THE Australian Federal Police (AFP) Association wants the Federal Government to develop a long-term plan to address a shortage of sworn officers.

Association spokesman Jim Torr says more demands are being made of the AFP, but there are fewer sworn members now than 20 years ago.

Mr Torr's comments follow renewed requests by the Western Australian Government for AFP assistance to combat child abuse in remote Indigenous communities.

He says the Federal Government needs to come up with a new strategy to bolster resources.

"[It needs to be] similar to the Defence white paper in terms of the Government laying down a comprehensive expectation of what will be required and what can be called on of the AFP, and a staffing and recruitment program designed to accord with that," he said.

Mr Torr says resources are already stretched too far.

"Everything indicates that the AFP will be called on to intervene in both issues domestically and abroad," he said.

"If we've got to the point where we have no more numbers, what does that say about our search capacity to deal with other issues?"

Source: ABC Online

A STATE police officer has illegally tried to access information about the investigation into the UK car bomb attacks, Australian Federal Police say.

AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty revealed the attempted security breach on Thursday while explaining potential problems with a proposed national crime database.

Mr Keelty said information gleaned during some AFP investigations could not be shared with other police forces and agencies, and the database could create privacy and national security concerns.

"I'm not saying we've got a big corruption problem," he said in Canberra at a parliamentary inquiry into the future impact of organised crime.

"But I can tell you, giving evidence before this committee, that the deputy and I have seen a downloading of some data in the last 24 hours of the operation that we are doing with the Queensland police - by somebody not authorised to receive it, from another police force in the country."

"So it does happen, it's a real issue for us.

"And so there is a need to get the balance between what people need to know, in order to carry out their function (and what they don't need to know)."

A tip-off from British police led to the arrest of Indian national Mohammed Haneef, a registrar at the Gold Coast Hospital, in connection with foiled bomb attacks in London and Glasgow.

Dr Haneef was arrested on Monday night at Brisbane International Airport and, with authorities obtaining a court order for his detention on Tuesday, can be held without charge until Thursday night.

A senior Scotland Yard counter-terrorism investigator has arrived in Brisbane to question Dr Haneef, whose family maintains he is innocent.

The parliamentary committee quizzed Mr Keelty on the possibility of a national police database following state police complaints that their investigations were being hampered by their inability to quickly access information from other jurisdictions.

"In terms of the need for a totally separate system ... we would say there is sufficient access at the moment," Mr Keelty said.

The attorney-general's department also poured cold water on the plan, and CrimTrac CEO Ben McDevitt said a system to be rolled out next year would improve information-sharing arrangements.

The Police Federation of Australia, which represents 50,000 officers, is backing the plan for a national database.

The federation's Mark Burgess told the inquiry police also wanted a national automatic number plate recognition system - similar to the one Britain had used in the recent foiled car bomb plot.

He gave the example of a Western Australian police officer injured while trying to arrest a man for stealing petrol in February 2006.

The thief, William Watkins, was wanted for a double murder in Melbourne, but the information did not come up when the officer entered his details and registration into the WA police database.

Had the number plate system existed, Watkins - who was killed after seriously wounding the officer - would probably not have made it out of Victoria without capture and would certainly not have been able to drive the 5,500km in three days to Western Australia, Mr Burgess said.

A number plate recognition system similar to those operating in the UK and parts of the United States had "the potential to revolutionise policing across Australia, with huge benefits for crime prevention, reduction and investigation as well as for national security and border protection activities".

Labor senator Chris Hayes said he understood police were able to track vehicles used in the recent London and Glasgow bomb plots using their integrated vehicle registration identification system.

Mr Keelty said Australian authorities were "working towards" such a system.

The government had allocated $2 million to CrimTrac to come up with a model that would integrate the different systems currently in operation across Australian jurisdictions.

"In answering that question, though, I wouldn't want you to think ... that that was the solution to what the Brits were doing last week," he said.

"There's a lot of other complex issues I can't talk about here."

Mr Keelty said the effectiveness of current police database depended on the information entered into them and whether users searched correctly.

"If somebody is wanted for offences or a missing persons there are flags on data systems that are available for all jurisdictions," he said.

"The system is only as good as the users, really."

He said allowing only people with certain authorisation to access certain information reduced the opportunity for corruption.

Police had "got themselves in trouble" in some infamous cases by accessing data inappropriately or even selling it, he said.

Source:  Nine MSN

VICTORIAN police stationed at Melbourne Airport say they are bored and disillusioned, and airport security is compromised by poor communications networks.

About 50 state police work under the command of the Australian Federal Police at the airport as a result of recommendations made by the 2005 Wheeler report into airport security.

