OF ALL the things a rogue cop can do, the lowest is to sell out someone else’s investigation, to steal information and sell it to the enemy. It risks the lives of undercover operatives and informers for nothing but naked greed.
Those who will stoop to such treachery leave the protected trenches of the police brotherhood, but are never fully trusted by the criminals they are prepared to serve. They exist in a moral no-man’s land, surviving on rat cunning, exploiting contacts on both sides of the fence and showing a ruthless desire to look after number one.
Many police are prepared to turn a blind eye to the bash artist or the officer who fakes evidence to get a conviction, but they have nothing but contempt for traitors willing to sell out ‘The Job’.
In December 1988, the Drug Squad decided to target William John Hackett, known as a major amphetamines trafficker.
The operation was given the code name ‘Mint’ and put under the control of one of Victoria’s most respected detectives, Sergeant Ron Iddles.
Two undercover police were introduced to the target as interstate drug buyers who could move large quantities of ‘speed’. Melbourne was then the amphetamines capital of Australia, so it made sense that dealers would come to the source.
The two experienced detectives were well-tutored in their roles and, on 2 January 1989, they had their first bite. They bought a pound of amphetamines for $8000 from Hackett. On 18 January, they bought another three pounds for $24,000.
Although the police had the evidence to move on Hackett, Ron Iddles decided to let the job run, to scoop up as many members of the syndicate as could be identified. With two men on the inside, it looked as if it could be a big win.
The detectives knew their target was cunning and experienced but they also calculated that greed, and the cash they were spreading around, might well ultimately trap the heads of the network. Although Hackett was a wary criminal, the undercovers were confident.
But, on 26 February, Hackett told one of them that a policeman was demanding $28,000 from the drug syndicate and had a police tape implicating a key member of the amphetamine ring. The undercover was told that $5000 had already been paid.
This news put both police at great risk. They didn’t know if the new information was real or just a try-on. If it was true, had they been sold out from within? If they had been identified as police, what would the heads of the syndicate do?
Investigators have been killed for less. Sydney undercover agent Mick Drury was shot at his home in 1984 while washing dishes. He had also been sold out by a brother officer. Police knew that no-one’s safety was guaranteed.
However, Hackett said in a secretly-recorded conversation on 6 March that the allegedly corrupt policeman had been warned off from continuing the approach. On 22 March, the day before a deal to deliver two pounds of speed to the undercovers was to go down, a member of the syndicate, Terrence John Moon, was observed going into the McKinnon Hotel in Melbourne to meet another man.
To this day the identity of that man remains a mystery, even though police in five unmarked cars were watching him. They saw he walked with a limp. A former policeman with a shady reputation was known to have a leg injury around that time, but a distinctive gait was hardly foolproof identification. Moon left the hotel and went home, where a listening device had been hidden. He told his wife that he was about to be arrested and the two men he had been dealing with were undercover police. He said the house was probably bugged. Iddles listened, outraged that his job had been sold out.
At 10.30 that night, ‘Mint’ was terminated and Moon, Hackett and a woman were arrested. Hackett was found to have several firearms, proof that the leak was dangerous, and potentially fatal, for the undercover police. Moon, Hackett and the woman were later convicted.
On 30 March, Hackett was granted bail on a $50,000 surety. A former policeman was in court and provided the surety. Detective Inspector Dave Foley confronted the former policeman and later gave sworn evidence of the conversation.
FOLEY: ‘I’ve been told you passed on an offer on to Moon … What do you know about that?’
FORMER POLICEMAN: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Dave.’
FOLEY: ‘Come on. Moon told me you passed the information on to him.’
FORMER POLICEMAN: ‘What can I say?’
FOLEY: ‘I want the name of the policeman or policemen who asked you to pass on the information about the tapes for money.’
FORMER POLICEMAN: ‘Dave, you know me. You know what it’s like. I can’t tell you who they are; it would be worth my life.’
FOLEY: ‘Did you pass the information, the message from the police officers to Moon. I mean, the offer of tapes for money?’
