January 16, 2004
By Susann Kovacs
Former Queensland Police Commissioner Noel Newnham has rejected the Crime and Misconduct Commission’s (CMC) reasons for refusing to deal with the possible misconduct of police investigating the shooting death of a Brisbane man in 1990.
Mr Newnham told The Justice Project it was “incomprehensible” that a witness found wounded at the scene of the killing in suburban Brisbane had never been interviewed by police.
“Why isn’t the CMC jumping up and down and ensuring there will be no repetition?” Mr Newnham said.
The witness, Brendan Ryan Turbane, confessed to the Newmarket killing in 2002, twelve years after the incident.
At his trial in September 2003, it was revealed Mr Turbane was found with the victim, who had suffered a shotgun blast to his upper chest, suffering a shotgun wound of his own and with a double-barrelled shotgun lying nearby.
Although Mr Turbane spent two months in hospital recovering from his wound, he was never questioned by police.
No inquest was ever held into the victim’s death.
A New Farm resident, Mr Robert Althaus, raised the matter with the Queensland Premier after the story was covered by The Justice Project.
Mr Beattie referred Mr Althaus’ letter to the Crime and Misconduct Commission.
In its reply to Mr Althaus, the CMC said: “No suspicion of ‘misconduct’ on the part of any public official is raised by your complaint or in any of the other information obtained.”
The letter went on to note: “… in any event, the police officer who was the investigating officer in 1990 in relation to the fatal shootings is no longer employed by the QPS (Queensland Police Service).”
Mr Newnham said this reasoning was an “absurd proposition,” because one solitary police officer would not have managed such an investigation.
“There is a shooting and someone has been killed - it is incomprehensible that one person carried all of the responsibility in respect of that matter,” he said.
Mr Newnham said there was no reason the CMC could not hold the officer’s superiors accountable.
Mr Newnham was Police Commissioner at the time of the killing.
“If the primary line of responsibility is no longer in the service, well we have no assurance that the superiors are not still in the service,” he said of the CMC’s conclusions.
“There might have been only one main investigator but, no matter what, a report would have been forwarded.
“Who read it and who gave it a tick of approval?” he said.
Although unaware of the incident at the time, Mr Newnham said he acknowledged some of the responsibility rested with him.
“Now this incident occurred on my watch, so let me be right up front with you – I have an interest in this case,” Mr Newnham said.
“Who let this slipshod go undetected?
“Well ultimately, it might have been me.
“I had no knowledge of it at the time but below me there should have been people that knew, and done something about it,” he said.
Mr Newnham also said the CMC’s refusal to investigate the matter may be contrary to its own objectives.
“The CMC not only has a role in pursuing individual cases but also in pursuing the responsibility of the service as a whole,” he said.
“It is pretty obvious that this case has disclosed some remarkable deficiencies in operational procedures and we need to be assured that those deficiencies are corrected, or have been corrected.
“There is a systematic fault here.
“The system needs to be double checked.”
The CMC, however, said in its response to the Althaus complaint it considered that dealing with this matter would be an “unjustifiable use of resources”.
Former Police Commissioner Newnham said the whole incident pointed to a need for law reform.
“There is a third arm to all of this,” he said.
“If the CMC has a role in law reform and if, as I am told, the law is defective in not ensuring that a Coroners inquest is held into this and similar cases, then that is a deficiency that needs to be corrected as a matter of urgency.
“I cannot imagine in this day and age how a person can be killed with a shotgun – and there is no coroners inquest.
“I cannot comprehend that,” he said.
Mr Newnham said he regretted that he was not made aware of the incident during his time as Queensland Police Commissioner.
“It is probably not too late for me to apologise to the family that they’ve been done badly,” he said.
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