In 2019 the NSW Police have been in the news and not for the best of reasons

With NSW Police being the subject of negative media reports this year concerning conduct while on duty, perhaps now is the time to look at how matters concerning allegations of police misconduct are handled by government agencies.

Law Enforcement Conduct Commission 2018-19 Annual Report gave this overview with regard to the last financial year:

• furnished 11 reports to the NSW Parliament;

• assessed 2547 complaints;

• conducted 207 investigations, comprising 85 preliminary enquiries, 73 preliminary investigations and 49 full investigations. The number of full investigations almost doubled for the financial year, up from 28 in 2017-18;

• conducted 78 private examinations;

• monitored 32 new NSWPF critical incident investigations, of which 27 critical incidents were attended by Commission staff. Commission staff also continued to monitor 31 existing critical incident investigations from the previous financial year;

• reviewed 1221 and monitored 16 misconduct matter investigations as part of the Commission’s oversight function;

• visited Dubbo, Nowra, Forster, Taree, Kempsey, Maitland, Port Macquarie, Casino, Broken Hill, Wilcannia, Newcastle, Wagga and the greater Sydney region as part of the Commission’s community engagement program; and

• presented to solicitors and community organisations at a range of forums including the Law Society of New South Wales, Gosford Court open day, the Aboriginal Legal Service, Community Legal Centres quarterly conference, multiple domestic violence services, Red Cross Young Parents program, Koori interagency meeting and Legal Aid Cooperative Legal Service Delivery groups around the state, amongst others.

In 2018-19 there were 1,384 (93.7%) complaints received from the general public, 94 (6.3%) from people identified as police officers, 4 (0.2%) from the NSW Crimes Commission and 63 (4.07%) from the NSW Independent Commission against Against Corruption.

During 2018-19 the LECC worked on 207 investigations, comprising 85 preliminary enquiries, 73 preliminary investigations and 49 full investigations. Of these, 104 matters were completed and 103 were ongoing at 30 June 2019.

Of these full investgations 2 were referred to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions for consideration of prosecution, 5 resulted in a dissemination of information to the NSW Police Force and 2 that resulted in information being disseminated to other law enforcement agencies (LEA).

According to The Sydney Morning Herald the 49 full investigations last financial year only represented 2% of the 2,457 assess complaints received.

One of these 2,2457 assessed complaints became the subject of an ABC News online article containing distressing footage of a young mother being arrested after a traffic stop. 

On 23 September 2019 the LECC issued a media release announcing a public hearing with regarding the strip search of an underage female at the Splendour in the Grass music festival at North Byron in July 2018 by NSW Police, and strip search practices more generally.

A report from a formal investigation into strip searching is not yet available.

In October 2019 the LECC published a Report in relation to its investigation in Operation Trieste which dealt with the stopping of a vehicle being driven by a 24 year-old woman with her stepmother as the only passenger. Body cam video footage formed part of the evidence and it was found that 2 police officers “engaged in serious misconduct during the relevant traffic stop in that they breached s 7 of the Police Act, breached the NSWPF Code of Conduct and Ethics and breached the provisions of LEPRA.”

The LECC recommended “that consideration be given to the taking of action against Officer 1 pursuant to s 173 of the Police Act...”

In October 2019 the LECC also published The New South Wales Child Protection Register: Operation Tusket Final Report - 2019 which stated in part that:

The Commission’s investigation has established that there have been problems with the Register for 17 years. Significant errors in the application of the CPOR Act started occurring as early as 2002. These errors have included incorrect decisions by the NSW Police Force about which persons should be included on the Register, and incorrect decisions about how long persons were legally required to make reports of their personal information to police under the CPOR Act (their ‘reporting period’).

Some of these errors have resulted in child sex offenders being in the community without being monitored by the NSW Police Force as required by the CPOR Act. The Commission reviewed one case in which a person reoffended while unmonitored. Other errors have caused the NSW Police Force to unlawfully require people to report their personal information to police for a number of years. As a result, people have been wrongly convicted, and even imprisoned, for failing to comply with CPOR Act reporting obligations, when in fact those obligations did not apply to them at the relevant time. Two persons were unlawfully imprisoned for more than a year in total.

The NSW Police Force has been aware for a number of years that there were significant issues with the Register. In 2014 the NSW Police Force Child Protection Registry (the Registry), the specialist unit in the State Crime Command responsible for maintaining the Register, started filing internal reports warning of systemic issues causing inaccuracies in the Register. Multiple reports from the Registry prompted the NSW Police Force to review 5,749 Register case files. This review was started in 2016 and took two years to complete. In October 2018 it concluded that 44 per cent (2,557) of those Register case files had contained errors.