FORMER POLICEMAN: ‘Yes, I did, but that’s all I can tell you. I can’t say anything else.’
FOLEY: ‘You should know us, we won’t rest until we find out who the crooked police officers are.’
FORMER POLICEMAN: ‘You’ll never find out, Dave. Moon doesn’t even know who they were.’
DENIS Tanner joined the police force on 22 October, 1973, and graduated on 15 March, 1974, in 22nd position of 24 recruits. He began his active service in the records section at Russell Street, then worked at South Melbourne, Shepparton and St Kilda before transferring to the CIB in March, 1979.
He was promoted to senior detective and worked in some of the heavy squads, including the major crime squad. A former colleague remembers Tanner as ‘a real good detective’.
‘He was a real tough bastard who loved to lock up crooks. I never saw him flinch once. Some coppers talk tough but lack a bit when it’s really willing. Denis was not like that. He was hard as nails.’
In September 1988, the position of detective sergeant at Benalla was advertised in the ‘Police Gazette’. Tanner was the successful candidate. Another policeman appealed against the decision, but the Police Service Board dismissed the appeal and, on 7 December, Tanner transferred to the posting, which was in the area where he had been brought up.
For Tanner, it was completing the circle. He had worked in the city but he had decided it was time to return to the country he knew. His wife, a policewoman, resigned her position at Altona when she could not get a country posting with him.
He believed that, with his city experience and his country upbringing, he would prove to be an efficient and respected detective who could make a difference in Benalla. The Police Service Board was later to say that he ‘took up his position with interest and enthusiasm whilst displaying marked initiatives to improve the working conditions at the division’.
While Tanner was settling in, Ron Iddles, another hard-nosed detective with a reputation for not taking a backward step, was stewing. Universally respected, Iddles was not prepared to walk away from his drug operation without trying to find out who sold him out.
It was an open secret at the time in police circles that a lot of Drug Squad jobs were being leaked to criminals. There was a traitor in the camp.
Soon, through a variety of sources, he came to believe that a member of a squad stationed in the same building as the Drug Squad had become aware of the operation and passed on the information to Tanner who, in turn, used the former policeman as a go-between to warn the targets.
It was a scandal waiting to break. Iddles was determined that this would not be swept under the carpet.
Tanner and Iddles were old mates. Both were raised in the country and were big, tough, no-nonsense types. They joined the job together and were in the same academy class, graduating on the same day. They both wanted to catch crooks and did detective training school together. Iddles finished dux of the course, but Tanner struggled through at the tail, passing with a mark of 75.25 per cent when the cutoff point was 75.
In April 1990, two senior officers, Detective Superintendent Neil Comrie, later to be chief commissioner, and veteran corruption investigator Chief Inspector Tony Warren of the Internal Investigations Department, were assigned the job of finding out how the job leaked.
It was not long before Denis Tanner knew he was in the frame. The detective suspected of initially finding out about the job and passing the information to Tanner was interviewed as a suspect.
The Police Service Board was later to find the detective ‘emerged in the judgment of the board as a member with unexplained knowledge of some aspects of Operation Mint’.
The detective was interviewed by Chief Inspector Warren on 18 October 1989. Within six weeks the suspect resigned from the force.
On 16 January 1990, the then Deputy Commissioner (administration), Brendan Crimmins, dropped a bombshell. He wrote to Tanner and effectively accused him of being a crook.
‘An investigation has been conducted into the corrupt leak of information from the Drug Squad, in respect to an operation into the large scale manufacture and trafficking of amphetamines,’ he wrote.
‘The maintenance of efficiency of the force requires the regional commander always has confidence in his personnel and that I, too, have the same confidence in them. As the result of this investigation, these degrees of confidence are not present and in the interests of the maintenance of the efficiency of the force, you are appointed to Force Reserve as of 17th January, 1990, under the provisions of Regulations 901, Police Regulations, 1979.’
