Top cop's contract renewed, despite scandals
08.05.2010
By: MICHAEL MCKENNA
Queensland's crime watchdog is about to turn up the heat on Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson
FEW outside the backrooms of the Bligh government's offices could fathom the February announcement that Bob Atkinson would stay on as Queensland police commissioner for another three years.
It came out of the blue, months before his contract expires in November and when the 10-year boss of Queensland's most powerful bloc of public servants is more vulnerable than any other police chief since the Fitzgerald inquiry exposed the rampant corruption of former commissioner Terry Lewis 20 years ago.
In the Fortitude Valley headquarters of the Crime and Misconduct Commission -- Queensland's corruption watchdog -- the premature extension of Atkinson's career stunned investigators preparing for the bloodiest of exchanges with the police hierarchy in a bitter war that has raged between the two crime-fighting bodies in recent years.
Senior members of the legal community and indigenous leaders also expressed surprise at the government going out on limb for one of its departmental heads, knowing scandals involving police are set to explode this year.
There is no suggestion of a return to the ``brown paper bag'' days of Lewis. Atkinson -- himself a lauded investigator -- has overseen a 26 per cent reduction in crime during his time in the job.
But there is little doubt of the return of the ``old mates'' network, eroding standards and fermenting a culture of ``protecting their own''.
``There are problems; however, he is viewed by the government as having honour and integrity, and there is no one else in the force who is regarded as being ready to take over just yet,'' a senior adviser in the Bligh government tells Inquirer.
In the next few weeks and months, Atkinson will feel the heat of a series of CMC probes.
There is the ongoing ``star chamber'' hearings into misconduct among the ranks on the Gold Coast, and the looming, long-awaited release of the watchdog's damning report into the discredited investigation of the 2004 death in custody of Palm Island man Mulrunji Doomadgee.
Leaks of the CMC Palm Island report claim it will allege a whitewash, involving the tailoring of evidence, by two senior officers of the elite Ethical Standards Command, picked by Atkinson to review the original death-in-custody investigation, condemned in 2006 by deputy coroner Christine Clements as lacking ``transparency, objectivity and independence''. In effect, an alleged cover-up of the cover-up.
This month's release of the CMC's report -- which recommends disciplinary action against the two officers, as well as four of the original investigators -- will return to a recurring theme of failing supervision, self-protection and a refusal of the 10,000-strong force to learn from its mistakes.
Last year, then CMC chairman Robert Needham slammed police over the Tasering -- revealed by The Weekend Australian -- of an unarmed 16-year-old girl.
The incident occurred only days after a year-long trial of Tasers was aborted, with then police minister Judy Spence approving the rollout of the new weapons to general duties officers.
Police had tried to put a legal stop to this newspaper investigating the incident, the only ``Taser deployment'' not detailed with a police media release.
After the subsequent CMC probe, Needham said not only did the girl's Tasering show a ``concerning pattern'' of poor policing, it also confirmed the force was refusing to ``learn from its mistakes''.
``The commission expected the QPS to use the incident as a learning opportunity for the officer involved and for Taser training generally, but there is no evidence to show this has occurred,'' Needham said in March.
``My observations of QPS failure to learn from mistakes are not limited to this case.''
Several months later, Needham's warning proved to be prophetic.
In June, north Queensland man Antonio Galeano, 39, died after he was shot 28 times, according to the Taser's built-in recorder.
A day after the death, Atkinson told the media Galeano had been Tasered just three times.
Again, it took this newspaper to reveal what Ethical Standards Command had gleaned from the Taser's systems about the death, now under investigation by the coroner.
But the most pointed insight into the Queensland police -- save for the six-year scandal over Doomadgee's death -- was the CMC's Dangerous Liaisons report into illegal and improper dealings between officers and prisoners.
Atkinson tried to block the release of the report and later accused the CMC of ``showboating'' by releasing it on the eve of an anti-corruption conference it was hosting in Brisbane.
The report implicated 25 officers for taking illegal payments, confecting charges and passing on confidential information to informants.
The CMC pointed the blame for the misconduct at senior police who ``showed contempt for QPS policies and procedures''.
``Without the pressure for public exposure, the CMC is not confident that the attitude of these officers will change . . . This is one of the reasons I have publicly released our investigative report,'' Needham said.
Atkinson appeared genuinely disgusted by the activities of police and said reforms had been introduced, although he could not guarantee it would never happen again.
``There is always that need for vigilance and alertness and awareness,'' he said.
Within days, Atkinson and Needham were brawling again, after it emerged that two deputy commissioners had opted to impose ``managerial guidance'' instead of disciplining five officers caught up in the prisoner scandal.
The CMC called for an overhaul of the police disciplinary system -- which Atkinson has said is bogged down in legal constraints -- and a review is under way.
The healthy tension between the two bodies first turned toxic in December 2005, when Atkinson produced a report that helped then premier Peter Beattie out of a political crisis.
The CMC had concluded former cabinet minister Gordon Nuttall had misled a state parliament estimates committee and could be prosecuted. Atkinson, at the request of the Beattie government, prepared an 11-page report at short notice in which he rejected the CMC's findings.
It was an act without precedent and drew condemnation from lawyers, then opposition leader Lawrence Springborg and ethicists who raised questions about whether Atkinson had became a political agent for the government.
But the CMC is not squeaky clean.
Blame for the ongoing scandal of the Doomadgee case, unresolved after almost six years, can also be put on the CMC.
With indigenous hatred of police so high after the death in the Palm Island watchhouse, the CMC should have taken over the investigation from the beginning.
Instead, CMC officers were the first to flee the island as the community rioted, leaving police to stand their ground and later investigate the death.
Again, after deputy coroner Clements slammed the investigation in 2006, the CMC allowed the police Ethical Standards Command to run the new probe.
In 2007, the police handed its 250-page report -- vetted by independent counsel -- to the CMC, which rejected it.
The CMC then began its own investigation, three years too late.
It is not known whether the CMC's new report attacks Atkinson or whether the fallout from it will force him from office.
It is possible. As one government insider tells Inquirer, the contract for his three-year extension has yet to be signed.
