Police Complaints Authority says new info warrants investigation

Revelations regarding historic rape allegations made against three police officers have brought to light new information that warrants urgent investigation, the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) says.

PCA head Judge Ian Borrin told NZPA today that a women officer's report that her baton had gone missing for a couple of weeks in about 1986, before being returned to her and told it had been used in sex with a woman, was new information from what a 1995 PCA inquiry was told.

Louise Nicholas has claimed three officers -- including Clint Rickards, who is now Assistant Commissioner and Auckland police commander -- pack-raped her and violated her with a police baton in Rotorua in 1986 when she was 18.

The three men have vigorously denied the allegations.

Mr Rickards, who has taken three weeks voluntary leave, has welcomed Police Commissioner Rob Robinson's announcement of a new high-level police inquiry and pledged to co-operate fully with it.

Judge Borrin said the officer's report about her baton was information that needed to be investigated as part of any inquiry into both the rape allegations and the previous police handling of them.

He said he would wait and see if police were going to interview the woman. If they were he would request the information from the interview. If they did not have plans to interview her he would order them to do so.

Police are conducting a review of their handling of Mrs Nicholas' complaints to see if new information brought to light warrants them opening a criminal investigation into the allegations.

At the same time the PCA will reopen its investigation into the police's handling of the case.

Judge Borrin said he was in talks with police to see what work they would be doing as part of their review.

Where their work intersected with information he wanted, he would request it from them. If there were other outstanding matters he wished to know he would either order police to investigate and then report to him, or he would use independent investigators that were now available to him through recent changes in the way the PCA operated.

"So far as I know that information [about the baton] has not previously been made available and certainly it was not to hand in the mid-90s when there was all the other activity in this matter," Judge Borrin said.

He said it was impossible to say exactly what ground his investigation would cover as it was possible more new information would come to light in the next few days.

However, he said most of the other information so far disclosed in the media was a reformulation of facts the PCA was already aware of.

Judge Borrin said the report that resulted from the PCA's inquiry into the handling of rape allegations made against the three officers had never been released publicly and there was no plan to do so now.

The reason for keeping reports secret was so that people were not driven away from taking part in PCA inquiries.

- NZPA