WITNESS TELLS OF OFFICER USING COCAINE

High on cocaine and in police uniform, Rodney Podesta visited his
girlfriend hours before shooting dead a knife-wielding man on Bondi
Beach, an inquiry was told yesterday.

The former girlfriend told the NSW Police Integrity Commission (PIC)
the young officer regularly used large amounts of the banned narcotic.

Sometimes he snorted cocaine on duty, sometimes the drugs were the
proceeds of police seizures, and on one occasion it was doled out from
a stash worth perhaps $1000 stuffed inside a plastic sandwich bag.

Identified only as SA2 during video testimony, the woman also branded
Mr Podesta's partner, Senior Constable Tony Dilorenzo, a drug-user.

She had referred to the pair as "the awesome twosome", she said, after
their penchant for "partying a lot".

The PIC is probing whether the two policemen were affected by cocaine,
ecstasy or alcohol, or a combination of the three, on the morning they
fatally shot Roni Levi.

Both officers fired twice on the emotionally disturbed Frenchman about
7.30am on June 28, 1997.

SA2 told counsel assisting the commission, Peter Johnson, SC, she
first met Mr Podesta at Bondi's Liberty Lunch cafe in early 1997.

A week later, Mr Podesta took her to dinner at Liberty Lunch and
produced cocaine, which they shared in the toilet, SA2 said.

It was to be the first of many times.

While they were dating, Mr Podesta "would go straight to work from
being out all night".

Questioned on when she last saw Mr Podesta before Mr Levi's death, SA2
said it had been the night before, "in the late evening".

"He was high on cocaine and he looked very agitated ... he couldn't
sit still," she said.

Under cross examination by Ken Madden, solicitor for Mr Podesta and
Dilorenzo, SA2 denied telling "lie after lie".

"You had a one-night stand and then you went around telling people Mr
Podesta was your boyfriend, didn't you?," he suggested, to which she
replied, "No".

SA2 also claimed to have witnessed Dilorenzo snort cocaine with Mr
Podesta at both the Sugar Reef nightclub and at Mr Podesta's house.

Mr Madden put it to her that that, too, had been completely
untruthful, an accusation she also denied.

The hearing continues.