Bad Cop No Donut
What police misconduct have we uncovered BCND?
A man was hospitalised after being shot in the shoulder by Perth police.
According to Western Australia police, a police car drove up behind a stolen vehicle in the driveway in Seville Grove, in Perth’s eastern suburbs.
Police say the car reversed into the police vehicle multiple times, causing damage, in an attempt to get past.
“[The officer] discharged his firearm into the vehicle of interest, the round entered the front windscreen and struck the driver in the shoulder,” Inspector Geoff Desanges said at a press conference.
NITV News understands the wounded man’s two teenage children were home at the time and witnessed their father being shot by police.
First Nation’s Deaths in Custody Committee Chairperson, Mervyn Eades, told local media police discharging their guns should be a “last resort”.
“The trauma that’s gonna be impacted on the children is gonna be massive,” he said.
“We don’t condone stealing cars, we don’t condone committing crimes. But we will not condone the police using excessive force upon our people.”
Police say the man is in stable condition with non-life threatening injuries.
A media statement by WA Police says officers on the scene administered first aid, and ambulance attended the scene transporting the man to Royal Perth Hospital.
An internal investigation is currently being carried out by the WA Police, with the officer who fired the gun remaining on active duty.
A Georgia police chief says an officer was justified in using a Taser to stun an 87-year-old woman after she didn’t obey commands to drop a knife in her hand.
Martha Al-Bishara was charged with criminal trespass and obstructing an officer Friday, when police held her at gunpoint before bringing her to the ground with a jolt from the electrified prongs of a stun gun.
“An 87-year-old woman with a knife still has the ability to hurt an officer,” Chatsworth Police Chief Josh Etheridge told the Daily Citizen-News of Dalton.
“There was no anger, there was no malice in this,” Etheridge say. “In my opinion, it was the lowest use of force we could have used to simply stop that threat at the time.”
But Al-Bishara’s relatives say the officers should have shown more patience.
Solomon Douhne the woman’s great-nephew is quoted as saying “If three police officers couldn’t handle an 87-year-old woman, you might want to reconsider hanging up your badge.
A woman in Victoria is suing the police for failing to protect her from her violent ex partner.
When Tara* took out her first intervention order against her partner in 2006, she’d already suffered a year of violence and abuse.
Steven* had ransacked their home while she was pregnant with their first baby — screaming at her and breaking the home phone and her mobile phone so she couldn’t call for help.
Her loud cries for help prompted neighbours to call police. It was later recorded in the police database as “a lover’s tiff”.
Over the next year, Steven would forcibly take their baby from the home, until police officers intervened.
His own sister would tell police Steven was a violent man who had once punched her too.
On one occasion it took six police officers to subdue him as he wreaked havoc in Tara’s house after a two-day drinking spree.
It was after that incident that Tara took out the first of four intervention orders over seven years.
The order prohibited Steven from assaulting, threatening, contacting her or the children or being within 100 metres of their home when he was drunk.
But the violence didn’t stop. Despite regularly reporting his attacks to police, she continued to suffer beatings.
The allegations are detailed in a writ before the Supreme Court.
In a legal first, her lawyers are suing the State of Victoria claiming police at the two regional police stations breached their duty of care by failing to protect Tara and her three children.
It is a case the state has tried to have thrown out of court.
It is alleged that officers dropped Steven off near Tara’s house on several occasions after playing soccer with him.
Police continued to not act appropriately when Steven attacked or threatened Tara.
Lawyers acting on behalf of the state arguing that the 18 police named in the case owed no duty of care to the family.
So the police aren’t compelled to help anyone even though that’s what they’re paying to do.
Family and domestic violence support services in Australia:
- 1800 Respect national helpline: 1800 737 732
- Women’s Crisis Line: 1800 811 811
- Men’s Referral Service: 1300 766 491
- Lifeline (24 hour crisis line): 131 114
- Relationships Australia: 1300 364 277
A NSW police officer is on bail awaiting trial for multiple charges, including sex with a person under 10, dating as far back as 2001.
