Lawyer X operated ‘at another level, say police insiders

Insiders close to the “human source” unit, which took reports from Lawyer X, have painted the barrister as a “manipulative mastermind” who ran rings around both them and the criminals she was supposed to represent.

Lawyer X operated “at another level”, according to those in the police force to whom she was giving information.

Insiders close to the “human source” unit set up in 2003 to handle police informers, and which took reports from Lawyer X, have painted the barrister as a “manipulative mastermind” who ran rings around both them and the criminals she was supposed to represent.

Lawyer X was critical to much of the work of the unit, which supported the Purana taskforce that then assistant commissioner of crime Simon Overland set up to stop the 1998-2010 gangland wars, in which more than 20 were murdered.

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Lawyer X, who has boasted of helping to get 386 or more people arrested and charged, provided police with daily information reports for a couple of years from 2005.

“She was like an octopus,’’ one insider has told the Herald Sun.

“We get one bit at the centre and then all the tentacles that come from that.”

But she was incredibly hard to handle, a source close to the unit said. “This person is the most manipulative person I’ve ever come across. She is playing chess no super-computer could ever match.

“I don’t know if there is some sort of psychological disorder. I tell you, the game of chess was phenomenal. She was months ahead of us.

“The way she organised deck chairs at times was pretty impressive. You just try and manage the car crash as best you can.”

Everyone involved in the Lawyer X scheme — about 100 officers are said to have known who she was and what she was doing — understood that the “judicial system was manipulated”, one source said.

“We were risking our lives and the lives of our assets,” one said. But when they flagged concerns, their bosses overruled them, they said.

By mid-2006, Mr Overland was deputy commissioner, though he retained hands-on control over Lawyer X.

The pair met at Kew Golf Club, on occasion during the time she was a registered informer.

“There were moments when we should have disengaged but we didn’t because we weren’t allowed to,” one source told the Herald Sun.

An insider has now revealed that it was only in 2009, when Sir Ken Jones arrived as a deputy to Mr Overland — who by then had become chief commissioner — that the scheme was seriously challenged.

Sir Ken Jones seriously challenged the police informer scheme.

In April 2014, two weeks after the Herald Sun revealed the Lawyer X scandal, the paper reported that Sir Ken and Mr Overland had clashed over the handling of police informers.

“Ken Jones was a breath of fresh air for Victoria Police,” one officer close to the unit has now said.

“He had a wealth of experience. He challenged those decisions (of Overland).”

But Sir Ken was marched out of his job by Mr Overland in 2011.

“What they did to Sir Ken was terrible,’’ an insider said.

“We had a critical moment here in Victoria Police, and we didn’t take it.”

Mr Overland himself resigned from the force in June 2011, a few hours after the release of a report from the Ombudsman which criticised “misleading” crime statistics he had published.

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