Senior cop to face MP's Inquiry 
Alex Mitchell, Sun Herald, 25 Feb 2001

Clive Small, one of NSW's most senior policemen, will appear before an Upper House inquiry later this week to answer allegations that he ignored a report on gang warfare.

His lawyer, Ian Tempy QC, contacted the all-party committee hours after Detective Sergeant Tim Priest made the allegations to MPs.

"I'll be having a fair bit to say when I go before the committee," Assistant Commissioner Small, head of the Greater Hume region, said yesterday.

Sergeant Priest, who was recently transferred to City Central, said his report in December 1999 predicted gang warfare was about to break out in Cabramatta and Bankstown. He claimed the report was ignored and subsequently 40 shootings occurred, people were murdered and seriously wounded and the community was placed in grave danger.

"This could have been prevented," he said. "I believe the person most responsible in Commander Small. That report was addressed to him and he didn't act on it."

But one of Sergeant Priest's supporters, Fairfield City Councillor Thang Ngo, said yesterday: "We don't know if [the report] ever landed on his desk. We have no guarantees where it ended up.

"Maybe it got short-circuited down the line. That is one of the things the parliamentary committee should establish."

Sergeant Priest had also complained to the Police Integrity Commission about the police hierarchy's alleged neglect of the Cabramatta area.

Opposition police spokesman Andrew Tink yesterday called on the PIC to set up a task force of interstate officers to take charge of the inquiry into sergeant Priest's allegations.

Police Minister Paul Whelan who had "gone missing" since the allegations were made on Friday, should take personal charge of obtaining the report and other documentary evidence and forwarding it to the PIC, he said