Victoria's corruption watchdog recommends major changes to the way complaints are handled against officers

Transcript

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS, REPORTER: Twenty years ago, police turned up at Corinna Horvath's home over an unregistered car.

They kicked in her door and she was beaten up.

CORINNA HORVATH, BASHING VICTIME: I was assaulted by Hastings police back in 1996 along with my partner Craig Love and two other people in our house.

We were taken to court. We were presented with an array of charges which were all dismissed in the Frankston Court and then we proceeded to sue the Victorian Police for what they had done to us.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Police fought that civil action until 2014 when the United Nations human rights committee found Corinna Horvath's rights had been violated under the international covenant on civil and political rights.

Only then did Victoria police settle the case.

Now Victoria's corruption watchdog IBAC (Independent Broad-Based Anti-corruption Commission) is considering whether an officer involved should be charged.

CRAIG LOVE, CORINNA'S PARTNER: Realistically, this shouldn't be getting talked about 20 years later. We didn't even have children.

Our oldest boy is 19 and like they didn't even know about any of this and we still have to talk about it all the time.

It should have been are over and done with within the first five years really. But it's dragged on this long.

CORINNA HORVATH: They were protected the whole way. Protected by ...

CRAIG LOVE: And still are.

CORINNA HORVATH: Protected by the body that was meant to be investigating them.

Twenty years later, it's still going. It says that the truth was there, it was just a matter of getting to it.

It's a matter of people believing you, so people don't necessarily believe and if the people that are investigating the police also don't believe you then you've got no hope.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The Flemington and Kensington community legal centre runs a program to help people with complaints against police so they can avoid long legal battles like Corinna Horvath's.

Its latest report shows out of 51 official complaints to police in the last year alleging excessive force or assault by officers, just one was upheld. .

ANTHONY KELLY, FLEMINGTON AND KENSINGTON COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTRE: We believe that in many of the cases that we put in, an independent investigative process would have come across, would have come up with a different result.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: The centre says the internal investigation system is flawed.

ANTHONY KELLY: There's a whole range of problems with the process itself, one of which is there is little communication particularly around the result and why the police came to that particular conclusion.

ASSISTANT COMMISSIONER BRETT GUERIN, VICTORIA POLICE: Those 51 complainants were predominantly complaining of having been assaulted by the police or having been abused by the police or misconduct at the top end.

The vast majority of complaints that Victoria Police receives is in relation to what I call duty failure or service delivery or rudeness or incivility and they're handled obviously very locally.

(Protestors chanting)

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Composer Houston Dunleavy complained to police after he was pepper sprayed protesting against Reclaim Australia last year.

HOUSTON DUNLEAVY: To me, there was a great heavy handedness that happened indiscriminately. It seemed random, what they were doing, and I hope it was.

I felt that what they'd done was unjust. Then when it came to an internal investigation, I thought, well, at least it will be heard.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: And was it, to your satisfaction?

HOUSTON DUNLEAVY: It was heard to my satisfaction, I'm sure somebody heard it. I think the actual outcome which was that there was no case to answer, was disappointing, although not surprising.

I had more feedback about why something was rejected when I made a complaint to the advertising standards board than I did when I made a complaint to the police and those are the only two complaints I've ever made. .

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: Victoria's anti-corruption body, IBAC, which oversees public sector and police investigations and compliance, is criticised for lacking investigative clout.

ANTHONY KELLY: IBAC is stymied by a lack of resources. They describe themselves as providing active oversight and we believe or we assert that's not enough. Active over sight is not independent investigation.

BRETT GUERIN: Look, I think intuitively the case to make for an independent body is easy but the devil is in the detail.

Who would undertake the nearly 2,500 investigations that would be required to be conducted were they to completely take over all complaints in the Victoria Police?

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: In an unpublished report, IBAC has recommended a series of changes to internal investigations and Victoria Police says it will adopt them.

BRETT GUERIN: Those recommendations touch on issues such as how Victoria Police receives and classifies complaints, how they allocate complaints to independent officers, how the independent officers undertake those investigations and how we come to a determinations and communicate those determinations to not only the complainants but the broader public and Government.

HAMISH FITZSIMMONS: For those who've battled internal police investigations, any reform is welcome.

CORINNA HORVATH: We do need the independent investigation and we can't have the police policing the police, so to speak, because it doesn't work.

There is a culture within the police force and we're never going to get to the bottom of what happens within these cases while the police are investigating the police.

Do you have a comment or a story idea? Get in touch with the Lateline team by clicking here.