unable to determine exactly how many times police had manipulated breath test devices to falsely inflate the number of tests conducted.

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