THE FORCE WAS WITH THEM ON NIGHTS OF ECSTASY AND COKE

Christan Bruce sat for five hours, answering every question in detail.

Yes, he and his police friends used ecstasy and coke. It was widely
available. It was easy to get. They used it regularly on the weekends. His
story is a reflection of the city he serves as a police officer.

His drug-taking days, he told the Police Integrity Commission, began in 1994
when he went along to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras party with his father
and tried ecstasy for the first time.

Since then the drugs that he and his police friends used were often bought
on their behalf by his friend and former officer, Peter Murrant, who ran a
security company, Blue Falcon.

If he could not supply them they could buy ecstasy and cocaine from dealers
in the clubs and pubs of the eastern suburbs and North Shore where they
drank.

He described a night which started off with police friends at the Sugar Reef
night club in Kings Cross where he and Constable Anthony Binns pooled $200
to get some more coke, after they had already consumed copious amounts of
alcohol and drugs.

They moved on to Biblos nightclub in Oxford Street with another man, Jack,
and by the morning they were at the Blackmarket Hotel in Haymarket.

Constable Binns had had enough and went home but the other man, Jack, was
"out of control" and wanted more. At 10am he and Constable Bruce went to a
drug dealer's house in Bondi to get even more coke.

Jack told Constable Bruce that he wanted to die snorting coke and he went
into the bathroom of the drug dealer's house and snorted a line. When he
came out "blood was streaming from his nose" and "that scared me a bit" and
he went home.

As a police officer, he and the others had compromised themselves by using
drugs, associating with dealers and turning a blind eye to those who
supplied them.

That point of compromise arose most intensely for Constable Bruce when he
learnt he was to be sent on a surveillance operation in the police
helicopter to observe a search warrant being executed on the house and the
office of his best friend, Peter Murrant.

It now seems that it was all part of an elaborate sting by the Police
Integrity Commission and there was no raid.

But he took the bait and tipped off his friend.

He apologised yesterday for what he had done and said his life will never be
the same again after turned on his best friend, Mr Murrant, and his old
flatmate Constable Matthew Crotty. His appearance yesterday was similar to
the appearance of Kings Cross Detective Trevor Haken in the royal commission
in 1995, who told everything he knew about his and his colleagues'
involvement in corruption.

For the Police Integrity Commission, the body charged with carrying on the
work of the royal commission, Christan Bruce may turn out to be just as
important.

Melinda Dundas, widow of Roni Levi, shot by police on Bondi Beach in 1997,
said yesterday there were still lots of unanswered questions about his death
and she hoped the PIC would delve further into matters surrounding it. One
of the men who shot her husband, Constable Anthony Podesta, was alleged to
have been a cocaine user and to have shared lines of cocaine with Constable
Bruce from a cistern at Biblos nightclub in 1998.

Ms Dundas said this raised concerns that needed to be properly aired.