An amusing -- but revealing -- defeat for the Queensland wallopers

On Sept. 15 I reported on the case of Eaves v. Donnelly in which Renee Eaves was awarded the sum of $93,000 against ex-cop Barry John Donnelly and the State of Queensland.

One would have thought that the Queensland Police Service would have been deeply embarrassed to find that a private prosecution was needed to establish the culpability of one of their officers after they had proclaimed that he had no case to answer.

Had there been any decency at the top one would have thought that prompt payment of the award accompanied by profuse apologies to Ms Eaves would be the order of the day.

Their actual response however established what low types run the Qld. cops. They say that fish rot from the head and it seems that the Qld cops are still in that category. The Fitzgerald enquiry put the Qld. police chief in jail so rottenness at the top is a reasonable expectation in Qld.

And that expectation would seem to be borne out in the Eaves vs. Donnelly matter. Instead of showing any contrition, the police decided to appeal the verdict. The scathing comments about them from Judge Samios were apparently like water off a duck's back. And that decision to appeal can only have come from somewhere close to the top if not the top itself.

But here's the amusing part: Their grounds for appeal were so weak that they had to back out of the appeal. They went to the Court of Appeal (a division of the Qld Supreme Court) but the court either point blank refused to hear them or they were quietly advised that they had no case.

What scum!

Needless to say, Renee is feeling in a very good mood at the moment after the failure of the appeal (though she still hasn't got the money) so she sent me some pix:


Renee's comment on the Pic above: "The boy's club army all to sort out one lil blonde single mum....... Chickens ... but expensive ones for the taxpayers. Sherman Oh is the Asian one and Mark Hinson the senior counsel is front right"


Renee in a place she now rather likes


A meditation

The amount the cops must have spent on legal services in the matter rather boggles the mind. It would have been MUCH cheaper for the taxpayer if they had settled out of court. But to do that would have required at least an implicit admission of fault and they were clearly not adult enough for that.

A letter to the Qld. CMC

Sent to me for publication by the author

I wish to submit a complaint about police officer Jamie Hurley, who also goes by the name of Jamie Joseph. Issues include:

• Using police computers to access private information about me without cause

• Using police computers to access legal information and publishing same on facebook

• Using the heroic death of a police officer as an excuse to get stress leave so that he could pursue an acting career

• Taking place in a film whilst on duty (Alien Sons, filmed in Jacobs Well)

• Attending acting classes with me and a certain movie producer and performing other personal errands whilst on duty and in uniform

• Leaving his police weapon on the coffee table with a civilian whilst he went up to his car – can describe it as a Colt, also displaying it to my father

• Using a police vehicle for private purposes, and taking photos of actors in the back of his police vehicle (details enclosed)

• Earning an income as an actor whilst on stress leave

• Displaying and discharging a taser on a civilian to display it’s effect whilst they were visiting his home (kept in police safe, was removed in my presence)

• Bringing a confiscated weapon (knife) to a film set, being photographed/filmed with it and later giving same to one of the crew – can offer it back as evidence

• Acting as a safety officer on film set whilst on duty (Alien Sons)

• Discharging his weapon without cause to “display it’s power” at Jacobs Well

• Using his badge to remove children from an area of a park to make space for filming even though he was off duty and there was no legal right for the crew to have the park to themselves

I realise that bringing an accusation against a police officer usually just results in even more harassment and no action, as he so succinctly pointed out himself, but a line has to be drawn somewhere, and I have had enough of a bad police officer abusing his privilege and making my life hell in the middle of it all.

UPDATE:  James Hurley has emailed me as follows:

I was a police officer for many years both in Victoria and Queensland. As a police officer, I NEVER did anything that was illegal or outside the boundaries of my position. I was given the opportunities to abuse my position by both police officers and criminals, yet I always refused and at times when necessary, reported the issue. I left the Qld service in 2013 suffering from PTSD. 

I am trying to get my life on track and recover from this illness and am succeeding now. 

The complaint placed on your blog was a totally fictitious complaint made up by a person wanted for impersonating a gynaecologist. This person and his partner blamed me for the QPS finding out who they were and they mdd it their goal to impact my life in a negative way. The part of this that really gets to me is the claim I used the death of my very good friend and colleague as a reason to get out of work. This really pisses me off. 

90% of the rest of the complaint was discounted by investigation. i.e.: the downloading of the Taser to prove an activation had not occurred. There are a couple of things I can’t prove didn’t happen but believe when I say they didn’t.

My request is, can you please remove this story from your blog? It is completely untrue and it does continue to haunt me.

Queensland Police crime figures flawed and unreliable, say criminologists

QUEENSLAND Police keep two sets of books on crime - only one of which they release to the public. The other they keep to themselves.

Queenslanders get district and regional figures, which criminologists say cannot be used to measure crime accurately because the reporting method is flawed and unreliable.

By contrast, residents in NSW can access crime statistics by suburb, collected by an independent body and published online.

Since 2006, the QPS has made 41 changes to police district boundaries, making "apples to apples" comparisons impossible.

In 2009 the Gold Coast police district shrank from 1140sq km to 374sq km after the QPS created a 3004sq km Coomera police district. Crimes figures for several Gold Coast crime categories declined as a result.

Police Minister Neil Roberts told The Courier-Mail that police had provided him with recent crime statistics on Gold Coast crime based on the old district boundaries but the QPS has declined to provide these to The Courier-Mail.

The minister's office has yet to respond to a request to supply this data.

Police also record "divisional" figures on a consistent basis but they are kept secret.

On the Gold Coast, divisional figures are collected for Coolangatta, Palm Beach, Broadbeach, Surfers Paradise, Southport, Runaway Bay, Mudgeeraba, Nerang, Coomera and Robina.

With the exception of Robina, boundaries for those areas had not changed during the past decade, a senior police source told The Courier-Mail.

The QPS said it could not release the divisional statistics because they had not been "verified" by their statistics unit. "We don't do anything further down than the districts," a spokeswoman said.

The QPS told The Courier-Mail it would have to make an application under Right To Information laws to see the divisional statistics, which also are routinely denied to academics.

"You have to go through a research committee and they are likely to refuse you," said leading criminologist Paul Wilson of Bond University, adding he knew of no researcher accessing the data.

Professor Wilson said of the police figures: "You can't get any consistent trends over time. They are quite inadequate."

A QPS spokeswoman said the geographic boundaries were "operational police boundaries and as such are amended over time to meet operational needs" such as when new housing estates were created.

LNP police spokesman John-Paul Langbroek said he had never been provided the divisional crime figures for the Gold Coast district he represents.

SOURCE