Homicide cop Jarred Heuston temporarily demoted, given pay cut after ‘false’ promotion statements

A homicide cop who knowingly made false statements to police when applying for promotion has been temporarily demoted and had his pay cut by up to $25,000, a tribunal has heard.

A senior constable was demoted and had his pay slashed after knowlingly made false statements to police. Picture: File/Glenn Campbell

A homicide cop who lied by exaggerating his role in the decision to charge two offenders with murder in his bid to get promoted, has been temporarily demoted and had his pay cut by up to $25,000, a tribunal has heard.

Senior Constable Jarred Heuston was demoted to constable and had his pay slashed in July 2021 after he was found to have knowingly made false statements to police when applying for promotion on 15 March 2020, then sought to escape the consequences of his first lie by further lies.

He claimed his stellar communication in presenting during a January 2015 briefing influenced an audience of senior staff, including senior management and a Queen’s counsel to change their approach and agree that sufficient evidence existed to charge two offenders with murder.

“Required to provide briefing statement to management and senior QC of the DPP regarding investigative direction with murder investigation,” Const Heuston wrote on his application for the job vacancy.

But he was caught out when one of the senior officers on the selection panel had been involved in that murder investigation and reported Const Heuston for making inaccurate claims.

It was later found that there was no representative of the DPP at the January 2015 briefing in a regional Queensland city, and that it wasn’t until eight months later that a decision to charge the two offenders was made.

Details of his lies and his later demotion were revealed in a decision handed down in the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal on January 31 and published online on Wednesday, after Const Heuston sought to overturn his penalty.

In his decision former District Court judge turned QCAT judicial member John McGill SC ruled that Const Heuston’s one year demotion should stand.

Superintendent Glenn Horton. Photo: Paul Guy

Chief Superintendent Glenn Horton - then Acting Assistant Commissioner - had previously hit Const Heuston with the one year demotion from senior constable pay point 2.10 to constable pay point 1.6 in July 2021.

Mr Horton submitted to the tribunal that it was important that the public, and other police, be able to trust what was said by a police officer.

Const Heuston was found by Mr Horton to have improperly submitted his promotion application in 2020 knowing it contained false and misleading information, and to have knowingly provided false and misleading information during the investigation of his exaggerated promotion application.

In October last year Mr McGill declined to overturn Mr Horton’s internal disciplinary finding that Const Heuston’s actions were improper, and Mr McGill concluded he could infer from the evidence that Const Heuston acted knowingly when submitting his job application containing incorrect information.

Const Heuston claimed he did not knowingly mislead, and he was confused about the briefing or his memory had faded, a submission Mr McGill rejected.

“He was not the officer who presented the briefing described in that application, and the only real explanation is that he was using that description because it did serve as a good example of communicating with influence,” Mr McGill concluded.

Const Heuston claimed that by stating in his application that the result of his presentation at the January briefing was that sufficient evidence existed to prosecute, was a reference to the ultimate outcome of the whole investigation, rather than to the result of that particular meeting and his presentation.

But Mr McGill rejected that, stating the whole point of Const Heuston including reference to this job in his job application was to illustrate his personal ability to communicate with influence.

“Simply saying that he contributed to the investigation which eventually led to people being charged does not do that,” Mr McGill wrote.