Denis Tanner was nothing if not a fighter. He was not prepared to cop the transfer. If he did nothing he knew his professional reputation would never recover. His credibility would be shattered and he would be branded a leak for ever more. He appealed to the Police Service Board, where the case was fought in a marathon hearing of twenty days before County Court Judge Walsh, a former police commander, Eric Sutton, and a respected veteran policeman, Fred Leslie, in 1990.
REPUTATIONS were made and lost at the bitterly-fought hearing. Police turned on police, officers who had been friends for years gave sworn evidence that illustrated alarmingly different recollections of conversations.
The board issued subpoenas to certain people it believed could shed light on the mystery, but they could not be found. Meanwhile, Denis Tanner argued strongly that he had been accused and punished on the basis of guilt by association, combined with malicious gossip.
‘As a general proposition, rumor and innuendo about crime and personalities are rife within the police force. I have found frequently that names are mentioned, quite inaccurately as it later turns out, but nevertheless this misinformation circulates on the grapevine,’ Tanner said.
‘Sometimes this is the result of malice, other times it is inadvertent, while at other times it can be the result of misguided enthusiasm. Facts and personalities change as the story does the rounds. It is an inherent part of the job that police will pry into the business of other people and this flows on to the individual lives of police.
‘I believe now that at least one reason why my name has arisen in respect of this matter is because some persons know or learnt that I am an acquaintance of (former policeman) who was a friend of Moon and a good friend of (suspect detective) and wrongly speculated that I must have been connected with ‘selling out’ of the alleged Drug Squad job.
‘The “selling out” of Operation Mint became a talking point, especially in CIB circles.’
Eleven serving and former police, from the rank of constable to chief inspector, told the board that Tanner was a ‘trusted and valuable member of the CIB’. Support statements were gathered from five serving and former police.
Locals who were prepared to vouch for Tanner included a butcher, a local councillor, a supermarket manager, a school principal, a farmer, a publican and a car dealer.
His record sheet was filled with praise from senior officers. He was described over the years as well-conducted, efficient, reliable and enthusiastic.
On 4 May 1978 he was praised in the following terms: ‘Commended with three others for dedication to duty, courage and persistence displayed, with scant regard for his personal safety, in the apprehension and subsequent conviction of a desperate criminal who exercised every violent means at his disposal endeavouring to effect his escape.’
Two months after transferring to Benalla in December 1988, Tanner hurt his knee on duty after a ‘violent struggle’ with a criminal in the cells. He was off work for 40 days from 17 April 1989 to 11 June 1989, suffering from stress and anxiety ‘due to a variety of factors perceived by him, not the least being that he heard the allegations that he was suspected of serious corruption’. He had been disciplined twice in his career for inappropriate actions. In the early 1970s, he was counselled by senior officers for not following procedures and, at Benalla CIB, for using inappropriate language.
When he moved there he was in the process of buying a house for $147,000. In October 1989, he was ‘very belatedly’ interviewed by investigators over the Drug Squad leak. Tanner knew the ropes and the tone of the interview left him knowing that he was under suspicion.
He rang the head of the investigation, Superintendent Comrie, to find out where he stood. The future commissioner didn’t mince words. Out in the cold, was the answer.
The board said Mr Comrie told the suspect policeman he ‘was likely to be sent to Force Reserve’. Tanner allowed his offer on the house to lapse.
THE board warned of the dangers of listening to mess-room gossip. It found that a corrupt approach had been made to one of the targets but found there was nothing to link Tanner to the approach. ‘The evidence which was available to the investigators did not afford any tenable basis for that conclusion. Nor was it such as to give rise to reasonable suspicion that Tanner was involved in the corrupt approach which was made. ‘The evidence which was given and the statements which were received provided convincing evidence of the appellant’s ability and efficiency, his value as a detective in the north-east of Victoria and his ability to integrate his CIB duties with his membership of the community in that area.’
The board overturned the decision of the chief commissioner to transfer Tanner to the force reserve.
Tanner gave impressive evidence at the hearing. He said he was financially secure, ‘to refute the motive of greed attributed to him’.
Ron Iddles resigned from the force in disgust. He later rejoined and was given rapid promotion to become a senior member of the Homicide Squad.