10 May 2007

Clea Rose - Things not done by the book after all

| johnboy
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Despite howls from our policing friends that only bad people ask questions about policing, and other howls from delusional members of the community who wouldn’t be able to get to sleep at night if their glossy brochure image of policing were to be ruptured, something new and interesting has come out of the Clea Rose inquest.

The Canberra Times has the fascinating report.

“The third day of the inquest heard Sergeant Bob Sobey was ACT Policing communications team leader on the night July 29, 2005, and the early morning of the following day, a role which included pursuit controller.

Sergeant Sobey told the ACT Coroner’s Court yesterday that as pursuit controller, it was his role to take charge of any police pursuit as soon as it was called in to him. However, he had not been notified of the pursuit that lead to Ms Rose’s death until after she had been struck by the stolen car being tailed by police.

Sergeant Sobey said if he had been dictating the pursuit over the radio to Constables Graeme Cooper and Constantinos Bobolas, he would have ordered they terminate it immediately after the suspect turned into the bus interchange”

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If (or should I say when) he reoffends, I want him in jail without bail and sentenced as an adult.

I’d like to see tougher sentencing in general.

But as sentence has been passed and he has served it I’d like to see him arrested quick smart if he re-offends.

The rest of the bollocks, bile, and CC being CC I’ll let through to the keeper.

There was a good article in the Saturday CT. Surprisingly it didn’t take a particular Police bashing angle and simply reported what was going on.

Article on the same day went into the drivers history of Police pursuits. Driver said he was scared of being arrested – what a load of crap.

JB, you keep on about civil liberties… you don’t seem to be on this bandwagon. I’d like to hear of a program where he is daily tormented by the images of his actions not unlike what Clea’s family endure.

I’d like to see something that stops his hands from driving a car – maybe a bracelet that “zaps” him as he jumps into any car.

Or a tracking noose?

Could the parole conditions include the wearing of a tracking bracelet?

Even less … won’t he steal a ride so he can get to home/mates/pub?

Hope the AFP will be at the gate waiting for him …

18 months for taking someone’s life. Gee I feel so secure in our legal system.

Fraid so Pandy. Sentenced to a minimum 18 months 31/01/2006.

Did I not hear that he was being released in a few months?

Less… 48 hours.

I’ll start it off – 1 week

I was born in Alice Springs and have lived in Australia almost all my life – does that make me indigenous.

Didn’t this thread get way off track.

The little shit who was driving the car is out in a couple of months. Can RA run a poll on how long the punters think it will take him to steal another car.

RA needs more polls – they have been lacking lately – along with interviews.

Wait for JB’s comment.

Not not all youths are bad. Never said it was so.

Generalising about Aboriginal youth is just as stupid as generalisings about the police force being corrupt or useless. Yes, there are bad elements in every race, just as there are bad elements in every profession. Let’s focus on the issues and not on blaming a whole culture or group of workers.

As far as the police force are concerned, I think the issue should be lack of resources, support from govt. or the judiciary, and poor morale, some of which comes about because the community runs them down so much. There are some very good coppers out there.

What is racist about racial profiling?

It happens all the time under our new security regime.

Don’t agree with homosexuality – don’t do it.

having lived in alice springs, the media reporting of crime NEVER mentions race.

however when a news report of someone dying after being speared in the thigh outside the piggly wiggly is broadcast – you dont have to be sherlock holmes to figure it out.

99% of aboriginals i have met/seen/worked with etc are decent normal you and me people, with a unique culture.

the 1% who have effectively been expeleed from their communities and gravitated to places like the todd riverbed etc cause 90% of the trouble that racists revel in using as their evidence.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt11:21 am 11 May 07

Be careful playing the definitions game – look up racism on dictionary.com and you’ll see what I mean. Real racism is about saying “members of racial group X are bad because they are members of racial group X”. I think this is a bit different to what was said above, being “I have noticed that lots of members of racial group X are bad”. Observing the characteristics of a majority of a demographic is NOT the same as saying all members of a given demographic are bad because of that membership.

Sounds like a good argument to have over several large ales.