Senior Constable Scott John Brotherton, 36, is alleged to have had sex with a child who was five or six years old at the time. Court documents allege the offence occurred at some time between 2005 and 2006.
Senior Constable Brotherton is an officer from the Monaro Local Area Command, which oversees Queanbeyan, south to Cooma and Jindabyne, and east to Braidwood.
The senior constable appeared in a Sydney court mid August for nine charges.
NSW Police have confirmed he was suspended without pay but would not indicate when the internal watchdog, Professional Standards Command, learned of the allegations against senior constable Brotherton.
Senior Constable Brotherton originally fronted a regional NSW court in June before the matter was moved to Sydney.
He was also charged with two counts of aggravated indecent assault on the alleged victim.
Senior Constable Brotherton is also charged with committing an act of indecency and an assault on the victim.
He is also charged with four counts of assault for three different people in April 2001, one of whom he allegedly assaulted twice.
Senior Constable Brotherton will be appearing in Sydney again in late September. No plea has been recorded.
His bail conditions bar him from carrying a weapon, approaching schools or his alleged victims.
Monaro command is currently experiencing a staff shortage which the union says has reached crisis point.
A number of the absences related to suspensions.
Mitch Newton, a police officer currently serving at Liverpool Area Command was present at a party during which two Bulldogs football players were involved in public displays of nudity.
Two of the football players were issued notices to attend court for wilful and obscene exposure and a third was issued an infringement notice for offensive conduct.
What has this got to do with the police officer?
Well…. NSW Police have a code of conduct under which officers must behave “in a way that upholds the values and the good reputation of the NSW Police Force whether on or off duty”.
Newton was photographed in close proximity to a naked Adam Elliott – who reportedly stripped off for a drunken dance to Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline on the balcony of the Harbour View Hotel.
And let’s face it nobody wants to see that….. well but who wants to hear that song.. Am I right?
An inquest has begun into the death of a truck driver who was struck by a semi- trailer while securing his load of cement bags during a police operation in Sydney’s northwest.
The driver “fell, stumbled or stepped back” into an oncoming truck’s path not long after police pulled him over for carrying an unsecured load.
The week-long inquest before the coroner will investigate whether the operation contributed to the death and whether the roadside stop was conducted in a safe location.
Two police officers scared shoppers in Lismore last week when they shot a territorial magpie.
The magpie had earlier swooped on an elderly woman causing her to fall.
Onlookers say the officers were not in uniform and fired shots without adequate warning.
However Richmond Police District Inspector David Vandergriend says a warning was given.
“We don’t just rock up and think ‘there’s a swooping bird, we’ll shoot it.”
An inquest into the death of a man who was holding a woman hostage has heard an officer he made the decision to repeatedly fire his gun because he believed there was “an imminent threat” to her.
Brendan Lindsay who was thought to have been under the influence of ice was shot dead after 13 shots were fired.
Constable Christopher McCormack was one of the four officers who fired their guns and fired the final shots.
He fired four or five shots as Mr Lindsay and Ms Tran were falling to the ground because he still believed there was an imminent threat to the hostage.
Ms Tran was shot during the incident and hospitalised for gun shot and knife wounds.
The inquest has heard that the officers who fired their guns were later “arrested on suspicion of causing grievous bodily harm”.
They were “unarrested” later the same day, and say they were told their arrests “were not appropriate” and “it would not happen again if a similar situation arose”.
Drug busts have been mistakenly double-counted for the past seven years, and some experts warn the exaggerated data might have been used to justify crackdowns on drug users and support bad policy.
NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research BOCSAR director Dr Don Weatherburn admitted his bureau was at fault, and said the drug bust mistakes built gradually from 2010.
Cocaine and ecstasy possession reports to police were inflated more than 30 per cent in recent years, while last year in total, 13,350 recorded drug use/possess events never happened.
