Vic Police accused of not tackling corruption

Australian Broadcasting Corporation

TV PROGRAM TRANSCRIPT

Broadcast: 23/10/2006

Reporter: Josie Taylor

KERRY O'BRIEN: Another former member of Victoria's disgraced drug squad was sent to jail today, the sixth member of the squad to be jailed on corruption charges, Senior Constable Matthew Bunning, sentenced to nearly seven years. Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has hailed the convictions as evidence that the Victoria Police is capable of cleaning up its own act. But that's not the view of one of her senior corruption investigators. In an extraordinary break with convention, Detective Sergeant Bill Patten has spoken publicly about what he sees as the force's failure to pursue other corrupt police. Detective Sergeant Patten, who was a member of the Ceja task force set up to investigate the Victorian Drug Squad, says he believes Victoria should follow the lead of other States with a royal commission or a standing commission to investigate police corruption. Josie Taylor reports.

DET SGT BILL PATTEN: I was absolutely devastated. Mind-blown, blown away. It just it really guts you. And some of these people I knew. I mean, you see one side of people, you just have no idea and the gravity of it was just mind boggling.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Detective Sergeant Bill Patten has seen a lot in 28 years of police work. But nothing prepared him for what he was to encounter as an anti corruption investigator within Victoria Police.

BILL PATTEN: We just kept standing on landmines, everywhere we went it was just it was far worse than what the picture had been painted.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Described by his former Senior Sergeant as an "uncompromising perfectionist who never backs away from a challenge", Bill Patten was handpicked to join the top secret Ceja task force set up in 2002 after two drug squad members were found to be corrupt and the squad was disbanded. Bill Patten says the task force uncovered an extensive web of corruption.

BILL PATTEN: Police were trafficking drugs. They were offering protection to informers. They were involved with the distribution and manufacture of amphetamines. Obviously large quantities of cash, I'd say, were being kept by corrupt policemen.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Police command has always denied a link between police corruption and Melbourne's underworld murders. But Bill Patten is convinced corrupt police engaged in the drug trade fueled the gangland war.

BILL PATTEN: Corruption is - and it crosses over. So whether you say you're going to feed information to somebody else and someone gets murdered as a result of that information, or in the old term of burning an informer where you use an informer, you then feed him back to the criminal element and you let them know that he's been informing to the police - well, I'd suggest a number of those gangland murders were as a result of that. And I don't think there's any secrets in that

JOSIE TAYLOR: In the face of this, the Ceja task force achieved some impressive results. So far six former drug squad detectives have been convicted on various corruption offences, including dealing millions of dollars worth of heroin, protecting drug dealers and money laundering. The biggest scalp was the conviction of Detective Senior Sergeant Wayne Strachan last week on a charge of selling to Mark Moran, himself a victim of the bloody turf war. The convictions were seen as a cleanout of corrupt officers in the Victoria Police.

CHRISTINE NIXON: A terrific team of people who I think have done an outstanding job to bring these matters before the court and now most of those, in fact, are finished and we're able to see that these people have been convicted and out of Victoria Police.

JOSIE TAYLOR: But according to corruption investigators like Bill Patten, the task of cleaning up the force is nowhere near complete.

BILL PATTEN: A lot of that stuff, not for the wrong reasons but because of resourcing, has never been appropriately dealt with in the appropriate timeframes, because some of the stuff there's no good looking at it now. It's been and gone. You've missed the boat.

JOSIE TAYLOR: How frustrating is that for you?

BILL PATTEN: Again, you've got no idea. It just seems ludicrous. There was things there that were ready to go that were never looked at.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon declined a request from the 7.30 Report to respond to Detective Sergeant Bill Patten's claim that corrupt officers remain in the force.

BILL PATTEN: I'd put a figure between 12 and 24 that I could confidently say are either corrupt or contributed to corruption.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Still serving?

BILL PATTEN: Still serving.

JOSIE TAYLOR: So how far up the ranks does this go?

BILL PATTEN: Well, I think I'd go as far as superintendent.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Bill Patten is quick to point out corruption within the police force is limited to a small number of offenders. But he says force command has failed to tackle corruption at its highest levels.

BILL PATTEN: I have a very strong belief that commissioned officers have been protected. They've never been duly dealt with and I say that not for the wrong reasons. Some have sat on the fence - and it's been poor management practice. Some have been corrupt, some have sat on the fence and not blown the whistle.

JOSIE TAYLOR: He says part of the problem was access to Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon.

BILL PATTEN: Personally I thought it would have been important for her to sit much closer to it than what she did. But my own honest opinion is, because of the management process and the gravity of what might have come out of it, I believe that she distanced herself from what may have come out of it.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Despite calls for a royal commission, the job of pursuing police corruption in Victoria is still handled by internal investigators, and the State Government's Office of Police Integrity. Victorian Premier Steve Bracks remains unwilling to change his approach, despite Bill Patten's allegations.

STEVE BRACKS: Well, I reject that. I think corruption is being properly investigated and that's one of the reasons why we established the OPI, the Office of Police Integrity.

