Two police officers who trolled Greens' dog-sniffer Facebook page were on duty

NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione confirms three officers who posted false information have been disciplined 

 

All three of the officers who lied on social media about the location of sniffer dogs had been involved in drug dog operations. Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP 

Two of the police officers who lied on social media about the presence of drug detector dogs were on duty at the time, and all three had been involved in drug dog operations. 

 NSW police commissioner Andrew Scipione has confirmed that three police officers posted false information about the location of drug dogs to the NSW Greens’ Sniff Off Facebook page on 29 February and 7 March. 

All three officers were attached to the police transport command in Bankstown and had been involved in drug dog operations. Two were on duty when the posts were made. 

 In a letter to the Greens justice spokesman, David Shoebridge, who contacted Scipione in early April, the commissioner said a formal investigation was undertaken by the police transport command.

 “The matters have been finalised and management action was taken against the officers involved,” he said.

 “I can assure you that the NSW police force condemns this behaviour and has acted swiftly to discipline these officers.” 

 A NSW Police spokesperson was not able to give more details of the disciplinary action on Friday evening. According to its most recent statement, the matter was with the police integrity commission and NSW Police had “been asked to take no management or investigative action pending their inquiry”. 

 Police transport command has had the largest growth in drug dog operations of any command in the past three years, and also the worst track record of delivering false positive drug dog indications. 

Of the 3,592 searches carried out by the transport command after a drug dog indication in 2014, 80% were false positives, with no drugs being found. 

Shoebridge said the officers had engaged “in grossly inappropriate behaviour”.

 “It goes without saying that police should never be telling lies in public, and this is doubly true when they are on duty and being paid by the public,” he said. 

 “We know that the police don’t like Sniff Off telling the truth about drug dog operations ... However, this does not give police licence to log on and lie.” 

 Although Shoebridge welcomed Scipione’s response, he said questions remained unanswered, including whether the three officers’ conduct was known to or condoned by senior officers, and what was being done to change police culture to prevent similar abuses of social media happening again. 

“The police’s job is to enforce the law and to hopefully do it with the utmost integrity,” he said. “They are not paid to go online and lie in an attempt to derail a political discussion about the utility of drug dogs.” 

 Since Shoebridge complained to Scipione about the posts to the Sniff Off page, officers were alleged to have posted derogatory and racist posts about Greens MP Jenny Leong. 

 Acting deputy commissioner Geoffrey McKechnie said it would be investigated but refused to say if the comments – which included calling Leong’s father a “swamp monkey” – were a sackable offence.