Probe faults Queensland top cop Katarina Carroll over leadership

An inquiry into the handling of domestic violence, misogyny and racism by Queensland police is understood to have made damning findings about the leadership of police commissioner Katarina Carroll.

Queensland police commissioner Katarina Carroll. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Dan Peled

An inquiry into the handling of domestic violence, misogyny and racism by Queensland police is understood to have made damning findings about the leadership of the state’s first female police commissioner, Katarina Carroll.

The Australian understands the commission of inquiry found Ms Carroll had been too “distracted” by the Covid-19 pandemic to properly deal with systemic cultural issues of racism and sexual harassment in the Queensland Police Service, as well as downplaying its “woeful under-resourcing” of domestic violence policing.

Independent commissioner and District Court judge Deborah Richards’ final report was delivered to the government on Monday, but won’t be considered or released by Annastacia Palaszczuk’s cabinet until next week.

While there is no specific recommendation that Ms Carroll be removed from her post three years into her five-year term, it is understood Judge Richards is highly critical of her evidence to the ­inquiry and of her leadership. Ms Carroll had “unjustifiable confidence” in the QPS, despite evidence a “culture of fear and ­silence” flourished.

Judge Richards is understood to have suggested that Ms Carroll was either wilfully ignorant, or kept in the dark by her senior officers, or was deliberately obfuscating about her knowledge of the cultural problems in the QPS.

The inquiry found Ms Carroll had publicly stated in late 2020 that the QPS was “in no way ­racist” after an Indigenous elder died in police custody but she conceded she knew this was not true, because she had been at a meeting in August 2020 where a group of Indigenous officers had told senior police about their years of experiencing racism in the force.

“I know I have racist people in the organisation; I know that,” Ms Carroll told the inquiry when she gave evidence in October. “I could have chosen another word … I should have chosen ‘the organisation as a whole is not racist’.”

The commission of inquiry has already claimed the scalp of deputy commissioner Paul Taylor, who quit the QPS after it was revealed he addressed a commanders’ conference in Brisbane and described a gynaecologist friend as a “vagina whisperer”.

Before the incident was made public, Mr Taylor was subject to disciplinary action through the “local managerial resolution” process and received guidance and counselling from Ms Carroll on the use of inappropriate language.

Ms Carroll was sworn in as commissioner in July 2019. While the government has the power to remove her before the end of her five-year term, it is understood there is reluctance to do so, and a hope she will now have a “mandate” to overhaul police culture.

In October, she told the inquiry she had been the victim of sexual harassment and abuse by more senior officers several times in the 1980s and ’90s. “I was pretty well attacked by what I would say was a sexual predator,” she said. “On my first day of training in that area, he took me to the forest and started taking my seatbelt off and I started running back towards the station … my station protected me.”

A QPS spokeswoman said it could not provide specific comment because it was being considered by the government: “The QPS is committed to strengthening and improving its responses to domestic and family violence.”

Women’s Legal Service Queensland chief executive Nadia Bromley said her organisation would be happy to support “any commissioner who wants to denounce” misogyny and racism in the QPS and she hoped the inquiry would recommend appropriate training, debriefing and mandatory psychological counselling to help police deal with the trauma of their job.

She noted experts had found some officers who were perpetrators of sexual harassment and abuse had “vicarious trauma” and were using the abusive behaviour as a “maladapted coping strategy”.