Police wanted rid of my ill wife: ex-cop

By JAMES GARDINER

A former top police officer, convicted and later cleared of fraudulent expense claims, says the charges were a "rort" by senior police to get at his mentally ill wife, whom other officers wanted out of their lives.

Superintendent Alex Waugh, 53, who was Wanganui district commander until 1998 when he resigned in disgrace and admitted fiddling $1199 in expenses, levelled the accusations yesterday in Wellington's Employment Court.

He is claiming wrongful dismissal and seeking reinstatement to a senior role in the police, where he once believed he was being groomed for promotion to assistant commissioner or commissioner.

For the first time he has revealed details of his wife Shirley's mental illness, its impact on him and how he believes it was used to try to end his career.

"I was not the target of the police investigation, my wife was," Mr Waugh told the court. "I regarded the charges as a rort by people who were sick of my wife's behaviour and her illness. They were prepared to get me to get her out of their lives."

He also gave evidence about what led to his decision to resign from the police and change his pleas on 10 of the 21 fraud counts from not guilty to guilty.

These included an alleged threat by the prosecutor, John Upton, QC, to charge Mr Waugh with perjury over something he said on oath during the trial, and the fact that the presiding judge, who was sitting without a jury, had indicated in a chambers hearing to counsel that there was a likelihood of conviction on at least some of the charges.

Mr Waugh, widely praised for the way he helped broker a peaceful settlement to Wanganui's Moutoa Gardens occupation by tangata whenua in 1995, had his fraud convictions quashed by the High Court last year.

That followed an inquiry by retired High Court Justice Thomas Thorp, who found "improper pressures" were brought to bear on Mr Waugh by police and the prosecution to get him to change his plea.

Three months ago Justice Lowell Goddard awarded Mr Waugh $47,000 in costs and said what occurred warranted an amount above the normal scale.

In his evidence yesterday, Mr Waugh said his life "completely disintegrated" after he left the police and was convicted and fined.

"I was unemployed, then became a beneficiary and then for a time ended up cleaning toilets for a living. Everything I had ever believed in had turned to crap."

He said he now understood where things went wrong and accepted some responsibility for that "but so also do my superiors and some of their wives.

"They allowed, indeed encouraged my wife in a direct link with themselves.

"They allowed themselves to become involved in endless prolonged and irrational telephone conversations and, at times, mocked my wife's emotional distress."

In Mr Waugh's sights are some of New Zealand's highest ranking police, including Assistant Commissioner Jon White and Superintendent John Kelly, the officer responsible for investigating and prosecuting him.

He has also criticised John Rowan, QC, the lawyer who acted for him in the trial and helped convince him his $250,000 police superannuation was at risk if he did not resign and plead guilty.

The basis of that allegedly came from Assistant Commissioner White, who told Mr Waugh's lawyers that if he was found guilty and sacked he would get his own superannuation contributions but not the Government subsidy.

Under cross-examination by police lawyer, Raynor Asher, QC, Mr Waugh agreed he had made his own inquiries about his superannuation entitlement before his trial and had established then that he was entitled to the full amount regardless of whether he resigned or was sacked.

The hearing, before Chief Judge Tom Goddard, is set down for a fortnight.