How Victoria Police officers, recruits came undone on the job
From cheating on exams to an “incident” with a gun, here’s how ten police officers and PSOs slipped up in 2022.
Police & Courts
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The police discipline regulator dealt with 10 cops who fell foul in 2022.
The independent Police Registration and Services Board exists to hear and determine appeals related to transfer and promotional decisions, to review decisions and to impose dismissals within the force.
PRSB President Ms Andrea Lester listed its outcomes in the 2021-22 annual report.
Here are some of those cases.
Aspiring PSOs busted cheating on law exam
It didn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Prosenjit Biswas and his mates were cheating on their law exam at the police academy in June 2021.
Mr Biswas, an IT expert, wanted to join Victoria Police as a PSO despite considering it a “mediocre” career option.
But his policing career ended abruptly when he jotted down a note on his law exam, showed it to a friend, before erasing the “incriminating” evidence.
His mate then shared the answers with two more recruits.
The exam invigilator spotted it, as did at least three other recruits sitting nearby.
Of the four cheaters, three quit the force before Victoria Police could make disciplinary findings against them, with only Ms Biswas sticking around to fight his termination.
Mr Biswas, the day after being caught, told a fellow recruit that he and his mates were “just checking with each other to ensure (their answers were) correct”.
The recruits, including Mr Biswas, were mostly Indian, and a Police Registration and Services Board hearing was earlier this year told Mr Biswas complained about the recruits who dobbed him in for cheating.
“I can’t believe that someone from my own country could do this to me,” Mr Biswas said.
Mr Biswas also claimed the students who reported him and his mates did so “out of jealousy and hatred”
The Board rejected Mr Biswas’s suggestion his classmates “hated” him, or were racially motivated.
The Board said a complaint about his body odour during the course was properly handled.
“It is further noted that two of the witnesses were also of an Indian background and there is no suggestion that racism played any part in reporting this conduct.”
His termination from the force was upheld.
Rookie constable’s gun mishap
It was a bad omen when, in October 2019, Constable Joel Oorloff flunked his first attempt at the Police Academy’s “firearms week” because of a safety breach.
He passed on his second attempt.
After stints at Northcote and Moonee Ponds police stations he was sent to Kyneton, where, on June 23, 2020, he was involved in what a the Police Registration and Services Board later, ominously described as “the incident”.
It involved two officers firing shots into an SUV travelling at high speed on Harmony Way at Elphinstone.
The whole incident was caught on body-worn cameras, and was referred to the Office of Public Prosecutions, which inexplicably took more than two years to charge Constable Oorloff and another officer with conduct endangering life and conduct endangering serious injury.
He is set to fight the charges, and will next face court in February.
But for two years, Constable Oorloff sat in legal limbo, assigned to desk duties and refused remedial training, until the powers that be ordered him sacked.
In a scathing decision the Board criticised the policy of not allowing officers under investigation for misuse of weapons to take part in Operational Safety and Tactics training, or to undergo “remedial training”.
It found his sacking was “harsh”.
Referees said Constable Oorloff was mature, reliable, committed, professional, composed and respected by his peers and superiors.
Chopper pilot back in the air after ‘near miss’
Air wing pilot Constable Clare Butler came within minutes of causing a potential tragedy in March last year when she was flying from the Yarra Valley to Bairnsdale in heavy cloud.
Constable Butler is an experienced and respected pilot who has been flying since she was 19, and has flown for Victoria Police for six years.
She was flying at 5000m when a thick blanket of cloud rose up around her helicopter.
She turned on the warning system, which immediately set off a “caution terrain” alarm.
Constable Butler was 138ft below the nearby summit of Mt Baw Baw.
The Australian Transport Safety Bureau and the Civil Aviation Safety Authority found Constable Butler “did commit errors” but that any experienced pilot could have made similar errors.
The regulators said it would not be appropriate to take action against Constable Butler.
More than a year later, Chief Commissioner Shane Patton reassigned her to the drone unit before senior officers conducted a secretive and shoddily conducted review of Constable Butler’s performance.
