Who polices police?

ANTI-CORRUPTION watchdogs have a chequered history in this state.

We have some organisations that are intended to look at smaller matters but are given overwhelming powers.

The Local Government Inspectorate — which investigates misconduct at council level but has disproportionate star chamber powers — falls into this category. This is the bureaucratic equivalent of using a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

And then we have organisations, such as those which are meant to have oversight of police misconduct, which are often just not up to the task.

The old Office of Police Integrity, of which current police chief Graham Ashton was a senior member, is a good example.

For all the wild west tactics the police force used under former police chief Simon Overland and disgruntlement expressed from critics ranging from veteran detective Ron Iddles to deputy commissioner Sir Ken Jones, next to nothing was exposed.

Instead, it appears Overland, the police chief of the time, simply used the OPI as his personal plaything.

The OPI would investigate Overland’s enemies in the force but nothing that the chief did himself.

We now have IBAC instead of the OPI, but when IBAC probed the Lawyer X matter it did not interview Lawyer X herself, and it did not find criminal behaviour had occurred. And it is now alleged the police held back relevant documents from that probe.

While the IBAC probe was a bit of a damp squib it did recommend that Prosecutions consider if “matters ... had an adverse effect on any prosecution”. The fight to do so (while Police top brass spent public money on appeals to suppress the truth) is what finally led to the exposure of the central facts of the Lawyer X scandal.

All’s well that ends well, but questions remain on the future role of government and public bodies to oversee police.