Western Sydney University Associate Professor of Criminology Dr Michael Salter said the BOCSAR figures are what policy and policing decisions are based on.
Mr Salter says this dramatic overestimation of drug detection may have led to a perception of a drug crisis.
He questions the role these inflated statistics have had on informing drug policing and law enforcement.
“We have seen quite aggressive use of drug detection dogs, and policing at music festivals but to what extent have those tactics been launched to false data?”
The bodies of two Aboriginal teenage boys were recovered from Perth’s Swan River earlier this month.
They were part of a group being chased by police and their deaths are counted as deaths in custody.
According to police, officers responded to a call from residents in Maylands that the teenagers were jumping fences and chased the group on foot.
The teenagers reportedly ran into the Swan River.
Speaking to the media on Tuesday, WA Police Commissioner Chris Dawson said it is “nothing short of a tragedy”.
“Two boys are believed to have got into difficulties in the middle of the river and succumbed to the conditions and were not seen to resurface,” he said.
“Police did not physically come into contact with the two boys who disappeared under water in the middle of the river.”
The two were part of a group of five teenage boys. Two others entered the river were accounted for, with police initially holding fears for the fifth before confirming he was with family members and calling off the search.
Water police recovered the first body on Monday night, and the second on Tuesday morning.
Investigations are ongoing.
A woman who fell pregnant and miscarried at age 11 after being raped by a paedophile former policeman is fighting to name her abuser.
Despite facing the serial child sex predator in court, Tracey May is unable to expose his identity due to a suppression order dating back to 2012.
A review of Victoria’s legal system last year found adult victims of sexual assault should be able to identify their attackers after conviction, but Ms May still cannot speak out.
The non-publication order, made when Ms May’s abuser’s court proceedings began, has no end date and no explanation for why it was put in place.
Chief Magistrate Peter Lauritsen says the order was made before the Open Courts Act was passed in 2013, which placed a five-year limit on suppression orders.
The act was passed to improve transparency in the state’s justice system, but hundreds of orders are still issued every year, including blanket reporting bans.
Her abuser, a former police officer with more than a dozen victims, raped nine children as young as five over an 18-year period to 1985.
Victims of Crime Commissioner Greg Davies says although suppression orders are often put in place to protect victims, victims themselves are not being consulted.
‘If a victim wants to go and make mention of what happened to them … because they want to prevent what happened to them from happening to someone else, and they can’t, then the victim is being further victimised by the court process.’
More than 100 people charged with drug possession at Splendour in the Grass appeared in court on September 11 most escaping without having a conviction recorded.
Today Magistrate Jeff Linden dealt with most cases by issuing a section-10 bond.
That meant no conviction was recorded, but a six-month good behaviour bond was imposed.
Sally McPherson, from Local Court Lawyers, had several clients appearing.
She says “A Section 10 is what everybody is hoping for, particularly these young people who have got no criminal history.”
The issue of use and policing of illegal drugs at festivals is talked about quite a lot these days.
Last weekend two people died at the Defqon.1 festival with suspected overdoses, 13 attended hospital and hundreds others were treated at the festival.
Pill testing is the answer but the establishment is pretty much against it.
Pill testing is implemented in more than 20 countries.
There was testing at a festival in the A.C.T which in all likelihood saved lives. Lethal substances, highly toxic substances were found in some capsules and pills
The son of prominent talkback radio host Ray Hadley has resigned from the New South Wales Police Force after he was charged with possessing cocaine last month.
Former Senior Constable Daniel Hadley was arrested at a pub at Rouse Hill in Sydney’s north-west after allegedly purchasing 0.79 grams of the illicit substance, worth about $200.
He was off-duty at the time.
Police say the 28-year-old was being monitored at the time by the Professional Standard Command.
Another man was arrested nearby and charged with supply and possession of a prohibited drug.