Police resign over draconian 'rules' (i.e. not even law)

Mass departures and recruitment issues a major challenge for Victoria Police command

Police members have revealed why they are walking away from the job amid calls for change to stem the exodus and fix recruitment issues.

Victoria Police is fighting for numbers with almost one in nine officers leaving since 2019 and the force struggling for recruits.

It can be revealed 1912 sworn members out of a 16,700-strong workforce retired or resigned in the three-and-a-half years to July.

Although overall officer numbers have increased in that period, the departures and recruitment issues are a major challenge for command.

The Herald Sun has been told many of those who left did so as a result of enforcing draconian Covid rules, such as children not being allowed on playgrounds.

While the vast majority are rank and file members, 530 are of sergeant level and above, showing the force has lost thousands of years of experience.

Sixty per cent had reached retirement age or finished because of ill health.

The alarming departures are combined with “very few recruits” training at the academy and a dire number of applications to join Victoria Police.

Senior police are aware Covid rules left many officers feeling “wondering what they were doing”.

Victoria Police has just launched a recruitment drive to try to gain 2400 members in the next two years, following an attrition rate rise from 3.6 per cent last year to 4.7 per cent this year.

At some stations, managers have emailed all staff pleading with them to “speak to their peers and encourage them to transfer” to their station.

“We are starting to feel the pinch with staffing,” a memo for the Whitehorse, Monash, Boroondara and Manningham areas reads.

“After Monday’s gazette the number of unmatched vacancies is about 34 positions across the division. With very few recruits in the Academy the only way to address this issue is for every ED1 member to speak to their peers and encourage them to transfer into ED1.”

But officers told the Herald Sun it was a “solution” that only “robbed Peter to pay Paul”.

The Herald Sun is also aware of some policing departments having to reduce hours due to “unprecedented” staff shortages.

“Covid took a massive toll on the force – we were not only dragged from pillar to post, manning state and regional borders to being thrust at protest after protest, but then we were expected to stop toddlers playing on slides and grannies sitting on benches in the park,” one senior constable, who left last year, said.

“So many of us just became disillusioned with the job. It’s not what we came into policing for and we felt let down by our superiors, who were just toeing these ridiculous government edicts.”

Many officers are believed to have transferred to other state police forces, with Queensland being a popular choice.

Some Victoria Police departments are facing ‘unprecedented’ staff shortages. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

The figures the Herald Sun has obtained are up to July last year. But one senior officer said they expected the situation to get worse, as many of those thinking of retiring or resigning had held on during the pandemic and lockdowns.

Another officer said the 41 who left the force due to vaccine mandates should be urgently brought back.

“Surely now is the time, when we are bleeding officers and struggling to recruit them at the front door, that we should be inviting these members back,” they said.

“We have lost a lot of seniority and experience from the ranks.”

Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt said the union was working with the force and identifying areas where improvements could be made to streamline the recruitment process.

“We acknowledge attrition is not working in our favour and that recruiting at the moment is difficult,’’ he said.

“We believe that Covid has played a part in increased attrition rates and we’re not surprised. Our members worked tirelessly through that period and the work was, and remains, exhausting.”

Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt says ‘recruiting at the moment is difficult’. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Sergeant Gatt said the largest number of resignations was in the 30 to 39 year age group, meaning members were leaving earlier in their careers than previously.

“Placing an emphasis on attracting new recruits to policing is something that needs to happen constantly, but it’s more important now than it ever has been, given the rapid changes we’ve seen in the working world over the last three years,” he said.

“This is something that Victoria Police, TPAV and the Victorian government will have to prioritise during our enterprise bargaining negotiations, due to commence next year.”

Victoria Police said the increased attrition levels came in a period of historically low unemployment which was driving an extremely competitive job market.

A spokesman said the level of departures appeared to have stabilised in the past three months.

“Police reaching retirement age, many who’d delayed this decision during the pandemic, drove the recent increase in member departures,” the spokesman said.

