Law enforcement watchdog finds Strike Force Raptor officers engaged in ‘serious misconduct’

A Law Enforcement Conduct Commission report has found officers from the NSW Police’s elite anti-bikie task force harassed and intimidated a northern NSW lawyer

An investigation into the NSW Police Force’s Strike Force Raptor by the law enforcement watchdog has found three officers were involved in the harassment and intimidation of a NSW legal practitioner representing a bikie after he refused the elite anti-bikie squad’s request to give evidence by video-link.

In a report released last week, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission revealed that in private hearings held from February to November last year two officers gave evidence that they had been given instructions by a senior officer to target the solicitor on his way to court by issuing minor traffic offences on the day he was due to represent a client charged with alleged animal cruelty offences.

“The supervisor gave evidence stating that he gave these instructions to the two officers,” the watchdog said.

The results found that three NSW Police Force officers from Strike Force Raptor were involved in the “targeting of a practising solicitor in NSW, engaging in conduct which harassed and intimidated the solicitor”.

In its findings, the Commission reported “the three officers engaged in serious police misconduct” and recommended the officers be reprimanded, describing the officer’s actions as “serious misconduct” and “disgraceful”.

“The Commission is concerned about the sense of entitlement that can develop in an elite strike force and was demonstrated by this conduct,” the report said.

“Such limited strategies can become unrestrained and unlawful. If you are an elite, are you bound by the rule of law and the policies of the NSWPF or are you bigger, better, harder and more entitled?

“The task of these officers is to enforce the law. If the unlawful conduct engaged in by these officers is allowed to continue and be condoned because of some imagined higher purpose, there can be no good to come from it for the people of NSW.

“This sense of entitlement, the misdirection by senior management and the condonation of unlawful conduct has led directly to the conduct of the officers outlined in this investigation.

“Strike Force Raptor has been very successful in disrupting criminal activity and its function must continue. However, unlawful conduct must not be condoned or covered up.”

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission has expressed concern over the conduct of some Strike Force Raptor members.

The Commission heard evidence from the officers involved, as well as the solicitor, that on two days in May 2019 officers from Strike Force Raptor travelled from Sydney to northern NSW to give evidence in a court hearing after the solicitor made a request to have evidence given in person, despite the complaints raised by police that one officer had a back injury and found it difficult to travel.

On the night before the officers arrived at the destination a senior member of the strike force (Officer MON5) told other officers “let him (Civilian MON1) know that the whole of Raptor’s up here. He wanted Raptor. The whole of Raptor’s up here”.

Two officers were then instructed to “sit off him, and if he commits a traffic offence, give him a ticket”. On May 28, 2019, two junior officers (MON3 and MON4) followed the solicitor from his home at around 6.30am and was pulled over, where he was fined for driving without a licence and for not indicating as he reversed out of his driveway. The officers then pulled the solicitor over again on his way back home and issued a defect notice for the vehicle for an oil leak they could not see.

The Commission heard evidence that the solicitor then decided to catch a taxi to work for the hearing, and that the taxi driver was also pulled over and given a ticket after dropping the solicitor off at his office, before waiting outside the building.

The following day the same two officers issued another defect notice on the lawyer’s Harley-Davidson motorcycle for an excessively noisy vehicle without actually having heard it being driven.

As a result of the officer’s conduct, the solicitor was not able to properly represent his client at the hearing, with the Commission hearing evidence that he requested to vacate the hearing date, and then asked the magistrate to use the rear exit of the courtroom.

The Commission was told that after returning to Sydney, a Detective Chief Inspector, who has since left Strike Force Raptor, said to Officer MON5 “what, are you going to attack a Magistrate next because you lose a court matter?” and “a solicitor acting for someone is essentially a part of the judicial system” so was not to be targeted.

“The harassment of Civilian MON1 and his friend Civilian MON2, and the impertinent lack of respect shown to Civilian MON1’s solicitor friend in his interaction with Officer MON3 and Officer MON4, was a natural consequence of that sense of entitlement within Strike Force Raptor resulting in the direction by Officer MON5 who was in charge of this operation. It also demonstrated complete failure to manage the application of this targeting policy by the Commander then in command of the Strike Force,” the report said.

“There has never been alleged any personal conduct of Civilian MON1 which could be identified as criminal conduct. He is a pillar of the community. He was doing his job. Whatever the police may have thought of his client, Civilian MON1 was performing his role as a solicitor.”

In its findings the Commission said there was “no grounds” for the defect notice issued on either vehicle and that the officer’s actions were a “deliberate, deceitful and malicious harassment” of the lawyer and recommended that senior police contact him to apologise.