Raid by the AFP on an age pensioner

Glenorchy, 10th May, 2011

He was sitting in the 1 metre by 2 metre front porch of his pensioner unit as usual, this time enjoying the autumn sunshine while contemplating his weekly walk to the local supermarket.

He hadn’t shaved for a week nor showered in that time, a period longer than usual because he’d lived alone for 20 years, and with no invited visitors he could do such things without offending anybody except his slightly stinky self.

In his large complex of identical pensioner units this was a quiet and peaceful setting for the 71 year-old despite the ravages of multiple serious health ailments and subsequent hospitalisation making life continuously awkward, tiresome and painful.

But he did like his cheap computer, or more particularly, what it could do. Without private transport and with mobility difficulties this was his “Window on the World.”

He was a caring intellectual interested in news, current affairs, politics, the environment, alternative energy, mathematics, physics, metaphysics, electronic engineering and occasional flower photography.

He suddenly noticed several people rapidly striding towards him down the communal footpath to his left. Some were in uniform and others carried equipment bags. One had a battering ram. The group came straight to his small porch and divided there, some to speak with him outside and others to rapidly enter his open front door, the first of them shouting to whoever might be inside.

Documents were presented by a female Australian Federal Police officer declaring that they constituted a Search Warrant. It was explained that media were present for the purpose of videotaping the proceedings, but no satisfactory explanation was offered for this despite his challenge.

Nine people were suddenly now in and around his two-roomed unit doing things like searching everything everywhere, videotaping inside and outside and asking questions of him, some of them under standard legal caution and some with the digital recorder switched off.

Two computer technicians went straight to the computer in his study/bedroom, upturned it and removed screws from its base. This pair spent the next four hours, without a break, intensively examining and copying its contents onto their laptops.

The investigating constable thrust forward ten pages of documents with the demand that they be read, but the pensioner was too stressed at this shocking invasion to read even a single paragraph, and said so.

Later on it was found that the documents were in two parts, the first part being four pages of search warrant and the second part comprising three double-sided pages titled Rights of Occupier.

The search warrant stated that on May 9th 2011 Hobart magistrate Christopher Webster was satisfied by information on oath that there was, at the premises, evidential material as defined in the Crimes Act 1914 which satisfied three detailed conditions.

The third of these conditions stated that on 27th January 2008 the pensioner used a carriage service to transmit child pornography, and when the investigating officer described the alleged pornographic image, the pensioner, recalling receiving that particular image from an old friend three and a half years ago, told the officer in which part of his computer it was stored.

It is a standard practice everywhere that when one replies to an email the reply incudes the sender’s original message, including any original images, beneath his response. This means that one’s response to a friend’s email is also being forwarded by “a carriage service.”

The police officers’ search of the pensioner’s premises was thorough with the contents of all storage cartons, many objects and most family photographs being carefully examined; however because the unit comprised only two rooms the physical search was completed well before the two forensic computer examiners had studied 110 gigabytes of computer files and many thousands of emails.

The search officers became bored and so they went outside and chatted amongst themselves. The computer technicians remained hard at it. The suspect in these cases may make restricted movements about his own home but he will be continuously watched and there will be a police officer within two metres of him at all times, and he will be accompanied everywhere he goes even when using his own toilet. His offers to prepare all persons cups of coffee or tea will be declined through risk of poisoning.

Invitations to sit and be comfortable while watching TV will also be declined, presumably because a sitting police officer is more vulnerable to attack than a standing one.

Around four hours after the raid began the pensioner was called to one of the examiner’s laptop computers, legally cautioned and then questioned with the chief investigating officer’s digital recorder running. The old image his friend has sent him years ago had been found and he was required to respond to it.

It was a cute image, that of a naked youngster sitting on his toilet. He had leaned fully forward to rest his head on a storage container and then fallen asleep. The investigating constable declared the image pornographic – yet there was no sign whatever of any “sexual organs, anus or breasts in a sexual context” – these being among the main criteria for pornography.

The image was one that would produce a laugh if shown on the popular TV program Funniest Home Videos, and is comparable with what every parent witnesses at least once while raising young children.

