October 20, 2006
DETECTIVE Sergeant Bill Patten is not one for visible displays
of emotion. But his eyes glisten and his body tenses when he
recalls the late-night phone call from fellow anti-corruption
investigator, Mick O'Neil.
It was 10pm, and O'Neil had just opened his letter box to find
two police-issue .38 bullets. Engraved on the bullets were the
names of O'Neil and his wife.
"Mick was just a blabbering mess," says Patten. "I still get the
hackles up the back of my neck, just talking about it."
It has been two years since the phone call and almost five years
since Patten, 47, became one of the first investigators to join the
Ceja taskforce, whose work would uncover some of the worst police
corruption — from drug trafficking to money laundering —
in Victoria's history.
This week marked the official end of Ceja. With suppression
orders lifted, the public learned that five drug squad officers had
been convicted of drug trafficking. Chief Commissioner Christine
Nixon praised the success of Ceja: "The investigators did a
terrific job … and they put them before the court and I think
that's the important part for the community to understand," she
told ABC radio. But Patten, a policeman for 28 years, tells a
darker, inside story of Ceja. He says he wants, for the first time,
to "set the record straight".
According to Patten, the rot uncovered by Ceja went further than
has ever been exposed. The response from force command to all that
Ceja found led to missed opportunities to stamp out corruption; no
senior officers have been brought to account; internal disciplining
was "pathetic" and the official refusal to acknowledge links
between corrupt police and the underworld was deceptive.
Patten tells, too, of the ostracisation, the harassment and the
death threats against the men who worked in the taskforce, who were
treated — and are still being treated, he says — as
outcasts in a culture which often values loyalty above all. It is
that betrayal that he has found so devastating. "We formed our own
self-help group because we are the only ones who care for each
other," he says. "The organisation doesn't care. We have just been
cut loose."
Police officers are forbidden to speak publicly without
authorisation, and Patten knows the risk he is taking. "I have been
one of the most loyal, devoted police members for just short of 28
years," he says. "I gave the force 150 per cent to the detriment of
my family. I have nothing to gain, but this is a public interest
issue."
In early 2002, Patten told his boss at the Ballarat Regional
Response Unit, Detective Sergeant Ronnie Cosgrove, that he had been
approached to join a taskforce investigating police corruption.
Police who investigate police are traditionally known as "the
filth" or the "toe-cutters" and the now-retired Cosgrove, whose 33
years of policing included stints in the drug squad and internal
investigations, warned Patten that he would be "walking into
another world". "You become an outcast, I told him to have a damn
good think about it and where he would end up. Sure enough, he
ended up in shit creek," he says.
Patten was "one of the finest, hard-working investigators"
Cosgrove had ever worked with, a "born policeman". Now retired
senior AFP investigator Bill Laing, who was Patten's boss in the
late 1980s during a joint taskforce targeting drug syndicates, says
that "at the time he was with me, I couldn't speak more highly of
him".
Patten spent much of his first two decades of policing in
Melbourne's tough western suburbs, the breeding ground for a host
of young petty crooks who would later emerge as armed robbers and
gangland figures. Colleagues describe Patten as a man either loved
or loathed; his intensity led to a stellar arrest rate, but also
clashes with colleagues whom Patten considered lazy or uncommitted,
including his superiors.
"All I wanted to do was do police work. I would put myself as
someone who consistently worked hard, who consistently dragged the
crooks in."
It was that reputation that led Ceja investigators to seek him
out. In early 2002, Patten headed to Melbourne to meet Detective
Inspector Peter De Santo, whose Operation Hemi had recently charged
two detectives, Stephen Paton and Malcolm Rosenes, with drug
trafficking. Patten was told police command wanted a taskforce to
examine allegations about drug squad corruption that had spilled
over from Hemi. It was the first time Patten heard the name "Ceja".
He had no inkling that, in a matter of months, he would begin
"stepping on landmines".
"As far as I was concerned, I went to do a job like any other
job. We were told it was going to be a six-month test of the
allegations to see if it had been all wrapped up by Hemi." Three
years later, he was still there.
Patten was one of 11 recruits who began a covert intelligence
probe into the drug squad practice of using criminal informers to
supply raw chemicals sourced by police to drug-making syndicates.
The "Controlled Chemical Diversion Desk" was a way of leading
police to the so-called "big fish". It was a high-risk strategy but
it was the potential for its abuse by police that Ceja was
interested in.
The probe centred on claims that police corruptly sold huge
amounts of chemicals to criminals and pocketed the profits and it
took Ceja deep into Melbourne's criminal underworld. The task of
corroborating or eliminating allegations was painstaking, given
that many of Ceja's sources had little credibility. Ceja's eventual
boss, Commander Dannye Moloney, called his team "the super-toe
cutters", which members took as a reference to their
thoroughness.