More Victoria Police officers are walking away from the job. Picture: Luis Enrique Ascui

“We make every effort to ensure our members know they are valued, are boosting mental health and wellbeing support to reduce the impact of psychological harm related to work and reviewing our rostering practices to better understand the needs of our workforce and the community.”

He said the force was intent on building the workforce, with a new recruitment campaign recently launching to add 502 police and 50 protective services officers over the next two years.

“As part of this effort we are streamlining the recruitment process, with a trial starting in January to explore options in exam testing so applicants can complete it online anywhere, any time,” the spokesman said.

Applicants who just missed selection or withdrew from the recruitment process would be contacted “to provide appropriate support for success.”

Source:heraldsun.com.au

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Tesla Fined $2.2M In Korea For Exaggerating Cold Weather Range

Tesla has been fined $2.2 million in South Korea for failing to inform customers that its electric vehicles offer shorter driving range in low temperatures.

The Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) said the fine of 2.85 billion won ($2.2 million) is warranted because Tesla had exaggerated the "driving ranges of its cars on a single charge, their fuel cost-effectiveness compared to gasoline vehicles as well as the performance of its Superchargers," Reuters reported.

Korea's antitrust watchdog said Tesla made these exaggerated claims on its official local website since August 2019 until recently. In a statement on January 3, the KFTC said the driving range of Tesla's electric cars plunge in cold weather by up to 50.5 percent versus how they are advertised online. 

On its website, Tesla provides winter driving tips, such as preconditioning vehicles with external power sources and using its updated Energy app to monitor energy consumption. The automaker does not mention the loss of driving in sub-zero temperatures, though.

The KFTC ruling comes after South Korean consumer group Citizens United for Consumer Sovereignty said in 2021 that the driving range of most EVs drops by up to 40 percent in cold temperatures when batteries need to be heated. Citing data from the country's environment ministry, the group noted that Tesla EVs suffer the most in this respect.

Electric vehicles are known to experience reduced driving range in extreme temperatures, although they are popular in markets with cold climates such as Norway, where four of five vehicles sold in 2022 were battery-powered – with Tesla being the No. 1 automaker.

A 2020 study of 4,200 connected EVs of all brands by Canada-based telematics provider Geotab found that most models had a similar drop in range in cold weather, mainly because the battery is also used to heat the car's interior for the driver and passengers. The study found that at minus 15 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit), the average EV had only 54 percent of its rated range.

In 2022, the KFTC fined Mercedes-Benz and its Korean unit 20.2 billion won ($15.8 million) for false advertising tied to gas emissions of its diesel passenger vehicles.

Source: insideevs.com

Office of Special Investigator says its Lawyer X probe is being hampered

A probe into the Lawyer X scandal has burned through nearly all of its $20m in funding and is battling to obtain secret documents.

Nicola Gobbo with gangland boss Carl Williams and underworld hit man Andrew `Benji’ Veniamin at the height of the gangland war.

Victoria

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Victoria’s Office of Special Investigator says its probe of the Lawyer X scandal is being hampered and it needs more money or powers to uncover the truth.

Special investigator Geoffrey Nettle will lobby the ­Andrews government for a budget boost as he examines whether any crimes were committed by Victoria Police officers or lawyer turned ­informer Nicola Gobbo.

The Office of Special ­Investigator has been battling to obtain secret documents and is fighting to unredact thousands more as Mr Nettle compiles a brief of evidence into the use of Gobbo as “human source 3838”.

But the Herald Sun can ­reveal the OSI has burned through nearly all of its $20m in funding. Mr Nettle, a former High Court justice, made his frustrations clear, describing the OSI’s progress as “extraordinarily time consuming and expensive”.

Flagging a need for ­additional funding and investigative powers, he cited “statutory secrecy made by a bevy of law enforcement agencies” as a key reason the OSI was being “impeded by factors beyond its control”.

Nicola Gobbo was a police informant during during Melbourne's gangland wars.

