Crooked copper

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NO SOCIETY can ever hope to protect itself completely against murderers or any other criminal. It relies on the professionalism and integrity of its police.

On the top floor of Queensland police headquarters is a conference room, its walls adorned by photographs of our past police commissioners.

They begin with bewhiskered, helmeted colonials and follow a sweep of history as faces and uniforms change . . . until, towards the end of the long line, there is a conspicuously empty space.

Once, it was occupied by the smiling face of police commissioner Sir Terrence Lewis — Knight of the Realm, OBE, QPM.

Now completely disgraced, stripped of his honours and released from jail, Lewis lives in quiet seclusion with his wife on an age pension.

He has never stopped protesting his innocence, despite exhaustive trials and failed appeals.

Born in 1928, Lewis joined the force in 1948 and quickly made his mark at the CIB in Brisbane where he won a George Medal for bravery. He established the Juvenile Aid Bureau in 1963.

An inspector by 1973, he was posted to Charleville by the honest commissioner of the time, Ray Whitrod, for — in Whitrod's words — "the good of the force".

There were stories about Lewis taking bribes and being a bagman for former commissioner Frank Bischof who was probably corrupt but was never caught.

Lewis cultivated premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen who made sure he was made assistant commissioner in 1976 over the heads of 122 equal or more senior officers. When Whitrod protested and got nowhere, he resigned and Lewis got the job.

In the late 1980s, the Fitzgerald inquiry laid bare the culture of corruption in the police force and brought Lewis and his cronies crashing down.

The inquiry and Lewis's subsequent trial showed he had been deeply involved in protection of illegal brothels and had taken more than $600,000 from bagman Jack Herbert, as well as $25,000 from an in-line gambling machine operator to write a report for cabinet against the introduction of poker machines.

It was estimated that between 1978 and 1987, Lewis was receiving up to $10,000 a month in bribes — money he tried to explain away at his trial by saying he won it on the horses. His "success" rate at the track would have had to have been 88 percent.

Former police officer Herbert, confessed bagman for the brothel owners, told the Fitzgerald inquiry Lewis was receiving $40 to $50 a week in the early 1970s before his promotion and that he had remarked then, "Little fish are sweet".

By the 1980s, when the racket (known in the force as "the joke") was in full swing, another corrupt cop, Noel Dwyer, allegedly told Herbert "The commissioner is like a shark — he takes the big bite."

When I visited that police conference room in 1996, I spoke to then commissioner Jim O'Sullivan — a key Fitzgerald iinvestigator into Lewis — about the conspicuous vacancy on the wall.

I said it was like a smile spoiled by a missing tooth.