Their detractors thought otherwise; as Ceja's existence became
known, its members were slagged as "promotion-seeking lightweights
at the filth", according to one crime department source. Whispers
turned into threatening phone calls and warnings to back off.
All up, the list of threats against Ceja investigators could
have been dreamt up in a film studio: bullets in the mail sent to
one investigator; another investigator's wife and young daughter
followed; one detective's house was broken into, but nothing taken.
A criminal was found with a list of police car registration
numbers, including several belonging to Ceja officers. "Mental
torment is the thing that can f------ break people," says Patten,
"and we had threats that someone from the underworld was physically
going to murder an investigator. Vulnerable is not the right
word."
There is ongoing disgust among the Ceja investigators about a
lack of support from police command. "The bullets Mick got in his
letter box; Ceja investigated it, no one was thrown into the
investigation to support us. We were investigating our own threats!
I mean, spare me!"
The threats reflected the gravity of what Ceja was discovering.
What started as 14 allegations against suspected corrupt police
snowballed to more than 100. In one secret briefing to force
command, 30 officers were singled out as possibly corrupt,
including several who had left the drug squad and were working
elsewhere in the force. Ceja's resources also grew; more than 40
staff members, including financial investigators and a barrister,
fed into what ultimately became an almost five-year investigation
into police drug trafficking, evidence planting, theft, drug taking
and "green-lighting" (allowing criminals to commit crimes). "No one
realised the gravity of what we found," recalls Patten. "It
literally blew up in everyone's faces."
CEJA began to charge officers in 2003. Chief Commissioner Nixon
committed to reforms, including overhauling drug investigation and
informer management practices. But Patten says the reforms and
Ceja's achievements fell far short of what Victoria deserves. "It
has been five years now. Some of it (the corruption) is very
significant and some of it has just gone out into the ocean. It is
long lost.
"There are probably a dozen to two dozen policeman in the
Victoria police who haven't been charged who I say are crooks or
who turned a blind eye to corruption. Some are commissioned
officers (above the rank of senior sergeant) and senior
detectives."
Those never dealt with range from officers who had active
involvement in corruption to those who turned a blind eye, "selling
their jobs by leaking information, inappropriate (criminal)
associations, to those who had knowledge but were not strong enough
to stand up and be counted."
Some of Ceja's unfinished work has been passed on to police
internal investigators at the Ethical Standards Department and the
Office of Police Integrity for review or examination; the OPI has
questioned some officers in private hearings on the basis of Ceja
intelligence. But Patten insists the opportunity to properly
examine much of what Ceja initially found has been lost. To
properly investigate all of the taskforce's corruption files would
have meant a trebling of resources. Even then, he says, it would
not have been enough.
"There would have only been one successful way to investigate
this stuff and that would have been a royal commission. No one else
could walk away and say that Ceja was the appropriate investigative
body to do the job. We did a good job, I'll still say that, but I
say some of the rot would have been got rid off."
In opposing a commission, Nixon, the Ombudsman and the
Government have argued that Ceja achieved more tangible results,
while sparing the force the demoralising trauma that accompanies
such a major government-ordered inquiry.
Patten responds that officers involved in corruption remain in
the force, including in management positions. While he won't
publicly reveal names or detail the evidence (he can be charged for
leaking such information), he bases his comments on "various things
like electronic surveillance".
"Once you have been exposed to what we were exposed to, at the
level we were exposed to it, there is evidence to make a decision
on (as to whether someone is corrupt) as opposed to sufficient
evidence to convict them."
Several investigators, closely aware of Ceja's work, back up his
claims and share Patten's frustration at the "pathetic" internal
disciplining of some police, which sometimes amounted to a sideways
shift and a confidential admonishment.
They include a sergeant with significant unexplained wealth and
numerous ties to several criminals and corrupt police, and a
detective superintendent with a long history of suspected
corruption. Patten blames an unspoken culture of protecting
commissioned officers for the failure to bring to account those
under whose watch corruption flourished.
"My opinion is that the culture at the drug squad and various
other areas of the Victoria Police, managers should be held to
account for it. There were certainly some managers at the drug
squad who should have been brought to account for things, but they
weren't," says Patten.
Despite two interim reports from the state's Police Ombudsman
(since renamed the Office of Police Integrity), the last released
in June 2004, there has been no comprehensive outlining of the
scale and scope of Ceja's work.