“Unlike some other investigative organisations, such as, for example, the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, OSI does not have statutory power in relation to the investigation of possible criminal offences to compel persons to answer questions, or to compel the production of records, or to override unspecified or generic Crown claims of privilege,” he said.

During the 2019-20 Lawyer X royal commission, ­Victoria Police redacted significant amounts of sensitive intelligence.

Lawyers and police officers blacked out slabs of information it did not want made public before handing over documents. Other documents were not handed over due to legal privilege or secrecy ­provisions.

Special investigator Geoffrey Nettle.

To gain access to these documents or have them unredacted, the OSI must go to court.

Mr Nettle said he would not identify individuals or organisations who have helped or impeded its probe to date.

“For the time being, it would be ill-advised for the OSI to identify those persons and organisations who have so far assisted OSI and those who have refused to do so,” he stated.

“These are matters which, by and large, should remain confidential until OSI’s investigations have been concluded or, possibly, the Director of Public Prosecutions has determined whether a prosecution should proceed.”

Former Chief Commissioner Simon Overland.

It is understood Victoria Police current and former members who were Ms Gobbo’s handlers have not ­assisted the OSI. Among the officers Mr Nettle may be investigating over their conduct are former chief commissioners Simon Overland and Graham Ashton.

If Mr Nettle finds criminal offences were committed, he will hand a brief of evidence to Victoria’s Director of Public Prosecutions to consider charges.

The Office of ­Special Investigator began its work into the Lawyer X scandal in December 2021 and was allocated an initial $13.5m to complete its work.

It was given a further funding boost in the 2022-2023 budget, splitting $3.2m with the Victorian Inspectorate and a further $4.4m as part of last year’s Victorian Economic and Fiscal Update.

But the Herald Sun has been told the near $20m is fast running out due to the costly battle for answers.

It is believed Mr Nettle wants to increase his staff by at least 10, including hiring more lawyers.

 Ms Gobbo, who was the go-to lawyer for Melbourne’s underworld during the gangland war, provided police ­crucial information about her own clients that helped “roll” underworld hit men and drug cooks against high-profile gangland bosses such as Tony Mokbel and Carl Williams.An Andrews government spokesman said it supported the work of the OSI but could not comment on any extra funding.

Your expensive analog vinyl record reissue is actually...digital

An audiophile scandal leads to a lawsuit

Do you know what’s really etched in the grooves of your vinyl record collection? As reported by Billboard (via Pitchfork), a class-action lawsuit has been filed against record reissue label Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab (Mofi) by a North Carolina resident who claims that the label misrepresented the process used to create its Original Master Recording and Ultradisc One Step releases. 

What about those records was misrepresented? According to the lawsuit, the audiophile owners of the best turntables who are buyers of those discs – in this specific case a reissue of the Pretenders’ 1979 debut LP – were expecting them to be produced using a fully analog process, with an original master tape retrieved from a vault used to directly cut a master that would then be sourced to create a very limited run of accordingly high-priced vinyl records. 

Instead, Mofi tapped a digital format called DSD (Direct Stream Digital) to create the master used for that Pretenders re-issue, along with many more releases extending back to at least 2011.

The digital divide 

Lawsuits notwithstanding, there’s nothing unusual about a digital master being used to create a run of vinyl records. Aside from a small group of boutique labels that insist on analog mastering (which, up until recently, included Mofi) it’s standard music industry practice. DSD was developed as an archival format for audio, and Mofi’s use of DSD 256, which has a sample rate that’s 256 times as high as a regular CD, is actually a much better-quality than average process.

But the problem here is that DSD is not analog – something hardcore collectors expect from their vinyl and are willing to pay handsomely for.

The origin of the situation that got Mofi in hot water – a YouTube record reviewer landed a visit to the company’s California mastering facility and was able to get the engineers to admit to using a digital step as part of their process during an otherwise casual interview – along with the social media fallout that followed is well explained in this post by Canadian audiophile journal SoundStage!

