Sir Ken Jones slams toxic loyalty over law in Victoria Police

Victoria Police’s operation with Nicola Gobbo was “illegal and chaotic”, former deputy commissioner tells Royal Commission.

There was a toxic culture of loyalty to the boss over the law when Nicola Gobbo was used as a police snitch, a former Victoria Police deputy commissioner told the Lawyer-X Royal Commission. Picture: ABC

A former Victoria Police deputy commissioner has unloaded on the “illegal and chaotic” relationship between Victoria Police and criminal barrister turned police informant Nicola Gobbo, telling the Royal Commission he informed the state’s Ombudsman about Lawyer-X almost a decade ago.

Internationally respected police officer Sir Ken Jones told the Royal Commission on Friday that Victoria Police was debased by toxic culture where loyalty to superiors was valued above all else.

Former Victoria Police deputy commissioner, Sir Ken Jones. Picture: News Corp

“There was a strong culture to loyalty, your supervisor [or] boss was all [and]I thought that was wrong, very toxic,” he said.

“I was over sighting the Ethical Standards Department [and] I saw a number of files where that culture had led people into dead ends.”

Sir Ken said the operation with Ms Gobbo “began as highly irregular, unethical and and deteriorated over a period of years to illegal and chaotic.”

Ms Gobbo, who royal commissioner Margaret McMurdo last week ordered to give evidence in January, was a high profile criminal defence barrister who represented underworld heavies such as Tony Mokbel at the height of the gangland wars in the mid-2000s.

The royal commission has already identified dozens of cases that may have been tainted by Ms Gobbo’s relationship with Victoria Police.

Sir Ken told the inquest he discovered Ms Gobbo was being used as a human source when he was overseeing the Driver Taskforce investigation into the prison murder of drug lord Carl Williams in 2010.

He said he was “discredited and silenced” after he raised concerns over Lawyer-X , which included reporting that a barrister was informing on her clients to a senior judge as well as the Victorian Ombudsman.

“I was doing what I could,” he said.

“What that required, even then, was somebody to call for a royal commission. Pure and simple.”  

Sir Ken was under investigation by the now disbanded Office of Police Integrity over suspicions he leaked information to the media over the murder of Williams when he resigned.

He told the inquiry he faced hostile reporters who he later learnt had been backgrounded on the allegations by the then head of Victoria Police’s media department.

“We were completely and utterly humiliated,’’ he said. “My wife was in bits, it was disgusting what was done to us.

Around the same time, Sir Ken said he was told by fellow officer Jeff Pope, who signed up Ms Gobbo as an informant in 1999, that a contract on his had been taken out on his life over his work investigating organised crime. He said he, his wife and his dog found a red laser dot on their chest.

“I had some firearms experience, it wasn't the sort of laser you'd buy in a toy store,” he said.

“It was a real thing and it had come from a huge distance away.”

Sir Ken said former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland operated without accountability within an opaque bureaucracy.

“We wouldn’t be sitting here today if Victoria Police was effectively regulated. Simple as that,” he said.

Sir Ken denied he approved the $3 million settlement Ms Gobbo received from Victoria Police.

Mr Overland was Chief Commissioner of Victoria Police from 2009 to 2011. As Assistant Commissioner (Crime) from 2003 to 2006, he led the Purana Taskforce on organised crime, taking a prominent role in attempting to end Melbourne’s gangland wars.

Mr Overland was sensationally sacked as CEO of Whittelsea Council on Wednesday, just a week before he is due to give evidence before the Royal Commission.

Sir Ken applied for the role of Chief Commissioner but was appointed deputy commissioner in 2009 after he was knighted in the UK in part for helping to establish an independent corruption body.