JOSIE TAYLOR: But so far Bill Patten has seen little evidence that this system is effective.

BILL PATTEN: My own honest opinion is there should have been a royal commission or a standing commission in relation to corruption in Victoria Police. Unquestionably, and with the benefit of hindsight, what I've endured and what other Victoria Police members have endured as investigators, and for the integrity of Victoria Police, I definitely believe there should have been something other than Ceja.

JOSIE TAYLOR: The traditional resentment towards police who are investigating police was made clear to the Ceja task force members.

BILL PATTEN: During the course of Ceja there was death threats made towards members. We had bullets left in one member's letterbox engraved with his name and his wife's name. We had a crook, the piranha, picked up that had basically a third of our fleet of vehicles with the registration numbers in his wallet. We had information from the underworld saying that someone was going to do a hit on one of the investigators to throw the whole thing into a spin.

JOSIE TAYLOR: The Ceja task force was shut down last year. Task force members were told they'd have help to reintegrate with the force, help Bill Patten claims was not forthcoming.

BILL PATTEN: We went into Ceja and did a tough job. We were made a number of promises by high level management, including Christine Nixon, and I'd say those promises have never been followed up with. We've never been duly supported and we've been forgotten about.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Late today, the Chief Commissioner issued a statement declaring that members of the task force had been provided with significant support, including welfare assistance. Despite that, Bill Patten's career is probably over. His appointment to a country police station is being challenged in the Supreme Court, a challenge funded by his own union, the Victorian Police Association.

BILL PATTEN: Well, here I am now. I'm about to leave Victoria Police after 28 years, a job that I loved and I lived for and, my wife will tell you, to the detriment of my family. We were handpicked to do a tough job and the fallout is, here I am suffering stress and anxiety.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Bill Patten is well aware going public with his story could endanger his life and his family.

BILL PATTEN: At the end of the day you're vulnerable, you're always vulnerable and what I've done and what I've said, people aren't going to be happy.

JOSIE TAYLOR: There is the added frustration that while Detective Sergeant Bill Patten might leave the force, corrupt officers will remain in it.

BILL PATTEN: How ironic is that? The people that investigate it have become casualties, while they continue. It just doesn't seem right. But I mean, you've got to get beyond that. That is the way it is and you've got to move on or else you get bitter and twisted about it. That's part of one of my strengths. No point getting bitter and twisted. What's happened, greater powers than me have decided how it was going to be dealt with and how it was going to finish, and that's where we're at now.

Corrupt officers still serving in Vic Police Force: Detective Sergeant

AM - Monday, 23 October , 2006  08:11:00

Reporter: Josie Taylor

TONY EASTLEY: Weeks out from a state election in Victoria, politicians and Victoria Police management have publicly declared a triumph over police corruption.

But a serving detective sergeant tells a different story.

Victorian corruption investigator Detective Sergeant Bill Patten says there are dozens of corrupt officers in the force, and police management refuses to fully address the problem.

The serving detective says there are undeniable links between police corruption and Melbourne's gangland murders, and without a royal commission, the lives of corruption investigators are being placed in danger.

Detective Sergeant Patten admits his decision to go public with his concerns could mean he and his family are put at risk.

Josie Taylor reports.

JOSIE TAYLOR: With 28 years of police work under his belt, Detective Sergeant Bill Patten describes himself as a hard-nosed investigator.

It goes against the grain for him to speak publicly about his work, but the detective sergeant says he has no choice.

BILL PATTEN: There's people that I say are corrupt, have been corrupt, have acted inappropriately, are still within the Victoria Police.

It's just something that I say the public need to know about, and the greater police population needs to know about it, what really happened, and what the fallout really was.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Bill Patten was a member of the Ceja Taskforce, set up four years ago to investigate corruption in the former Victoria police drug squad.

A number of corrupt police have been convicted and sentenced as a result.

But Bill Patten says numerous allegations of corruption were never investigated due to a lack of resources.

The Ceja Taskforce was closed down last year, a decision Bill Patten says was premature, and left dozens of suspect police officers within the force.

BILL PATTEN: I'd put a figure between 12 and 24 that I could confidently say were either corrupt or contributed to corruption.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Still serving?

BILL PATTEN: Still serving.

JOSIE TAYLOR: And what sort of rank are we talking about?

BILL PATTEN: They range from senior detectives right up to commissioned officers.

JOSIE TAYLOR: How high up the ranks does it go?

BILL PATTEN: Ah, well I think I'd go as far as superintendent.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Bill Patten believes the Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon was kept at a distance from the true extent of corruption.

He also says commissioned officers suspected of corruption have been protected.

And now Bill Patten says the police who pursued corruption have been ostracised within the force, and abandoned by senior police.

BILL PATTEN: Well, we shouldn't have investigated it, end of story. It should've been done by another standing body, whether it be a royal commission or a standing commission, either, either.

