Critical incident investigations not investigated properly: Police Integrity Commission
Police are routinely ignoring the rules for investigating critical incidents in a "worrying" practice that may jeopardise examinations into civilian deaths, the force's independent watchdog has found.
The Police Integrity Commission has analysed all 83 critical incidents between 2009 and 2012 to examine whether guidelines are being followed and whether there are risks involved in the investigative process.
A critical incident investigation is launched when a civilian or police officer suffers serious injury or death in the course of a police operation.
Incidents examined by the PIC's Project Harlequin included the death of Brazilian student Roberto Laudisio Curti, the shooting death of mentally ill man Adam Salter, and the death of Steven Bosevski, who was restrained by police while watching a St George Dragons game in 2010.
Standard guidelines for examining critical incidents include that it must be investigated by a command not involved in the incident, officers must be separated at the earliest possible opportunity, and mandatory drug and alcohol testing must be done.
To begin with, the PIC found a disturbing lack of documentation kept by police in two thirds of cases, hampering the PIC's ability to assess the response.
Conflicts of interest were considered in only 33 per cent of investigations, despite it being a mandatory guideline.
While there was a high rate of compliance with mandatory drug testing, there was a "worryingly low rate of compliance with other requirements".
The PIC found that officers were separated from each other in less than half of all investigations and only 58 per cent of critical incident crime scenes had been properly preserved.
"This meant that potentially 42 per cent of incident scenes were at risk of loss of evidence or interference with evidence through either inadvertence or deliberate misconduct," the report found.
"Separation of involved officers reduces the risk that these officers may collude to create a shared (and possibly more favourable) account of what happened and is one of the key requirements of a critical incident investigation if the risk of misconduct is to be minimised."
For many years, critics have argued that the NSW Police model for critical incident investigations is rife for conflicts of interest and misconduct because police investigate each other.
Last year, the NSW government passed legislation to replace several police oversight bodies with a single body, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
However, Greens MP David Shoebridge said at the time that it "fails to address the key failing in the present system with police continuing to investigate police in the most serious cases.
"When it comes to critical incidents this oversight body will largely be reviewing internal police investigations, rather than doing the investigations themselves. We're repeating the mistakes of the past."
The PIC report said the NSW Police acknowledged gaps in record-keeping practices but denied investigations were compromised as a result.
There was no resistance from NSW Police to 16 recommendations, including better record keeping, regular compliance audits and better recording of conflicts of interest, the report said.
A NSW Police spokeswoman said on Thursday: "NSW Police is aware of the report and is considering its recommendations."