Some have said they do little more than walk around terminals in an effort to make passengers feel secure. However, one policeman told The Age yesterday that doubling the number of police at the airport would not stop an attack of the sort made in Glasgow this week.

The report, compiled by British security expert Sir John Wheeler at the behest of Prime Minister John Howard, criticised the lack of co-operation between state and federal authorities in charge of airport security.

The states agreed to lend police to the AFP. But by late last month, only 111 of the promised 365 state police had been provided, although all Victoria's contingent was in place.

Victorian police have described themselves as "cardboard cut-outs". "It's simply not busy enough. It was sold along the lines that we'd be putting operations together to do covert work, setting up special operations teams, basically what you do at stations," the policeman said. "But it's just not busy enough to have 55 coppers there. It's one of the biggest issues we have, motivation and morale, because you don't do anything."

Another policeman said there was friction with other organisations, including the AFP and Customs, and many Victorian police were trying to move back to normal duties.

The most serious accusation is that the AFP radio network is responsible for long delays on licence or name checks. Police say that it can be up to 10 minutes before the results come through the AFP system in Canberra, far longer than Victoria Police's LEAP system takes.

"It's obviously unsafe. I dare say the airport's a target in someone's mind at the moment … (but) you try to do a car check or name check and it takes 10 minutes. It's ridiculous," one policeman said.

However, a spokeswoman for the AFP said that though there might have been problems in the past, the communications system was now operating satisfactorily and even had access to the VicPol database. The role of the state police was to perform normal, "community" duties but they were also rotated to work on serious and organised crime related to aviation.

"The AFP continues to work with the seconded VicPol members to address any cultural or operational challenges arising from their deployment."

The spokeswoman said that of 55 state police, only three had been transferred back to VicPol, and there were 33 applicants for two sergeant jobs at the airport.

Police Association secretary Paul Mullett likened the deployment to the airport to Mr Howard's call for state police to be sent to Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory.

It was policy on the run by Mr Howard, he said.

"He hurriedly put together the Wheeler review, that made a number of recommendations, including the deployment of the state police.

"As it was policy making on the run, when it was rolled out, there wasn't a lot of thought put into how the whole thing would work."

Victoria Police directed inquiries to the AFP.

Source:  Dan Oakes, The Age

TONY Mokbel has been charged over a second Melbourne gangland murder, 15 months after he fled Australia during a drug-trafficking trial.

Victorian police have charged Mokbel of the 2003 shooting of Michael Marshall, who was found dead outside his house.

Police said Marshall was shot dead in his driveway in South Yarra.

Mokbel had previously been charged over the 2004 murder of Lewis Moran.

He is still fighting extradition in a Greek Court.

Gangland killer Carl Williams is already serving 21 years in jail for the murder of Marshall, a suspected drug dealer.

Source: News.com.au 

AUDIO Interview With Tony Mokbel:

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/img/audio/070610_mokbel_audio5.wav

Worth a listen, even if poor old Tony is pretty misguided.

Source:  Darren Lunny.  Channel 9, Melbourne.

Mokbel's arrest in a cafe on Tuesday coincided with police raids on 22 homes across Melbourne and 14 arrests.

A defiant Mokbel, in a statement to an Athens' prosecutor, accused Victorian police of fabricating the murder charge in a

bid to win his extradition.

Mokbel's lawyer in Athens, Yiannis Vlachos, said Mokbel denied any link to the murder.

"My client is saying it is a conspiracy of Australian police that they have found somebody accused of murder who say he is

involved - my client denies any involvement in the case," Mr Vlachos said today.

He said Mokbel was found living in Athens by Australian police who passed the information on to their Greek counterparts.

In another dramatic development, it emerged that Mokbel had fathered a daughter to girlfriend Danielle McGuire.

Ms McGuire, who has been living with Mokbel in a luxury Athens hideaway, cradled baby Renate as she tried to dodge waiting

media outside the court.

It is understood their home backed on to a Greek Supreme Court judge's estate.

Mr Vlachos said Mokbel was holding up well in jail but was concerned about his children - a three-month-old daughter and an

11 year-old daughter.

"The problem is he has a baby of three months, born here in Greece, and this is something very unpleasant for him...he has

also an 11-year-old daughter and it's not very pleasant for her to see her father in this situation," Mr Vlachos said.

He denied Mokbel had been living a luxury life in Athens.

"He has spent some money in the time he was here, but no more than what the usual Greek family spent," Mr Vlachos said.

"It is his opinion that this is why Australian authorities want him so badly, because they think that there's a lot of

money behind him and that's something he denies anyway."

Australian authorities have begun proceedings to extradite Mokbel to Australia.

 Source: Herald Sun