NSW govt won't release surveillance report

THE NSW government will not release a report into a high-level internal police surveillance operation, saying the police integrity watchdog has found the investigation unsatisfactory. 
 
Police Integrity Commission (PIC) Inspector David Levine warned that releasing the Strike Force Emblems report would be "dangerous" and damage the reputation of NSW police.

Strike Force Emblems was established to investigate the propriety of an internal police operation in 2000, which put 114 people, including police and lawyers, under surveillance.

Some of those police are now in the top ranks of the force, including deputy commissioner Nick Kaldas.

Police and their union have called for the Emblems report to be released to protect the reputation of honest officers.

However, after being asked by Premier Barry O'Farrell to determine whether the report should be made public, PIC Inspector David Levine was damning.

The former Supreme Court Justice wrote in a letter to Police Minister Michael Gallacher on November 23 that he had found the report "to be such an abstruse and unsatisfactory internal police document that it is not in the public interest for it, its findings ... and its recommendations ... to be made public".

He wrote: "There is a grave risk to the reputation of not only the NSW Police as an institution but also of many named persons by false perceptions flowing from publication as well as inevitable speculations which would be fruitless as they would be dangerous."

Recommending the Emblems report and his review of it not be released, Mr Levine said it was not a question of avoiding public scrutiny.

"But rather of the operation of a transcending public interest in the fair and considered protection of the good name of the NSW Police," he wrote.

Mr Gallacher told reporters a line should be drawn under the "flawed" Emblems investigation.
In opposition Mr Gallacher had called for the release of Emblems, but having read in government what he said were its inconsistent recommendations, he had changed his mind.

He said the Ombudsman should now be allowed to conduct his investigation into the original surveillance operations and Strike Force Emblems.

"We've got to finally come to a point that says let's rule a line under Emblems, let's stop holding it up as somehow being a model of an internal investigation, let's (give) the Ombudsman the opportunity to go about and do this investigation once and for all properly," Mr Gallacher said.

He said it was now for the Ombudsman to look not only at Mr Levine's report "but indeed the entirety of this matter".

The Police Association of NSW said the recommendation not to release the 2004 Emblems report was "disappointing and completely unsatisfactory", and defended the officers involved in the investigation.
"Today's announcement does not address the key reasons why there was an investigation in the first place," Association President Scott Weber said in a statement.

"It is completely unacceptable for (Mr Levine) to wipe his hands of responsibility and shift the responsibility to the Ombudsman."

Greens MP David Shoebridge accused the government of "hiding key information from the public".
"More than a hundred people had their phones bugged it would appear with almost no grounds to support that," Mr Shoebridge told AAP.

"Those people include senior police, journalists and lawyers (and) any society should be troubled when their police can go and get such extraordinary powers with little more than a rubber stamp from the Supreme Court."