As a result of that intense public scrutiny, Mofi issued a statement and interview on its website addressing the controversy. In the interview, company president Jim Davis makes a completely reasonable case for making the switch from analog to digital mastering, citing that record labels over time had become unwilling to ship out analog master tapes of recordings, even to create limited run reissues. Interestingly, instead of being down in any way on DSD, Davis states that it yields “superior sonics compared to a cut that is direct from the analog tape to the lathe.”

The quest for audio truth

As a casual record collector myself, I learned quickly when the recent vinyl revival kicked in and LP releases became standard again that there wasn’t much of a difference to be heard between the LP version of a new recording by bands that I liked and the CD release of the same. The likely reason: identical digital files had been sourced to create both the vinyl and the CD release.

That’s not to say there’s no difference between CD and vinyl mastering. When I discussed that subject with Gary Hobish, proprietor of A. Hammer Mastering in San Francisco and an engineer with 40 years of experience working with both formats, he told me that less dynamic compression is typically employed for vinyl than for CD. Also, the effects of that should be audible, especially for catalogue re-issues where a vintage vinyl version is available to reference during re-mastering.

I ultimately stopped buying new records but kept on collecting old vinyl that had been issued in the pre-digital audio era. Some of those 1970s analog-era recordings – Rod Stewart’s Every Picture Tells a Story and David Crosby’s If I Could Only Remember My Name, for example – sound fantastic, and were well worth the ten or so dollars each that I paid for them.

I also own a bunch of more recent Mofi Original Master Recordings, and have no quarrel with them when it comes to sound quality. But, like the complainant in the class-action lawsuit, I too thought these were created using an end-to-end analog process. That was mainly due to Mofi’s marketing on each record’s packaging, which speaks of the company’s Gain 2 Ultra Analog system, and how they strive to “ensure optimum sound quality by strictly limiting the number of pressings for each release.”

To me that’s the language of analog mastering of off-the-master tape, limited batch releases, and at Mofi for the last few years at least, that hasn’t exactly been the case. I won’t be lining up for the class-action suit, but I am glad to see that Mofi has started accurately listing when a digital step is used to produce a specific release on its website – something they should have started doing years ago.

Source:TechRadar.com

Officer Charged with Fabricating Evidence, But His Victim Explains that Coverups Run Deep

NEVER trust police. Record all interactions, preferably via a hidden device.

There are plenty of officers that act illegally, where only a handful are accused and see court time over it.

When NSW police constable Daniel Keneally answered the phone at Newtown Police Station on 24 February 2021 to speak to the caller, Luke Brett Moore, neither man knew the other.

Wanting to discuss this state’s police misuse of strip searches, Moore was happy to talk with whichever officer happened to be on phone duty that day, as he’d been the subject of an illegal strip search in 2017.

Recent years have seen the misuse and overuse of these searches the focus of a campaign led by former NSW Greens MLC David Shoebridge and the Redfern Legal Centre, as well as the invasive practice having been the subject of a Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) inquiry.

Perhaps the call annoyed Keneally. Who knows? But it did lead the then 23-year-old constable to write an official statement in which he fabricated a version of events that had Moore threatening the lives of then NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller and Goulburn police officer Ed Taylor.

Regardless of why the son of the well-known former Labor senator, Kristina, blatantly lied, it led detectives from the Fixated Persons Investigations Unit to arrest Moore the following day, and the innocent man then spent 21 nights in solitary confinement at the South Coast Correctional Centre.

And on Tuesday, the LECC announced that the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions has laid charges against Keneally over the fraud allegations, which were the subject of a “belated” investigation by the state’s police watchdog, which occurred only after the matter had been raised in parliament.

But, according to Moore, the story goes much further, and it raises serious questions, as per usual, about the culture that prevails within this state’s law enforcement agency.

Questions remain

“I’m relieved that they finally charged him. But it’s crazy it took this long for them to do something,” Moore said straight after he’d heard the news on Tuesday. “It has been mentioned in parliament three times. They know I am suing them. It has been reported in the media for 18 months.”

