FAKE COPS: Major bungle sees more than 1,000 Victorian police officers wrongly sworn in – so how did it happen?
Hundreds of police officers have been caught up in an embarrassing administrative bungle that went on for seven years.
Victoria Police Commissioner Shane Patton has revealed around 1260 officers from the state’s force were wrongly sworn in between July 2014 and August last year.
The bungle was caused by amendments to legislation eight years ago, where acting assistant commissioners needed to be appointed by the chief commissioner, or by a deputy commissioner with the authority delegated to them before they could swear in new recruits.
A review identified 1076 police graduates were wrongly sworn in by acting assistant commissioners.
A further 157 protective service officers and 29 police custody officers were also wrongly sworn in.
Victoria Police will urgently swear in affected officers over the coming days and weeks.
The Victorian government is in the process of drafting legislation to fix the error.
‘My priority and the priority of the government is now to fix this issue, to do so with retrospective legislation, to get it through as quickly as possible,’ police minister Lisa Neville said.
More to come
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