The New South Wales (NSW) Police Force has mismanaged hundreds of unsolved homicides, failed to catalogue multiple high-profile cases and left files to collect dust on senior detective’s desks, an inquiry has heard.
The investigative practices of the force between 1970 and 2010 have been exposed during the Special Commission of Inquiry into more than two dozen suspected gay hate deaths in Sydney.
Despite relying on a tracking file as a “live document” to keep recording unsolved homicides and suspicious deaths, the inquiry on Thursday was shown that the last matter added to the file was recorded in August 2016.
Unsolved homicide squad Detective Chief Inspector David Laidlaw said the official record management system used by his team since it was established in 2004 was “still a work in progress” when asked why no data had been recorded for the past seven years….