UNDERCOVER COP BEHIND TV DRAMA 'TOOK BRIBES'

As the inspiration for the television police drama Stingers, Guy Wilding
was an ideal model for "a series about undercover cops - people with covert
lives and constantly changing identities".

Yesterday the former Drug Enforcement Agency detective senior sergeant was
before the Police Integrity Commission where a former drug dealer accused
him of taking bribes to help reduce prison sentences.

Mr Wilding, who spent much of his 20 years in the police force undercover,
later became the basis for the Peter Phelps character in Stingers and a
creative consultant to the show.

Now describing his job as "home duties", he was the first witness at the
PIC's investigation into alleged misconduct by DEA members, in particular
the practice of detectives creating "letters of comfort" to assist
offenders about to be sentenced.

While Mr Wilding denied he had ever taken money from any criminal, a former
drug dealer dubbed P4 told the PIC that Mr Wilding and his partner had
brokered a $12,000 to $15,000 payment to write a favourable letter to his
sentencing judge.

When P4's sister was later arrested in Melbourne for supplying drugs, P4
claimed Mr Wilding and Detective Senior Constable Michael Kempnich offered
to provide her with a similar letter for $30,000.

Mr Wilding told the PIC he had arrested P4 on June 28, 1991 at a flat in
Darling Point where police found a quantity of LSD. P4 was then taken to
his home at Manly, where no drugs were found, but from where P4 alleges
about $7000 or $8000 disappeared from a jacket in his bedroom.

That morning P4 was granted bail from Manly police station without having
to go to court and later became Mr Wilding's informant.

Mr Wilding could not recall how many times he had met P4 but said that on
some occasions P4 wanted only to drink coffee "and say what a beautiful day
it was".

But by the time P4 appeared for sentencing at the District Court on October
23, 1992, among the documents the prosecution handed to the judge was a
letter signed by Mr Wilding detailing P4's help to police.

That letter said P4 was a registered informant known to Mr Wilding,
Constable Kempnich and DEA Detective Superintendent Bob Lysaught, who had
voluntarily supplied information which had been "instrumental" in the
arrest of other offenders and the seizure of drugs.

P4 said the letter was written after Mr Wilding or Constable Kempnich said
that for $12,000 to $15,000 they could arrange for a "little piece of
paper" to be given to his judge "to get maybe a lighter sentence".

According to the letter, the offenders P4 had helped catch were criminals,
yesterday given code names of F5, C7, F6, R3, A3, G6, D7, C8, A1 and P1.
Asked about the help P4 had provided in each of these cases, Mr Wilding
could not recall the details of any of them.

For his part, P4 said he offered police nothing on F5, R3, A3, D7, P1, A1
or C8 - whom he did not even know. He had told Mr Wilding only that C7 and
F6 were drug dealers and could not recall G6's name.

When P4 was sentenced for supplying ecstasy and possessing cocaine he
received only a three-year good behaviour bond.

The hearing, before Assistant Commissioner Tim Sage, continues.