Lisa Davies
Crime Editor
Date
THE NSW Premier, Barry O'Farrell, is resisting calls for a judicial inquiry into the secret bugging of more than 100 officers, despite admitting he is ''appalled'' by the serious allegations raised.As revealed by The Sun-Herald yesterday, the long-buried report by Strike Force Emblems alleges ''systemic corruption and mismanagement'' by some officers within the force's internal affairs unit.
The president of the NSW Police Association, Scott Weber, said the report clearly detailed ''allegations of the most serious abuses of power within the three organisations tasked with over-sighting police conduct''.
He said the government should immediately authorise a judicial inquiry ''to ensure that all officers wrongly named can have their integrity cleared''.
But Mr O'Farrell said he would do nothing until he received advice from the inspector of the Police Integrity Commission, the former Supreme Court justice David Levine, whom he asked in May to examine whether the report should be released.
''I'm appalled at what I read in the media about the report, I haven't seen it … [but] I'm not going to tell the independent PIC inspector-general how to do his job,'' Mr O'Farrell said yesterday.
''I think the first point here is to get the report out, that's what I've asked [for], whether or not that can occur.''
But the Herald has learnt the Premier may be waiting for a while - Justice Levine is only required to work a maximum of two days a week and has no staff other than a part-time secretary.
Meanwhile, many of the police the report describes as having been placed on listening device warrants for ''no justification'' are understood to be considering legal action for compensation for the damage to their reputations.
It is expected they will use the action taken by officers aggrieved over a covert taskforce codenamed ''Bax'' into organised crime in Kings Cross as a precedent. That legal action resulted in a compensation payout of almost $10 million.
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