ALARM AT PLAN TO PUT POLICE OUTSIDE LAW

AUSTRALIA'S peak civil liberties organisation yesterday slammed a
report that recommends Queensland police get more powers to tackle
organised crime, including permission to commit crimes.

Australian Council for Civil Liberties president Terry O'Gorman said
the Queensland Crime Commission report lacked evidence for its
findings and the fine print contradicted its own claim that organised
crime was a problem in the State.

"The QCC has to get public runs on the board and playing on the joint
bogey man of drugs and organised crime is their recipe for survival,"
he said.

The QCC was formed last year, taking over the Criminal Justice
Commission's role in investigating organised crime and paedophilia. It
was criticised at the time, by Peter Beattie, then Opposition leader
and now Premier, as a waste of money.

Launching the report, Queensland Crime Commissioner Tim Carmody said
police sometimes had to commit "low-level" crimes, such as dealing
drugs, as part of an undercover operation. "You might need to buy and
sell drugs to establish your credibility in the criminal milieu you
are operating in," Mr Carmody said. The joint Queensland Police
Service-QCC report, Project Krystal, also said prosecutions risked
failing without State laws protecting evidence obtained by undercover
police forced to break the law.

Police also needed phone-tapping powers, the ability to seize assets
before a conviction, and to have anonymous witnesses give evidence in
court, it said.

Mr O'Gorman said the report failed to back with any statistics its
claim of failed prosecutions. He also said making a law allowing
police to commit crimes was going too far.

"What they're asking the State to do is to legislate for entrapment,"
he said.

Mr O'Gorman said powers such as phone-tapping were properly held by
federal bodies such as the Australian Federal Police and the National
Crime Authority.

"This report is a rehash of a whole lot of other things that have been
said around the country about organised crime, which when you analyse
it simply does not say anything new."

Police Minister Tom Barton briefed State Cabinet on the report
yesterday but said no decision had yet been made on its
recommendations.