The Snitch: Jail governor Tracey Mannix’s assault conviction quashed
Veteran NSW Corrective Services officer Tracey Mannix has managed to pull her career back from the brink of ruin after an impressive win in the District Court quashed the guilty conviction over an alleged assault incident involving an inmate.
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Tracey Mannix is proof that you can’t keep a good governor down.
The veteran NSW Corrective Services officer has managed to pull her career back from the brink of ruin after an impressive win in the District Court last week.
The Dawn de Loas jail governor was suspended from her senior position after she was charged with assaulting an inmate during a staff strike in 2018.
Last year Ms Mannix and her supporters were shedding tears in Burwood Local Court as a magistrate knocked back her claim of self-defence and convicted her on the spot. She was also sentenced to a 12-month community corrections order, essentially putting a death sentence over her career as a senior prison officer.
But in an impressive 180-degree turn, Ms Mannix will return to work this week after a triumphant appeal in the District Court.
Her guilty conviction was quashed and her status as a suspended officer was lifted almost immediately.
The run-in with inmate Adam Riley occurred in April of 2018, when he was let out of his cell to help skeleton staff deliver meals during a strike.
He was warned not to communicate with the other inmates and after the second direction, Ms Mannix approached him.
The court previously heard Riley asked her, “what the f**k do you want?”, which in the already pressure-cooker environment, appeared to be the cherry on top for Ms Mannix.
The court heard she put her hand on Riley’s neck and pushed him up against
a wall.
It was a move, she claimed, she did in self-defence because Riley had raised his arm.
The situation was over and done with in the blink of an eye but several months later, Ms Mannix was charged with common assault.
She could not comment on the appeal when contacted yesterday.
JOCK RETURNS FOR NEW COURT DATE
Reports have been swirling around the Downing Centre this month about the arrival of a star witness courtesy of the FBI.
Snitch hears US jock turned drug king and party boy Owen Hanson is slated to make an appearance at an upcoming criminal trial in Sydney.
We can’t identify exactly which trial he may front up to for legal reasons, but given the characters involved, it would be hard to find an empty seat in the public gallery.
Hanson, a once-talented gridiron star who was arrested at a San Diego golf course in 2015, is currently serving 21 years’ jail in the US for trafficking large quantities of drugs to Australia from California.
EX-POLLIE PAEDO GETS CAUGHT IN WEB
Before ex-MP and paedophile Milton Orkopoulos was arrested for breaching his parole last week, he thought he had a good understanding of the Child Protection Register. And he made a point of telling police so.
“I mean, I voted on the legislation, remember?” the disgraced MP dismissively told police as they recited his CPR obligations last month.
Too bad Orkopoulos couldn’t remember what was in it. Within a month he was arrested and accused of breaching his parole by failing to tell authorities about his contact with a young child and a new Instagram account.
Snitch understands the strife stemmed from Orkopoulos saying “Hi” to an 11-year-old relative on the phone.
Orkopoulos, who served more than 11 years’ jail for assaulting young boys, also allegedly failed to tell police about his new Instagram account, which followed o
POSH FRAUD SQUAD DISCONTINUED
The top end of town lost its dedicated fraud investigation team this week.
The unit’s four specialised investigators, based at the Sydney City Police Station, were told on Tuesday the 20-year-old team would be no more.
While NSW Police has its own Financial Crimes Squad, Sydney City was the only station in the state to have a team that focused on big-dollar frauds. And with a patch that is home to large banks, finance firms, top-tier law firms and every multinational company in between, it hasn’t been short of work.
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However, police from around the state have been deployed to bushfire-affected areas to chip in with the recovery effort and rightly so.
This has contributed to the merger of the fraud team to help with the workload.
While senior police stress the investigators will still probe fraud cases, they will get involved in other investigations too.
Regardless, Snitch hears the merger did not go down well. Sources fear these complex investigations will fall to the wayside as other crime types are prioritised over fraud — traditionally seen as a boring area of investigation among the rank and file.
“You lose your specialist knowledge and the contacts,” one source quipped.
“Frauds take a long time and you have to take a long time with them.”
A NSW Police spokesman said fraud offences would continue to be triaged at Sydney City and sent to the Financial Crimes Squad if need be.
“Nothing has changed in this respect, it is business as usual,” he said.
“Customer service remains a key priority within the Command, particularly in dealing with financial institutions, and that will continue.”
ne profile — soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo.
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