It’s hard to keep up with the revelations of corruption in the ranks of Victoria Police. Using lawyers as informers against their own clients, bribing witnesses for evidence, using police information to carry out complex property fraud, carrying out fake breath tests to game the statistics, high ranking Professional Standards officers posting racial abuse and sexually assaulting people… and now this [$]: “Sgt Buchhorn, dubbed by the Herald Sun as ‘The Fixer’, begins tying the police accounts together. Statements will be shredded and new statements will replace old ones. Evidence will be left off the police brief, hidden from view, as if it does not exist. And to hide the trail, police will commit perjury. Officer Pullin is put in this unenviable position. When he is approached by Sgt Buchhorn in mid-1999 to make another statement, about 10 months after the shootings, he complies. His account becomes critical to the prosecution case of two offenders. Officer Pullin’s second statement is then fraudulently backdated to the morning of the murders, as if it is a contemporaneous account — the events fresh in his mind. … His original statement made just hours after he comforted and spoke to the dying Sen Constable Miller, was buried. The Court of Appeal on Tuesday said this conduct corrupted the trial ‘to its roots’.” Five original statements have disappeared… Remember — this was only revealed because a whistleblower kept a copy of one of the shredded statements. How deep is this iceberg?
11 November 2020