There has been no official public accounting of whether the drug
squad ever planted evidence, despite the decision by Crown
prosecutors to quietly abandon the cases of at least three
high-level drug dealers because of corruption concerns.
Open to speculation remains the question of how the drugs "lost"
by the squad and the green-lighting of criminals enriched and
empowered the crime syndicates that featured in Melbourne's
underworld war. (Despite attempts, Ceja never got to the bottom of
links between police and organised crime figures, including
murdered crime figure Lewis Moran and fugitive drug boss Tony
Mokbel.) Patten says that links between police and the underworld
are well established and that corrupt police became "huge
powerbrokers".
"Their ability to offer immunity, legitimately or
illegitimately, (to criminals) allowed a lot of drugs to be
manufactured and trafficked and fed on to the street — that is
amphetamines, heroin and ecstasy tablets." One of Patten's
colleagues remarked that "a lot of people have died of drug
overdoses because of their (the squad's) actions".
In 2003, the Ombudsman's interim report stated that he would
"expect the dedication of these seconded (Ceja) members, in
performing what is often an arduous and thankless task, to be
further recognised in due course." Mindful of this view, police
command signed off on a policy authorising Ceja investigators to be
subject to regulation 21 transfers, which allowed them to be
slotted into new positions of equal rank and bypass the usual
merit-based process. Ceja members were "upgraded" while at the
taskforce; along with another Ceja member, Patten attended
detective training school (during the course, fellow attendees
planned to create stubby holders depicting two rats). Welfare
support was organised, including visits from a psychologist and
team-building exercises.
In late 2004, a special Ceja "thank-you"
dinner was attended by Nixon and then police minister Andre
Haermeyer. During the dinner, one Ceja detective told the gathering
that Ceja had picked the Eagles'
Hotel California as their
theme song. It contains the line: "You can check in any time you
like, but you can never leave."
THREE Ceja investigators have left the force due, at least
partly, to unhappiness about the level of support offered. Others
have taken sick leave. One complained to superiors of stress when,
after attempting to leave Ceja, he was knocked back from seven
consecutive job-selection panels. The anger continues now, Patten
says, as Ceja members deal with resentment from other members about
their regulation 21 transfers and upgrading.
"I don't just speak for myself, I speak for many other Ceja
investigators who are too fearful of speaking out. They have been
ostracised, they have been harassed, they have been criticised up
until now in their current workplaces. We have not been supported
in our introduction back into the work place."
Breaking point for Patten came after his regulation 21 transfer
in November 2005 to lead investigator at Gisborne CIU, a small
regional investigation unit, was under attack. The decision to go
to Gisborne was always contentious, given that two former
drug-squad detectives were based there. A police source describes
Patten's move as akin to "placing his head in the lion's
mouth".
Last September, the Police Association funded a still-unresolved
Supreme Court challenge against Patten's transfer by two other
members who argued it was unfair because it was not open to appeal
and ignored questions of merit — Patten's upgrading to
detective rank while at Ceja was used to attack his credibility as
an investigator. Patten only found out about the court challenge
when he overhead a conversation in a lift, indicative, he says, of
the lack of support offered — either from the association or
the force — to deal with the resulting uncertainty. "It was
all just lip service. They gave us the 21s, Christine said she
supports our 21s. But big deal. There is a culture that needs to be
addressed and until it is addressed, how they expect people to go
into internal investigations and come out and go on with their
working lives is a joke."
Patten feels worn down, like there is "a huge tourniquet wrapped
around my chest". He is considering resigning from a job he has
held for 28 years. And he deeply regrets joining Ceja. "It has
caused my family grief. It has caused a lot of other people grief.
It has changed the direction of their lives and changed the
direction of their careers. It has inhibited their careers. You
become a leper."
Patten lives with his wife, Karen, who is also a police officer,
and their two young children in a semi-rural setting in outer
Melbourne. Ribbons from the local primary school swim meets adorn
the fridge. The family's dog bounces around. It is an average
family home.
But there is an oppressive air in the Patten household. It is
fed by off-the-cuff comments during a tour of the house: "Look at
where I live. If someone wanted to take me out, they had me." And
there is fear about the price of speaking out, especially for his
wife and children. Said one of his Ceja colleagues: "Bill will be
cut off by the force."
Last month, Patten decided to take extended leave from work. On
a Saturday, he drove to Gisborne police station and did five hours
of paperwork — he says the station was already short-staffed
and he was worried "about letting the blokes down". He then quietly
packed up his desk.
"I drove away and it was one of the greatest feelings I had in
my life. It was like letting the pigeon go, just letting it go and
letting it fly. It was just unbelievable and I never second-guessed
it."