The investigating constable was resolved that the image was one of child pornography and in repeatedly demanding acknowledgement of this was eventually told, with exasperation, that if she thought this image was pornographic then she was so far up a gum tree that she was at risk of falling out of its top branches.

The officer then downgraded its status and repeatedly declared it was borderline child pornography. Her behaviour on this subject was wholly irrational whereas in the hours to that point it had seemed acceptably appropriate.

It became obvious that the officer had such a hangup about this image that she lacked the capacity to reason objectively and to evaluate this image forensically according to the required legal standards of “a reasonable person.”

All officers eventually departed leaving the living room reasonably neat and suitable for a final verifying videotaping, but with the bedroom in a mess.

This mess was photographed immediately after their departure.

No evidence was found of any illicit activities, photographs, computer documents/images or substances and so nothing was removed from the premises except, most likely, copies of all computer files as appropriated without owner consent.

The next day the pensioner emailed a local Internet aquaintance about these events and enclosed a copy of the allegedly offensive image. This lady did a Google search and within two minutes found that it was on the Internet in at least two places, and she provided the weblink to each site. She declared that this image had been on the Internet for at least several years.

What triggered this wholly futile investigation?

The pensioner’s old friend of 20 years’ duration had been harrassed by sudden police visits to his premises on several occasions late last year and is currently on remand in jail having been seized on Christmas Day while he and a mate were preparing to assemble and fly a kite at a deserted suburban park. He had previously been charged with several carriage service offences involving pornography and was on bail.

That friend, one under long-term specialist treatment for mental disorders, had been in occasional email contact with the pensioner for around seven years. It seems that at some stage during questioning he told police officers that he was glad they caught him because he was about to go out and commit offences. Police, untrained in mental health issues, take such statements at face value and do not realise that such utterances can be made in jest by a person so strange that he thinks they are amusing.

Surely it is a reasonable expectation of the public that before a helpless citizen’s home is suddenly invaded by uniformed officers fully equipped and trained to attack him, and if deemed necessary to kill him on the spot, then there must be truly fair cause to do so.

In this case there was no valid cause at all and it appears that even a preliminary Internet search for this allegedly pornographic image was not undertaken, perhaps with such a search not even being considered.

The pensioner deems the authorising magistrate also at fault for not discharging a sufficient duty of care as is required of him, and for not demanding sufficient evidence to justify the issuance of a search warrant in his name. He allowed himself to be manipulated as an uncaring rubber stamp.

Enquiries indicated that such laxitude in these matters is standard.

It thus appears that the magistrate’s vitally important role as public protector was forfeited by him and then deviously usurped by incompetents, so it was not proper legal standards that were applied in the matter but apparently the warped personal beliefs, hangups and attitudes of one overly officious female police constable apparently bent on career enhancement no matter what devastating human havoc is left in her wake.

It also appears that the same police constable was the lead officer in the investigation into the allegedly pornographic activities of the pensioner’s imprisoned friend, an entirely harmless 54 year old man who prefers to stay in prison rather than be discharged to endure what he describes as “another police setup.”

The pensioner now quite understandably believes that sudden home invasions of this nature should never be allocated to police officers at constable level because such officers will almost certainly lack sufficient knowledge, maturity, understanding, tolerance, compassion and life-experience to properly process them, as in this case.

*Tasmanian Times has seen the image and sent it for legal assessment. The lawyer’s assessment:

This goes nowhere near the sexualisation/exploitation/depiction of children.

Definition:

“child exploitation material” means material that describes or depicts, in a way that a reasonable person would regard as being, in all the circumstances, offensive, a person who is or who appears to be under the age of 18 years –

(a) engaged in sexual activity; or

(b) in a sexual context; or

(c) as the subject of torture, cruelty or abuse (whether or not in a sexual context);

*The writer is a regular contributor/commenter on Tasmanian Times. He is so traumatised by the experience he does not wish to be named: “I’ve been so shaken that almost the entire memory of everything that’s happened since the raid a week ago has been erased. It’s as if the Invasion Party left only hours ago. I’ve never had that feeling before in my life.”