Qld police slammed on Operation Trident

By Bill Mason

BRISBANE -- The controversial Operation Trident car-stealing scam was poorly conceived, incompetently executed and tainted from beginning to end, according to the Carter report tabled in the Queensland parliament on March 17.

The long-awaited report by Trident inquiry commissioner Bill Carter QC said the seven-month operation, in which 68 innocent people's cars were stolen under the supervision of police, involved a variety of dishonest and corrupt practices.

Carter, recommending compensation to the victims, said a major concern must be that Operation Trident began only a few months after the publication of the Fitzgerald report into corruption in Queensland.

“It is surprising that the lessons of that inquiry were seemingly ignored so quickly”, he said.

Operation Trident was conducted between September 1989 and April 1990 in the Beenleigh area. It involved the use of indemnified civilian police agent Tony Riesenweber to infiltrate a car-theft ring.

More than $60,000 in compensation payments will be made to victims of the operation, many of whom had their cars stripped for spare parts and never returned.

A number of Trident victims have complained that the pay-outs are “paltry”, and quite insufficient to compensate them fully for the losses and difficulties caused by the thefts.

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