“It’s easy to brand someone a racist simply because they claim to observe a behavioural trend or characteristic related to someone’s background.”

Probably because that’s a pretty good definition of racism, VY. Especially when it’s something negative like (and I paraphrase) “aboriginal kids nick cars”. It implies that they nick cars because they are aboriginal, not because they are seamy little turd-bags in serious need of a good arse-kicking.

Deride the behaviour. Deride the person. Don’t deride people loosely associated with the person because they’re of the same race. I’d say Nyssa’s kiddies won’t end up pinching cars.

VYBerlinaV8 now_with_added grunt9:28 am 11 May 07

It’s easy to brand someone a racist simply because they claim to observe a behavioural trend or characteristic related to someone’s background.

It’s a bit like when someone is branded a homophobe because they don’t agree with homosexuality (which is a valid view – we’re all different).

I think Nyssa is right about needing tougher penalties for kids. When I was at school in QBN it was common knowledge that if you got busted for something you’d cry, blame peer pressure and wanting to fit in because your mum got divorced when you were young, and you’d get a stern talking to and that was the end of it. Several times over.

Youth justice is a joke.

“I’m not racist…but _______”

That old chestnut.

Yes and some people have the moral fortitude to see it for what it is.

“Oh I’m not a racist” blah blah blah. Whatever keeps you going.

That some people are of a better class than others. The kind who never went to La Grange springs to mind.

My god, it looks like a racist, it smells like a racist, but he says he can’t possibly be a racist. What can I possibly believe?

You can’t face the truth.

BTW my workforce is mostly Indian. I have a couple of Chinese too. Dont have an issue with them at all: except for the slackers.

What is it about Riotact that occasionally means it attracts complete redneck morons?

el, we’re still in a little town though.

We’re not in outback NSW.

Proportion of disadvantaged incarcerated in general?

Racist police in rural communities?

That’s a start.

As i siad, don’t mention the “A” word.

And I still blame the parents.

And the fact is the proportion of Aboriginals in jail is way higher than their representation in the population. ever wonder why?

F¨ck me.

Delinquents come from all walks of life, Pandy. I really hope you’re taking the piss and deliberately trolling for replies.

No I’d have a problem with racism either which way.

Lack of respect for people property: anti-social behaviour: parents that dont care what their 14yo child is doing. seems like an MO for an Aboriginal delinquent, in which case I blame the parents.

Who before you bleat about how dare I point the stick, just go to outback NSW or Alice Springs and see which group of kids believe they cannot be touched by the law.

And I bet if I had said “Are they Muslim?” there would not be any issue tight? Just don’t mention the “A” word.

What’s that got to do with anything?

Is the turd Aboriginal?

The fact of the matter is Clea is dead.

If people want to hypothesise that the coppers were at fault, fine. It’s called free speech.

If people want to state the little turds who killed her should have received a long sentence, then that’s fine too (and I’d agree with you).

What annoys me the most is that Clea died and still little turds are stealing cars and endangering lives – no matter where in Canberra they are.

What makes it even worse is that the family of one of those little turds hasn’t learned their lesson.

About a year after Clea died, a sibling of one of the little turds was stealing cars and joyriding and bragging about it.

Someone has already said that they should have been at Quamby with no parole – and I agree.

If tougher sentences aren’t handed out for anti-social behaviour etc the kids just laugh it off and continue to do it again.

If there is truly someone to blame, it’s the parents of the little turds. They obviously didn’t teach their children respect for another person’s property or that their actions have SEVERE consequences.

It seems to me Johnboy that your rants with your buddy Waterford caused at least one AFP in high command to pay the ultimate price.

Ever thought (look it up) that maybe they were trying to do things the right way and just hate dealing with ill founded criticisms?

While I remain luke warm about the performance of the local plods, I don’t think the discussion around the Clea Rose case is the right place to conduct such a debate.

My helicopter view of it suggests that the police were in a no-win situation here, and the procedural failings that are coming out probably made little difference.

I just cannot understand why the senior echelons weren’t more transparent at the start – might have minimised the suspicions of a cover up.

