Victorian police union to sue star chamber

THE Victorian Police Association is preparing a legal bid to bring the Office of Police Integrity to account for allegedly misusing its powers.

THE Victorian Police Association is preparing a legal bid to bring the Office of Police Integrity to account for allegedly misusing its powers, leading to the criminal prosecution of former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby and one-time union chief Paul Mullett.

The association will tell its 11,000 members this week that one of Melbourne's leading silks, Philip Priest, QC, and a junior counsel, are investigating whether the OPI can be sued for alleged negligence, false imprisonment, facilitating malicious prosecutions and conspiracy to cause economic loss.

There is no cap on the legal costs, which will be fully funded by the association, putting it on a collision course with the Brumby government and the OPI in the lead-up to a state election.

Mr Priest is also being asked to examine whether the OPI's regular delegate, Murray Wilcox, QC, whose failure to be properly sworn led to the collapse in February of the case against Mr Ashby, can be liable for legal action for damages.

Association assistant secretary Bruce McKenzie told The Australian yesterday that police were aware of evidence of highly questionable or unlawful conduct by the OPI, the nation's newest agency set up to tackle police corruption.

The OPI's extraordinary powers and exemption from operational oversight, apart from the narrow scrutiny of the Special Investigations Monitor, have triggered staunch criticisms from lawyers and police that it has been "drunk on power" and operates as a law unto itself.

Mr McKenzie also called for a permanent royal commission in Victoria as a matter of urgency, and an open inquiry into the OPI's conduct in the Ashby-Mullett cases as a high priority.

"We want to instigate a judicial review or inquiry, particularly into the Ashby and Mullett cases but also in others where we have seen similar accusations against police of terrible things without a shred of evidence," he said. `

"Police are happy enough to be the subject of scrutiny and investigation but they do not want to see the powers continually misused. The OPI has been accountable to nobody, they simply walk away without even so much as an apology or an explanation, and people are very angry about it."

The cases of Mr Ashby and Mr Mullett, which came to light in late 2007 in coercive public hearings run by the OPI and featuring dozens of telephone intercepts, saw both men accused of tipping off a serving police officer about a murder investigation implicating him. Although the OPI's investigation did not prove the claims, Mr Ashby and Mr Mullett were charged with perjury-related offences subsequently dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions.

Mr Mullett, who had been at war with the then police chief commissioner Christine Nixon and the OPI before the OPI began investigating him in 2007, said last night: "My allegations are that senior people in Victoria Police and the OPI have abused the criminal justice system to seek a politically-motivated outcome.

"My view is that the serious allegation I am making would ultimately be vindicated in the event of an open and transparent judicial inquiry into the OPI's conduct."

Mr Ashby said he was confident the full story about the OPI's conduct and its motives for the investigations into him and Mr Mullett will emerge.