Last week Victoria's Office of Police Integrity (OPI) has probed allegations that senior detectives interfered in a murder investigation to help their former colleague Paul Dale, the prime suspect in the case. One policing specialist says the process at work is a kind of blind loyalty between officers, known as the 'blue curtain of silence'.
The culture of protection is something that has surprised and appalled the former Federal Court judge presiding over the corruption hearings, Murray Wilcox QC.
Certainly a distinct disrespect for police whose job it is to investigate police was palpable in many of secretly recorded phone conversations played to the OPI this week.
Conversations like this one, where former senior detective Dale is happy to denigrate internal investigators in the foulest of language.
Paul Dale: "Tell 'em to go and get f****..."
Unkown person: "Exactly."
Pasul Dale: "They are just f**** trying to f**** ruin my life."
In another phone tap played to the hearing this week a different policeman was heard wishing officers from the Ethical Standards Department would all die.
Justice Wilcox QC told the hearing that comments like this come from a culture where internal investigators are seen as the scum of the earth.
Indeed former drug squad detective Dale was even caught on tape explicitly telling a witness not to cooperate with detectives from the OPI.
"Do not cooperate in any way, shape or form," he told the witness.
"I'd be most disappointed if I ever see a statement with your name on it."
In another phone tap, he asks a friend and still-serving police officer Denis Linehan to visit another witness.
"I was hoping if you had the opportunity, um, of being able to drop in and possibly give him a little bit of free legal advice, if you know what I mean," he said.
Both men deny the so-called free legal advice was code for telling this witness to shut up.
All for one
But what can not be denied is that senior detectives like Mr Linehan showed no reluctance to continue to help and fraternise with their former colleague Paul Dale - even when they knew he was suspected of involvement in the double murder of former drug dealer-turned police informant Terrence Hodson and his wife Christine in 2004.
Policing specialist Colleen Lewis from Monash University says this willingness to put personal relationships ahead of their responsibilities as police officers is a sign of the almost blind loyalty that can arise between police.
She coined the phrase, the 'blue curtain of silence'.
"It's this strong code that actually encourages police to cover up the misconduct and even sometimes the criminal activities of other officers," she said.
Associate Professor Lewis says public hearings like this week's will help discourage such misguided allegiances.
"You're seeing now police officers who are going to quite possibly be in trouble themselves because of the blind loyalty that they've showed to other officers," she said.
Victoria's chief commissioner of Police Christine Nixon has already introduced a new policy aimed at stamping out so-called 'improper relationships'.
Given the culture that has been on display this week, the OPI is now expected to recommend more measures to tackle the problem.
Adapted from an AM report by Jane Cowan
abc 15 Jun 2008Is this person for real??? !!! Is he really SUPRISED and APPALLED?????
If so he MUST be retarded!!!! Everyone is aware of what is going on except this Anglo-Masonic Fossil. Get rid of him!!!
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