Police app wrongly tags woman a liar
A violence complainant too scared to come to court was wrongly labelled by police as a false complainant. By Kelly Dennett.
Police kept false notes on their intelligence system claiming a domestic violence complainant had made up abuse claims and then failed to come to court.
A devastated Tania Pulham says the incident has caused her significant stress and paranoia, and she has complained to the Police Professional Conduct team after those false details were then accidentally shared with a journalist.
While another man whose details were shared in the same document was paid $10,000 by police for the breach, Pulham has been denied compensation.
She only became aware of the inaccurate comments in the police National Intelligence Application (NIA) after police sent the details of those alerts, and alerts made about Pulham’s friend Phillip Saleh, to a Stuff reporter by accident.
When Saleh complained police apologised and gave him $10,000.
Police have apologised to Pulham, and corrected the NIA details, but haven’t offered her compensation because they don’t believe she was harmed.
Police use the NIA in their day-to-day work. It contains information on nearly 2 million people, including criminal history, and notes against their name that could help police with background information.
Pulham, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, fears the information recorded against her name – that she made ‘‘false complaints to police’’ and failed to show up for a court hearing despite being summonsed – had affected police perception of her. ‘‘I was shocked,’’ Pulham said. ‘‘I was completely, completely overwhelmed. It’s really triggered a lot of uncertainty and paranoia. I had no idea why they would do this.’’
In 2017 Pulham complained to police after her ex-partner allegedly sent her threatening messages. The long-term relationship had allegedly been abusive and Pulham, fearing for her safety after a period of no contact, provided police with the text messages and a video of her allegedly being assaulted with a bat by her ex-partner.
He was charged with six counts of male assaults female, assault with a blunt instrument, and threatening to kill, but a November 2017 trial, at which Pulham gave evidence, resulted in a not guilty verdict for one charge, and a hung jury on others. The judge dismissed three charges. Pulham says she couldn’t face giving evidence again during a trial on the remaining charges last year and avoided it in fear, having already told police she did not want a retrial.
Police didn’t summons her and when she failed to show, the trial was subsequently abandoned.
She only learned that police had shared the NIA alerts with a journalist after Phillip Saleh, and advocate Shannon Parker, contacted her. The Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) decided not to investigate further because police had apologised and corrected the record.
Police could not comment in time for publication, but in a letter from police legal services to Pulham, Christine Scott says police didn’t notify her because ‘‘there was no risk of foreseeable harm resulting from the breach . . . In our view (the apology) is the appropriate remedy in this instance.’’
Scott said the breach wasn’t as serious as Saleh’s because Pulham was only named once in the disclosure, and it didn’t identify her as a criminal. ‘‘The disclosure does not, in our view, reflect her in a particularly bad light.’’
Failing to answer a summons and lying about a crime are both offences.
Parker said police were careless and had ‘‘failed (Pulham) in their handling of this matter from beginning to the very bitter end. They have failed at every step . . . thinking a person would make a false complaint to police is going to make an officer very wary of a person. Everyone should be requesting their NIA alerts from police and checking the alerts are correct.’’
She also disputed that Pulham hadn’t been harmed. ‘‘The information given out about her wasn’t true and made her look like an offender when she was the victim.’’
Pulham is receiving support, and intends to complain to the Privacy Commissioner, but remains troubled by the incident.
‘‘When I found out they were saying this about my character, it put me in a whirl spin,’’ she says. ‘‘I can’t even express in words what that did. I’m the victim here, why am I being treated like this?’’
‘‘I can’t even express in words what that did. I’m the victim here, why am I being treated like this?’’ Tania Pulham