This is a document which attempts to describe some aspects of endemic corruption in the NSW police force, specifically during the period around 1979 to present. It is a transcript from a conversation with Blackheath Flowers 7th September 2000. Thoughts on the mysterious Rick and Luke. During the period about 1979-80, "Rick" a.k.a. Richard Seary, was active in the Kings Cross region. Rick's main occupations, assisted by his partner Luke, were narcotics dealing and unsolicited surgery without a license to practise medicine. Rick's primary employer for surgery and general miscellaneous public nuisances was an anonymous, tall Australian gent who drove a Monaro who used to enjoy the hospitality of the Bourbon and Beefsteak, a well known watering hole for NSW detectives and CIA agents of the time. Rick was facing a lot of gaol time for narcotics dealing and inept surgical procedures on unwilling patients, but was able to remain in circulation owing to his other role as a police informer. Rick had also insinuated himself into various aboriginal groups. Rick and probably many other informers find themselves in their role because their previous involvment in the narcotics distribution system. The informer-to-be, usually sourced from a position of socioeconomic vulnerability, is threatened with prosecution if they fail to reveal information on people involved in other (alleged) criminal activity in the locale. Since illegal drug transactions are a victimless crime, and there are no complaints raised about lack of prosecutions of disposable, small-time dealers and habitual users, there is never any pressure on the police to reveal the identities of their informants. Regarding Rodney Podesta. Rodney Podesta recently came to some notoriety as one of the police officers responsible for the shooting of Roni Levi on Bondi Beach in 1998. He was not subsequently charged for this shooting. He has some other interesting personal historical aspects which have not yet seen the light of newsprint. Some of these serve to highlight the entrenched nature of corruption in the NSW police force. Rodney Podesta, having failed both of the maximum permissible two applications to join the NSW police force, was subsequently permitted to join the NSW police as a trainee police officer when he applied for admission a third time. These circumstances for admission are highly unusual. Applicants who have failed two attempts at admission are, without exception, refused a third application. Unless, of course, they have relatives who hold high office in the NSW Police training Academy at Goulburn. Rodney was subsequently permitted to undergo training and graduated as a probationary NSW police constable in 1996, despite te knowledge that he had many friends and associations over many years in the Kings Cross area, which would, one might expect, have rased a red flag about Rodney's suitability to perform as a law enforcement officer at all, let alone in the Kings Cross region. Rodney Podesta's now deceased father, Joe Podesta, long-time owner of the Piccolo Coffee Shop in Kings Cross, was brought up before two Royal Commissions and was reputed to be involved in three gang wars of an unspecified nature. This establishment provided a safe haven where cannabis dealing could occur without any intervention by the local police, and this is the reason for the immunity of this establishment to harassment by local police and emerging criminal gangs in the region. Rodney Podesta was initially posted to the Rose Bay precinct upon graduation. The choice of assignment was determined in part by the nature of the associations he had made in his preferred and subsequent region of operation, which was Kings Cross. Rodney, during his time as an adolescent, was occupied on Wednesday nights supervising the running of the Piccolo Coffee shop, which one might expect swayed the development of Rodney's character and view of the world and his place in it. Much of the Piccolo's clientele represented a less law-abiding and honest section of the community than one might prefer as an environment in which a upstanding adolescent might be expected to develop within. Rodney was, through his father's ownership of the Piccolo, exposed to influences which certainly shaped his later choice of carreer and his attitude towards it. Rodney was bored (and not sufficiently remunerated) by his initial assignment and, because he wanted to "see some action" applied for a transfer. This led to his reassignment to the Bondi Beach police station. It is alleged that there was unusual behind-the-scenes police computer database activity in which Rodney was involved. Access to the police files is logged, but this logging does not ensure that access to these files is made for valid reasons - for instance, an officer or other individual with access to the files could conjure up a reason like "suspected stolen car", enter the license plate details and see what - and who - comes up. The actual nature of Rodney's accessions was never determined, but an indication of their significance is given by the fact that neither the state or federal police investigated this activity - and this activity was never investigated in the courts. The only organisation which investigated Rodney's activities prior to the shooting or Roni Levi was ASIO, who installed a surveillance camera into the cieling of his Randwick unit (via the floor of the unit above). The issue here is not that Rodney was corrupt, but rather that Rodney was an instrument of a system with corruption so entrenced that it encouraged and fostered corruption as a way of life for law enforcement officers. What does it say that in order to run the police force in NSW that one has to appoint a person from another country to do the job, and that the first major change he implemented was to prevent the Goulburn Police Academy from functioning as a manufacturing plant for additional institutionalised and generational corruption and nepotism in the police force.