Because we were then made vulnerable, bullets in people's letterboxes, following people around, making phone calls, you know, talking about murdering a Ceja investigator. You know, we were put at risk, and we shouldn't have been put at risk.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Bill Patten says corruption is not widespread within Victoria Police, but the kind he uncovered was extremely serious.

BILL PATTEN: Trafficking drugs, laundering money, involved in some degree in murders. The whole thing just was so interwoven. I mean, the general public would just be horrified.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Force command have always denied that there's any link between corruption and the gangland murders. Were they lying?

BILL PATTEN: I don't know if they were lying, but they were certainly, they were either misinformed, didn't want to be informed. But as I said, from what I've been exposed to, that's not the case. There is clearly a connection between corruption and the underworld.

JOSIE TAYLOR: Three detectives resigned whilst serving in the Ceja Taskforce.

Bill Patten is now considering leaving the police force. He believes more corruption investigators may follow.

His major concern is that corrupt police may now target him and his family for speaking out.

BILL PATTEN: At the end of the day, I mean, you're vulnerable. You're always vulnerable. And what I've done and what I've said, people aren't going to be happy.

TONY EASTLEY: Detective Sergeant Bill Patten ending Josie Taylor's report.

What lies beneath

Nick McKenzie

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."

Crooked police still at large

By Nick McKenzie
October 20, 2006

Ostracised: Detective Sergeant Bill Patten, at home with his policewoman wife, Karen.
Photo: Wayne Taylor

 

 

UP TO two dozen Victorian police, including senior managers, who were involved in corruption or turned a blind eye to it remain in the force, according to an original member of the Ceja anti-corruption taskforce.

Detective Sergeant Bill Patten told The Age in an exclusive interview that corruption had not been thoroughly dealt with in Victoria, despite revelations this week that five drug squad detectives have been convicted for drug trafficking as a result of Ceja's work.

He said the disciplining of police suspected of corruption — even if there was insufficient evidence to charge them — was "pathetic" and that Ceja taskforce members were "hung out to dry" by force command after the difficult work of investigating fellow police.

Sergeant Patten, a police officer for 28 years and a member of Ceja for almost four years, is considering resigning from the force because of his disillusionment with the way the taskforce's work was handled and because of his own treatment since leaving Ceja late last year.

His allegations are certain to embarrass the State Government and Police Commissioner Christine Nixon, who yesterday praised Ceja and said the "public can be reassured and I think that they can look to see what we've done in Victoria Police (to fight corruption). We have not stepped back on this."

Sergeant Patten alleges that:

■ Commissioned officers who presided over corrupt police were protected from appropriate sanctions or moved sideways.

■ Pressure from force command to focus only on allegations that would lead to criminal prosecutions meant that "significant" corruption was not adequately investigated.

■ Several Ceja investigators and their families had been "sucked dry, spat out the other end and left to fend for ourselves" because of the force's failure to offer support while working at the taskforce and upon re-deployment.

■ Despite two interim Ombudsman reports on Ceja, there had been no public accounting of all the drug trafficking, evidence planting, and drug use that the taskforce uncovered.

■ Links between members of the underworld and corrupt police were indisputable during Melbourne's gangland wars.

"There would have only been one successful way to investigate this stuff and that would have been a royal commission," Sergeant Patten said.

"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 of.

"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."

Other members of Ceja have privately backed Sergeant Patten's central claims. The state's police watchdog, the Office of Police Integrity, and the police's ethical standards department continue to use and examine information gathered by Ceja, but Sergeant Patten said the opportunity to properly investigate much of it was lost.

Conduct never examined included the leaking of operational information, taking bribes, criminal associations and failing to report corruption, he said.

"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," he said. "Corruption investigations like Ceja should not have been done by state police.

"Anybody at Ceja will tell you if they are being totally honest that internal sanctions have been totally disappointing and inappropriate as far as sending a message about corruption and being involved in corruption."

Sergeant Patten said many Ceja investigators and their families were frustrated about a lack of support following their work with Ceja, including several who have taken stress leave or left the force.

Several members of Ceja had received death threats.

"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 workplace," he said.

Ceja investigators were granted direct transfers to new jobs to aid their redeployment.
 
But Sergeant Patten's move to a regional detective unit was appealed in the Supreme Court by two officers who argued it was unfair.

The case is unresolved, but Sergeant Patten said it was driven by an anti-Ceja mentality that force command had failed to tackle.

The Age has confirmed that several police officers singled out by Ceja to command remain on active duty and in managerial positions. "Once you have been exposed to what we were exposed to … there is evidence to make a decision on (as to whether an officer is corrupt) as opposed to sufficient evidence to convict them," Sergeant Patten said.

"There were certainly some managers at the drug squad who should have been brought to account for things, but they weren't."

Ms Nixon declined a request to respond to these allegations, but told ABC radio yesterday that there was no evidence to "substantiate any kind of action to be taken against senior people".

She said the force had committed to a range of corruption-proofing reforms, including a strengthening of the ethical standards department.

Regarding the Ceja investigators, Ms Nixon said: "I believe appropriate recommendations of recognition should be put in place as soon as possible."