An ABC investigation uncovers allegations of bullying, sexism and a dangerous lack of support within the ranks of NSW Police, which officers say is driving hundreds of officers out of the force.
Mel Cooper was a bright-eyed 19-year-old when she joined the New South Wales Police force in 1994 as one of its youngest recruits.
She said she left the force broken, after 30 years of working in a culture still plagued by bullying, nepotism and revenge."I'm out of fight. Thirty years of fighting and it's not getting better. In fact, it's getting worse."ABC News has spoken to more than a dozen current and former NSW police officers who have all given remarkably similar accounts of cultural problems in the force.
"I thought it might be an opportunity to make a difference and for them to listen to me, so I told them I'm taking leave because I'm struggling," he said. "The commander would come in and make inappropriate comments to me about being his favourite sergeant and how well I looked today — at the time I didn't even recognise it for what it was it just made me feel uncomfortable.
"With the complaints system they effectively gag you. They serve you with a complaint, give you very little information and tell you can't discuss it with anyone — even members of your family or your support networks. Another time she said an officer had turned on her when she stepped in to defend a female probationary constable.
"Of course this probationary constable is going to say 'I'm OK', because she'd have to work with him alone in an isolated area and he was awful. He should have been reprimanded over that.""Because women have what's called 'tone' then they get called bitches or c***s but a bloke can have an absolute tantrum in the workplace, and people just say he's having a bad day.
"All ever wanted, and I said to the boss, was to help these young people so they don't end up like us.""In the five days before I went off I was at work crying every day. I was just a mess. And nobody from the ranks came and saw me, checked in, asked how I was. Nobody."The ABC spoke with current and former NSW Police officers, hearing a number of stories of a toxic culture of bullying, sexism, nepotism and a lack of support.
"I was seven months pregnant and had to view child exploitation material for three days, which is one of the most horrendous things you can do, and there was never a check in — it just wasn't done," she said."I was probably only ever asked if I was OK or needed assistance maybe three times in my career and some of those were done by group email.""It got to the point where it was all too much, I could not manage my workload," she said.
"There's a lot of police who just cruise along, but I wasn't one of those, and unfortunately some other detective sergeants didn't like me making them look bad," he said.Sean claims his commander at the time was teaching boxing to local at-risk youths during his time off. She said after 10 years in the force, while she was working as a detective, things took a "massive downward turn".
"Instead, I was reprimanded and put on plans to monitor my sick leave and basically getting in trouble for needing the time off." Julia said the more she tried to seek help for her mental health, the more she was targeted and bullied. Julia said she ultimately had a panic attack at a crime scene, before taking leave and never returning to work.
"In roughly a decade in the cops, I saw and directly dealt with a lot of things that most normal people would find extremely confronting. He said NSW Police "do nothing to mitigate" the inevitable development of PTSD symptoms in officers, an issue he said has become increasingly prevalent in recent years as more officers left the force and the workload grew."We wanted a career with the capacity to help people and make a difference … Now I can't go near a police station without having a panic attack.
Ethan said the culture within NSW Police deteriorated more rapidly over the past five years, leading to "over 100 cops" he personally knows walking off the job in the past four years."The bosses were quick to disown you when you did something even though they asked you to do it in the first place." He claims he was subjected to systemic bullying and harassment throughout the last 10 years of his career, which eventually forced him out of the job.
He said he then became the subject of an unfounded bullying complaint, which he believed was retaliation for speaking up about bad behaviour, while suffering severe PTSD."It would appear to me that a vast majority of the hierarchy have lost sight of what policing is all about," he said. "They're based on scapegoating and punishing officers and pitting them against each other for promotional opportunities," the psychologist said.
"The culture is so toxic, it is still such a boys' club and it's not what you know it's who you know," she said."Nepotism is the highest I've ever seen it, it's terrible. It's jobs for the boys — they can say it isn't as much as they like, but it is." "It was really upsetting for me because I felt like I had followed an order against my better judgement and she died."
Nsw Police Police Nsw Police Force Culture Recruitment Bullying Workplace Harassment Nepotism Sexism Lia Harris Crime Reporter
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