I’m glad the scrotes got as much as was coming to them. I wish our judiciary would have given them more.

I am concerned, and in this I am not alone, that in dribs and drabs a picture comes out of an police force enmeshed in secrecy doing its job very badly and then threatening and intimidating to try and hide its inadequacies.

The blame does not lie, as far as I can tell, with the cops on the ground, but in an AFP high command and a local government happy with their own cosy arrangements.

Well done JB, another rant. Reasonably well structured, not too verbose but still a rant.

I’m not too happy with the structure of “Combined with a demonstrably woeful understanding of the underpinnings of our justice system by the constabulary who have commented here it doesn’t give much hope for the future” – didn’t ‘word’ put a green line under it?

Please forgive my use of small words, I didn’t have time to use a thesaurus.

Having an opinion which differs from yours (you may have noticed) doesn’t make my knowledge or experience woeful. It differs to yours and I happen to believe that you are ignorant and pigheaded (forgive the minor pun).

You obviously have issues – you have had your previous exploits with the AFP aired you were found to be wanting in every instance and have generally avoided mentioning your Police mates who probably also told you that you were wrong. Now you are attempting to take the moral high ground and are increasingly critical of a process that you have no knowledge of beyond the media reporting – you may trust them as they are of your ilk however I am skeptical of everything that isn’t a sporting result.

Repeatedly your experience and knowledge have been questioned – you twist and squirm and still apparently believe that you couldn’t be wrong.

Wait until the final report from the inquest is completed and made public. You will no doubt twist and corrupt the findings to suit your misguided grudges and have a feeble attempt at slandering the AFP.

JB, what is your problem with this one. Some little shits, who were on bail for stealing cars and an assortment of other offences, that don’t care about anyone but themselves got spooked when they saw a Police car travelling in the opposite direction to them. Due to their paranoid personalities they decided to speed through the interchanged to put as distance between them and where they last saw the Police car heading and in the process hit poor Clae. The Police did not cause this tragedy. Unless of course you feel that because Police were nearby and their mere presence caused these oxygen thieves to freak-out, means the Police are responsible for this. The only thing that would have stopped this from happening was to prevent little shits like this getting out on bail time and time again. Does anyone know if the Magistrate that bailed them is going to appear and give evidence why they were not in Quamby. Them not being in custody is the reason why Clae is dead.

Well we now learn that down in the comms centre they leave their posts without being relieved. New to me and as thoroughly unprofessional as we’ve come to expect in this depressing matter.

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, the scrotes in the car are to blame.

It’s the lies and coverup that followed it culminating in the incoherent abuse from police with sorrowfully poor reasoning skills which fill me with dread. Combined with a demonstrably woeful understanding of the underpinnings of our justice system by the constabulary who have commented here it doesn’t give much hope for the future.

Here’s a clue boys, civil liberties are not your enemy. Now go read some history and learn why.

JB,

It’s not new and only interesting to you because you are looking for faults where you can twisting things into an irrational self obsessed anti police rant over which you know absolutely nothing. But don’t let me stop you… fill your boots as they say.

Sobey gave his opinion but as speculated upon here there are a million and one things that could have changed the outcome of that event. You would rather wax on about theories over which you have no idea about. Secretive and obstructive – it’s all a conspiracy don’t you know. Go put on a foil beanie, take a sedative and have a lie down – let the big people deal with this one.

MRB puts good questions to you and you blither about and regurgitate the same old rubbish. Ask Nik all the questions you like and when you still don’t get it or the answers you like go and bury your head in the sand.

“the police are not doing themselves any favours by being secretive and obstructive”

and how would one come to ths conclusion? hmm…another conspiracy….i’ve never seen seepi and jb in the same place at the same time…

ON radio they said he was attending to a 000 call.

They also reported that police records showed the ooo call coming in 36 seconds after the Clea Rose accident (I think).

Conspiracy theories or not, the police are not doing themselves any favours by being secretive and obstructive. It makes them look as if they ahe something to hide, even if they don’t.

Move along Johnboy. Nothing to see here.

