Police officer guilty of failing to investigate rapist Anthony Sampieri over menacing phone calls
The cop charged with failing to properly investigate menacing calls made by Anthony Sampieri, who went on to rape a 7-year-old girl, has learned his fate.
Police & Courts
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Police officer Andrew Michael Bruce has been found guilty of failing to properly investigate the criminal history of child rapist Anthony Sampieri the month before he attacked a 7-year-old girl.
But the 33-year-old senior constable was cleared of a second charge of failing to tell community corrections about the menacing calls Sampieri made while on parole.
Magistrate Vivien Swan said it would be “mere speculation” to reflect on the effect of Constable Bruce’s failure to investigate as she spared him from conviction in Downing Centre Local Court on Thursday afternoon.
Sampieri was jailed for life for the brutal sexual assault in November 2018 of the young girl in a Kogarah dance studio toilet.
The month before, he caught the attention of police when he made threatening and sexually explicit phone calls to a woman who can only be identified as AB.
Her complaint on October 26, 2018, about the then-anonymous calls landed on Constable Bruce’s desk.
The officer, who has been suspended with pay for more than two years, wore a bright blue suit and was accompanied by his family as he listened to Magistrate Swan deliver her decision.
He was charged in 2019 with two counts of neglecting his duty as a police officer by failing to properly investigate Sampieri’s criminal history and failing to notify community corrections about the incident.
Magistrate Swan said Mr Bruce had recorded AB’s complaint in the police online database, discovered the calls were linked to Sampieri and interviewed the parolee at his unit on November 7.
Sampieri told the senior constable he may have made the calls but was “drunk at the time”, the court heard.
Sampieri was not charged and the investigation was closed on November 14.
The next day, on November 15, Sampieri attacked the 7-year-old at the dance studio.
Sampieri died in March this year after being treated for liver cancer.
Magistrate Swan said Mr Bruce must have seen a warning on the police database that Sampieri was on parole, and this should have alerted him to the need to examine Sampieri’s entire criminal history.
The police database log indicated he had looked at a prior telecommunications offence from 2012 on Sampieri’s record, but the magistrate found he did not examine the entire history and had a duty to do so.
Magistrate Swan also found he had a duty to notify community corrections about the “adverse contact” he had with Sampieri.
A community corrections officer testified she had never received such a notification and records from some phones turned up no evidence of a call, the court heard.
But the magistrate found the prosecution had failed to rule out other scenarios – including that Constable Bruce had left a message with another staff member, sent an email, or called from a different phone line – and found him not guilty.
Constable Bruce, sitting in a swivel chair behind his lawyer, looked straight ahead and did not react as the verdicts were handed down.
Shortly after the sentence, Magistrate Swan said Constable Bruce was regarded by colleagues as “an excellent police officer prior to this”.
“He was in this particular case in fact complimented about his investigation of the matter and it was conceded by a number of the verifying officers that he had done more investigation than would usually be required,” she said.
She noted his failure to investigate was not a serious example of the offence and he had suffered punishment through being suspended from work for close to two and a half years as the case was delayed due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
He was placed on a conditional release order for four months, under which he must not commit any offences.
Originally published as Police officer guilty of failing to investigate rapist Anthony Sampieri over menacing phone calls
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