Revolt In Ranks

A CABRAMATTA police officer has been relocated "for his own safety" by
the Police Commissioner away from the heroin-selling hot spot while
the Police Integrity Commission investigates his allegations of
corruption and failure to control drug trafficking in the suburb.

Sergeant Tim Priest, a former drug squad officer and the son of State
RSL president Rusty Priest, is on leave from the south-western Sydney
police station.

He is due to transfer to Campbelltown station because "they consider
me under threat from outside and from within".

"(The threat is) from within the police force at Cabramatta and from
drug dealers in Cabramatta who, with the way things are destabilised
at the moment at the station, they might consider it an opportune time
to hit me," he said.

The highly-respected officer has made claims against a number of
senior police.

In a seven-page document passed by Commissioner Peter Ryan to the
Police Integrity Commission for investigation, Sergeant Priest said
senior officers had interfered with his and other officers' attempts
to arrest drug dealers.

Cabramatta had instructed "junior police not to make drug arrests" and
had not attended serious crime scenes for attempted murders and home
invasions because they did not want to incur overtime.
He said police had not taken action against a local pub, "possibly the
sleaziest hotel in Sydney (and) a major source of drug-related crime",
and at the height of shootings and gang activity in Cabramatta an
officer had dismissed the violence, saying: "It's only Asians shooting
Asians."

Sergeant Priest said he was victimised because of his attempts to stop
drug crime and expose corruption.

He claims he was demoted from detective rank to uniform after blowing
the whistle about the blind-eye turned to drug trafficking and related
crime in the Cabramatta area.

He attacked State Government crime figures which have lowered
Cabramatta's crime rate to below that of Mosman's, by not including
murder or drug statistics.

"You would have to be an idiot to say that," he said. "It's the heroin
capital of Australia.

"And it's as bad again as it was three years ago, with more young kids
wandering in to town and dying of overdoses.

"Maybe their philosophy is if we contain it all in Cabramatta then
it's a south-western Sydney problem, but the kids come from all over -
the north shore, the eastern suburbs."

Sergeant Priest said senior ranks were covering up the true crime rate
"to attain promotion. They are prepared to destroy any decent police
officer willing to fight the odds and continue to make a
difference".

"This current police force is so clean, clinically clean and free of
corruption, at least from sergeant down, but there seems to be this
culture that if you speak out or don't agree with the policies you get
cut to pieces."

For the past 18 months, he and other officers at Cabramatta had been
subjected to intimidation and accusations.

"Other cops took it because they thought they had to, but once we
started to support each other, the movement grew," Sergeant Priest
said.

Adding to the problems at Cabramatta is uncertainty about the position
of patrol commander Superintendent Peter Horton. He announced last
week he wanted to leave Cabramatta after a series of meetings by
police from the Cabramatta patrol unhappy with their commander.
Earlier this month, officers voted to put on hold a motion of no
confidence in Superintendent Horton. A similar motion was to be put to
Cabramatta police this week.

The Police Association and Cabramatta Chamber of Commerce have claimed
that heroin dealing has increased to the point where police have lost
the initiative to control it.

Chamber of Commerce president Ross Treyvaud said businesses and
residents were fed up with escalating violence and drug sales. "While
the situation at the police station continues to fester, there are 100
drug sellers in the street near the railway station at any one time,"
he said.

"We have been told there are budget restraints, which reduce the
number of police on the streets in the town centre to three or four.
That's four versus 100."

Mr Treyvaud claimed Operation Puccini, a visual policing system
involving street cameras and closed-circuit televisions instigated in
1997, no longer was effective after Fairfield City Council, which paid
for the scheme, sought a cheaper security firm to operate it.

A spokesman for the commissioner said he was not aware of Sergeant
Priest's letter "at such short notice" but that it may have been
received and passed on to such a body as the Police Integrity
Commission.