The review was so poorly conducted that Constable Butler was reassigned back to the airwing, but given no flying duties.
A Supreme Court case and the Police Registration and Services Board listed a closed hearing into where Constable Butler planned to challenge the decision to ground her.
It is unclear precisely what the legal wash-up was, but a recent social media post suggests Constable Butler is back in the air with a “busy flight schedule”.
Leah the leadfoot gets her promotion
A junior cop got herself into strife for speeding with a detained youth in her car following an order by a senior officer to “bust ass” to get to another job.
First Constable Leah Carpenter was slapped with two high-speed driving charges after a dramatic night in the van in 2019.
Details of the breaches emerged as she fights a decision by Victoria Police to delay her ambitions for a promotion.
In the first incident, First Constable Carpenter and a senior constable responded to reports of youths causing trouble at a Coles supermarket about 2.30am on July 21.
The group was asked by police to move on or else be arrested.
One youth, identified as Mr W, was subsequently arrested, handcuffed and loaded into the back of First Constable Carpenter’s divvy van.
Minutes later she and her colleague were assigned a priority 1 family violence call.
First Constable Carpenter was told by a sergeant to “bust ass” to get to the incident after dropping the youth off at a “random location” away from the supermarket.
With emergency lights blaring, she then drove him from the scene at 92km/h in a 60km/h zone in breach of the force’s “urgent duty driving” rules.
After dropping off the youth, First Constable Carpenter gunned it to the family violence job, driving at speeds of up to 154km/h.
First Constable Carpenter was subsequently disciplined for conduct found “to bring Victoria Police into disrepute or diminish public confidence” and deemed ineligible for promotion for nine months.
However she sought a review by the Police Registration & Services Board (PRSB) which has now set aside its decision to a future date.
The reason for the delayed ruling was in part due to concerns held by the Discipline Inquiry Officer (DIO) over the youth’s treatment by police that night.
Documents released by the PRSB state that First Constable Carpenter made no effort to establish his details – including his name, age and home address – and “blindly followed” the senior officer’s instructions to drop him at a random address “for the convenience of police seeking to control the events” outside the supermarket.
“There are issues about the lawfulness and propriety of the overall police action and the treatment of Mr W, including as a person in police care and custody,” the document stated.
However the board found her motivation for speeding was influenced by the “bust ass” comment and her sense of urgency to attend the family violence incident, which was deemed “serious … with risk to life”.
“There is no suggestion that the applicant was driving too fast to try and cause fear and distress to Mr W or to hurt him in any way. Rather, her error was made from a desire to assist someone in danger, and to comply with Sergeant G’s instruction,” the document read.
Force’s rage over cop’s ’roid habit
A gym-junkie police officer was dismissed after being busted obtaining anabolic steroids without a prescription which he claimed he sourced to treat erectile dysfunction.
Sen Con Young, 40, who had worked in the north west metro region for seven years before dismissal, was charged with breach of police discipline (disgraceful conduct) in July 2020 when he was caught acquiring the illegal drug from gym connections via his former colleague.
Young told the board he sought to source the drugs more cheaply as he had “run out of money” and was using them for erectile dysfunction, adrenal fatigue and issues with his metabolism.
He was caught making an unlawful purchase of schedule four drug clenbuterol and arranging to purchase schedule 11 drugs Stanozolol and Oxandrolone (Anavar).
The officer who dealt Young the steroids faced court for drug trafficking charges, who the board said was “likely connected with the criminal world”.
It said: “The drugs were likely sourced from criminal contacts, unlawfully. His acts were planned, repeated and motivated by self-interest”.
Young blamed his actions on a decline in mental health.
“I would do everything in my power to make up for the mistake I made, I am only human and my thought processes were clouded at a point in my life, which I am long past now, which was overwhelmed by desperation, and massive downfall in my confidence and feeling of declining mental health which was all brought on by my personal issues,” he said.
The board found the unlawful trade in and use of anabolic steroids was a significant integrity and health and safety risk to Victoria Police and affirmed his dismissal.
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