BRIBE MAN BLAMES BAD POLICE

A DRUG cartel of corrupt Victorian police officers had been operating for
at least a decade, the Supreme Court heard yesterday.

The claim was made by the lawyer for confessed drug trafficker and police
briber Peter Pilarinos. In seeking leniency for Pilarinos, Brian Cash told
the Supreme Court his client wanted to tell a royal commission about "the
alarming extent of corruption in the Victorian police force".

"There has been a drug cartel in the Victorian police drug squad as well as
among other police officers for at least a decade," Mr Cash said.

He said Pilarinos had told him the police officer he admits bribing for
about a year to get drug ingredients from the police compound at Attwood,
Kevin John Hicks, was a small fish among corrupt police officers.

"Pitiful detective Hicks was but a minnow and totally subservient to other
corrupt police officers," Mr Cash said.

He said 45-year-old Pilarinos should get a lesser jail sentence because he
had not bowed to pressure not to plead guilty to charges including bribing
a police officer and trafficking in illegal drugs.

"It will be alleged he was pressured by others not to plead guilty ...(he
was told) don't co-operate and you will be looked after," Mr Cash said.

Because he had "crossed the line", Pilarinos feared for his life inside and
outside jail, Mr Cash said.

"He is a likely candidate to be killed in and out of prison and I do not
say that lightly," Mr Cash said.

He said Pilarinos had had several death threats including one saying he
surely did not want to go on a picnic with Denis Tanner Hicks' superior at
the Benalla police station and the man accused by a coroner of killing his
sister-in-law.

Mr Cash said his client had been a petty criminal for most of his life who
had been subjected to an orchestrated effort to denigrate him because of
his association with Hicks.

"One lesson to be learnt is 'Don't get involved with a corrupt police
officer because if his conduct becomes public so will yours'," Mr Cash said.

He said the public humiliation Pilarinos had suffered by being referred to
as a drug baron would last the rest of his life.

Mr Cash called on Justice George Hampel not to make Pilarinos a scapegoat
for the inefficiencies of the Victorian police force's drug confiscation
compound at Attwood.

He said the security around the compound from which his client stole
amphetamines between January 1992 and February 1993 after getting the keys
from Hicks was "so inept it's unbelievable".

"One would pray the system has improved," Mr Cash said.

He said his client should get a much lower sentence than the one yet to be
imposed on Hicks, saying that as the corrupt police officer who could
arrest Pilarinos at any one of their meetings, Hicks had the whip hand.

Mr Cash said corrupt police officers posed a much greater threat to society
than humble petty criminals.

He said Pilarinos the son of Greek peasant migrants who ran a Clifton Hill
milk bar after arriving in Australia in 1955 admitted to becoming
antisocial and aggressive after spending nine months in jail at the age of 18.

Pilarinos was jailed for his part in a road-rage fight.

A Church of Christ minister, Thomas Ede, who has known Pilarinos' parents
for 39 years, said he believed that for the first time in his life
Pilarinos was feeling true remorse for his crimes.

The pre-sentence pleading was due to continue today.