Success finally, with NSW Police
About a year ago Warren Mallard pressed the CAPI register to set up a consultative group to discuss issues that investigators had with police, police who were empowered to regulate private investigators (amongst others). The police rank and file apparently knew next to nothing about what private investigators do or what private investigators are authorised to do on behalf of others.
Eventually the NSW Police Commissioner appointed Superintendent John Kerlatec of the Regulated Industries Squad to liaise with Warren and one other interested investigator. It was also important to bring about not just changes to the police poor perceptions about private investigators, but also to bring about changes to legal loop holes that, for instance, allowed some unsavoury characters to regain and retain their licence. Those changes are to be implimented this current year and essentially mean a re-drafting of the current CAPI legislation, a legislaton created without taking any notice about what the private investigation profession wanted.
John Kerlatec was a genuinely interested party and it is a tragedy that we have now lost him due to his new assignment in an important police investigation.
The PDF article (741kb) is a not quite what we hoped for, nevertheless a good beginning that will make life and work a little easier for private investigators who not infrequently faced absurd situations such as surveillance operations being exposed by such pointless exercises as police challenging the investigator in full public view about his presence at a location, or even telling the targets of surveillance that an investigator was conducting surveillance. There have even been silly situations such as police misinforming the public about what what investigators can or cannot do.
This Police Weekly magazine article is the first time in the history of private investigation in NSW that a realistic guide for police has been published. Every investigator should print the article and keep a copy of it handy to show to police if challenged during investigations.
Our thanks to Warren Mallard for the update