Gold Coast police 'make up warrants'

Queensland Police officers have been accused of regularly using illegal search warrants to raid innocent people's homes.

The Seven Network on Monday reported that whistleblower detectives claimed officers on the Gold Coast regularly made up evidence to obtain warrants.

The subsequent raids were allegedly used to further the careers of senior management, the network claimed.

The detectives, who asked for their identities to remain secret, also claimed corruption watchdog the Crime and Misconduct Commission had failed to investigate numerous complaints about the alleged illegally obtained warrants.

One detective told the network that illegal warrants had been used in hundreds of raids on the Gold Coast in the last five years.

"This is a major corruption scandal," he told Seven News.

"Specific evidence is required for a search warrant application but on many occasions on the Gold Coast ... that information is simply made up."

He claimed officers routinely drove around public carparks to pick up random licence plate numbers to use in search warrant applications.

"It is done for the purpose of arrest figures and obtaining numbers of search warrants," he said.

Another officer accused senior management of organising "raid days" where warrants applications were "dumped" on officers desks.

"If you didn't have details for 25 warrants then you had to make up addresses and grounds for warrants," he told the network.

"It is a rat's nest. Really good police offices are being made to act illegally."

He claimed police used justices of the peace, who would not read the grounds before signing, to take out the warrants.

A third officer, a former Gold Coast detective, told the network that the "dodgy" warrants were generated to get "keep figures up".

"The grounds of the warrants would not be correct but basically everyone knew you had to meet monthly total of raids and warrants or you would never get a detective's appointment," he said.

"You had to get seven arrests a month to justify yourself. We would have raid days at least once a month were you would have to have warrants.

"Everyone did it. Everyone knew it was wrong but everyone knew you had to get the figures up," he said.

The network claimed the allegations had been referred to the Police Ethical Standards Command 18 months ago but the investigation by police was still unfinished.

aap 20 Oct 2008.