Sgt Sobey may have been getting a coffee or taking a piss. Either of those things would put him away from his desk for long enough to miss this entire incident. A lot of things can happen in a 10 second period.

yea, JTK, but what happens then ? the driver loses control of the car anyway…

James-T-Kirk3:43 pm 10 May 07

Yep… A tragedy indeed, caused because the cops simply didn’t put a round into the back window of the stolen car.

You are in a stolen car – speeding away from police – expect something bad to happen.

That’s the way Victorian cops work…

Boom —- Stop, or I’ll shoot.

At the very least this proves (yet again) that Canberra police are understaffed.

In this instance ‘prioritising’ between a 000 call that the comms controller was dealing with, and this fatal car chase.

what IS a suspicious car?

From further down in the article:

He also said he would have expected the officers to inform him earlier when they had decided to follow the car to order it to pull over

Now MRB, if YOU want to give your version of events at the inquest we would love to run it.

Personally I’m happy to rely on the CT, ABC, and WIN. And that’s all that matters to me.

Did you go to the inquest jb? No? So again you get your information from the CT. If you had gone to the inquest, you’d know that the whole incident lasted a matter of seconds, with the police spotting a suspicious car coming out of the LA carpark in the opposite direction. By the time the police had turned around, the car was already entering East Row, leaving East Row as the police car entered – hence the 5 seconds between the car and the police car passing on the CCTV. (Damn, the police are thinking, I wish we were more secretive and got rid of that CCTV footage).
Do you think it was possible to check if the car was stolen prior to Ms Rose being hit? Do you think they should’ve called police comms because they were doing a u-turn to follow a suspicious vehicle?
Also, why don’t you use your investigative skills, and try and find the real situation with the CCTV cameras at the time, not the one you’ve conjured up through media reports, and love to regurgitate. I’d love to tell you, but I’m sure you’d twist it around to suit your own purposes, which, I must say, you’re quite adapt at.
Maybe even ask your mate nik_the_pig. He is strangely silent on this matter – I wonder why that is?

If a Coronial Inquest doesn’t increase the sentence where it matters, on the kid in jail who actually deserves to burn for this, then it is a giant waste of time

Are you for real? Isn’t the point of a coronial inquest to determine what happened exactly and if it was a preventable accident, to make recommendations to procedure that should be implemented and adhered to in future so this sort of thing can theoretically can’t happen again?

and by that i mean, i’m sure he would have done it appropriately.. not passed the buck down the line or whatever.

Bob’s a good guy. I have no doubt he would have played it down the line.
Much respect for him.

Ahh, the tinkerbell philosophy, only able to think of one thing at a time.

The toe-rags have been convicted and sentenced.

The question now is why our secrecy obsessed police force when the light is shone under their rock, turn out to be understaffed, breaking procedures, and with a broken CCTV network (which they had no plan in place to fix).

Leaving aside the Clea Rose fatality those things seem like a major problem worthy of addressing and intelligent human beings should be able to think of both things at the same time.

^^This guy tells it like it is^^

If a Coronial Inquest doesn’t increase the sentence where it matters, on the kid in jail who actually deserves to burn for this, then it is a giant waste of time.

Para 3 doesn’t change a thing. If the pursuit had been called off as the little toerag turned into the bus interchange it wouldn’t have changed a thing. The little toerag would still have been speeding through there, and it wouldn’t have been until the little toerag looked into his rearview mirror (assuming he was tall or smart enough to use the device) further down the road, that he might have been tempted to ease off.

If the pursuit had been called off a minute before the toerag was anywhere near the interchange, then it might have made a difference. And the difference might have been that the toerag considered he had carte blanche to steal a car and by dint of driving it anywhere in the city he would simply be able to get away.

Let’s get real here, bleaters and misguided ‘caring’ types, the fact is the little toerag stole property and the police have an obligation to weigh up the risks of letting toerags go, or trying to catch them to prevent further crimes. I think most sensible balanced people understand that there is a small element of risk in pursuing toerags in stolen cars but simply letting them go is only an invite to compound the problem.

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