“They tried to cover it up from the moment it started happening,” the law graduate, who is waiting to be admitted until after this matter is finalised, told Sydney Criminal Lawyers. “They all just happened to get busted because I wouldn’t leave it alone.”

Kenneally has been charged with fabricating false evidence, contrary to section 317(b) of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW). And if he’s found guilty, he faces up to 10 years behind bars.

The reason why Moore isn’t still up on the three offences he’d been charged with, including using a carriage service to threaten to kill, is that he’d recorded the call he made, which clearly shows he didn’t threaten anyone’s life, as well as conveying the level of deceit Keneally stooped to.

“I’m grateful that they’ve finally taken action against Daniel Keneally,” Moore reiterated. “But what I would like to know is what’s happening with the other officers that attempted to cover it up.”

Protecting their own

Fixated Persons Unit detective Malcolm Felgate charged Moore with the three federal offences on arrest. However, the law graduate claims that the detective was aware of the recording of the Keneally conversation stored on his phone within days of his being remanded for three weeks.

“The detective that charged me knew I was innocent within two or three days of me being in gaol, and not only let me rot there, but continued with the prosecution for two or three months,” said Moore, adding that Felgate “dropped off the brief of evidence to me that included the recording”.

After 21 nights spent in solitary confinement based on the lies of a young constable, who seemed comfortable to contemplate an innocent man he didn’t know facing multiple charges, which together carried up to 16 years imprisonment, Moore was released on his second attempt at bail.

“The case was only dropped when it went to the Director of Public Prosecutions and they just withdrew it without any explanation,” Moore said, hinting that the obvious reason was there was clear evidence that he had not threatened the now retired police commissioner.

Moore then took the matter to the LECC, which stated it was beyond its mandate, and referred it back to NSW police. Keneally’s superior, superintendent Sam Crisafulli then informed Moore that it had been found the constable had not acted with due diligence and that was the end of the matter.

Lies upon lies

On Tuesday, the NSW Police Force released a statement in relation to the case, outlining a serving officer, “attached to the Central Metropolitan Region”, had been charged, following a subsequent LECC investigation, which resulted in the police watchdog referring the matter to the NSW DPP.

“The constable… is due to appear at Downing Centre Local Court on Thursday 17 November 2022, for the offence of fabricate false evidence with intent to mislead judicial tribunal,” the statement reads. “The officer’s employment status is under review.”

Indeed, during a 31 August budget estimates hearing, NSW MLC Rod Roberts queried incumbent NSW police commissioner Karen Webb on constable Keneally’s “current employments status”, to which she replied, “he was originally suspended and he’s now back in the workplace”.

However, Roberts put supplementary questions to NSW police minister Paul Toole regarding Keneally’s alleged suspension, to which he replied on 27 September, “Constable Keneally was never suspended from the NSW Police Force and is a current serving police officer”.

A law unto itself

Moore was offered a compensatory settlement of $170,000 that came with a confidentiality clause, which he declined last December. The Nowra man, who runs legal service ISUEPOLICE.COM, has since lodged civil proceedings against the state police force with the NSW Supreme Court.

“It’s effectively ruined my life,” he underscored. “I was just about to finish my law degree when all this happened. I’d just begun my business. And when it came out and people thought it was all true, it was really difficult for me to get along in the legal profession.”

Of course, this matter raises further serious questions about how the NSW Police Force is operating, as this young officer obviously thought there was no issue with getting away with such a crime, other officers then tried to cover it up, and when it was exposed, there was no initial action taken.

During an interview on strip search misuse in August, Redfern Legal Centre senior police accountability solicitor Samantha Lee suggested it’s time for another Royal Commission into NSW police, in terms of how its operating “beyond the legislative framework” and its “cultural demise”.

“There is obviously a culture of corruption and coverup,” Moore said in conclusion. “They tried to cover it up from the moment it started happening.”

“If it’s so hard for me to get justice in this situation, where I’m a qualified legal professional, how on Earth an ordinary person could try to get justice is beyond me.”

Source: SydneyCriminalLawyers.com.au