POLICE 'TERRORISED' DRUGS OFFICER

A police officer who refused a cash bribe and alerted superiors to the
activities of corrupt detectives including Roger Rogerson and Grahame
''Chook'' Fowler was terrorised by death threats and warned he would
be set up, a court has been told.

The former drug squad member, the then Detective-Sergeant Barry
Michael Batton was offered $1,000-a-week to keep police under his
command out of Kings Cross and away from the Bayeh family.

But after reporting the bribe and his suspicions about Fowler and
Rogerson, Mr Batton and his family experienced behaviour his lawyer
described as ''extraordinary, extreme and without precedent''.

The revelations, including the threat of a fake internal security
operation, came in a hearing before the NSW Industrial Relations
Commission this week, in which the NSW Police Service is fighting an
order to compensate Mr Batton with six months' pay.

Mr John Gallagher, SC, for Mr Batton, said the case had ''an air of
unreality'', and the actions of the police service were ''absolutely
incredible in the 1990's - Royal Commission, or no Royal
Commission''.

Mr Batton was a team leader with the drug squad, heading up to 100
officers, and the facts leading up to his leaving the force are not in
dispute.

Counsel for the police service, Mr Peter Kite, said on Thursday that
the circumstances leading up to his retirement had no bearing,
although it was ''overwhelmingly easy'' to be sympathetic towards the
former sergeant.

The commission was told the case raised questions over whether the
force failed to support an officer who had ''done the right thing''.

Mr Batton was distressed when he was warned by anonymous letter that
money had been paid to have him transferred. Shortly afterwards he was
officially informed he was being sent to an area under the command of
Inspector Fowler, the commission heard.

Earlier this year Mr Batton, 50, won his case for compensation after
arguing he had been dismissed in August 1993.

The police service maintains Mr Batton was not dismissed, but that his
employment came to an end when his application for medical retirement
was accepted. As a result, he received a statutory pension of around
72 per cent of his salary.