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At the end of 250 days of
hearings, Beach made several recommendations in June 1976.
Beach, educated at Geelong
College, said that he believed charges should be brought against 55 serving
police officers.
Not one conviction was secured
against a single officer.
The charges by Mr Beach ranged
from trivial breaches of standing orders to assaults, corruptly receiving money
and conspiring to pervert, or obstruct, the course of justice.
The officers came from all ranks
and included two superintendents.
When giving his findings Beach said
that he believed three detectives, including Neil
Graham O'Loughlin, had 'Green Lighted' a robbery on March 14, 1973, at a
Thornbury business.
Beach also said that the officers assisted in fabricating
evidence to frame another man.
O'Loughlin
was found by Beach to have obstructed the course of justice by protecting a
criminal and to have conspired to give false evidence.
The charges were dismissed when a
magistrate said there was insufficient evidence to send him to trial. O'Loughlin
later became Deputy Commissioner and in charge of investigating police as head
of the Ethical Standards Department.
An other officer who prospered
despite having faced charges during the inquiry is John
McCoy who later became a Chief Inspector and was head of the drug squad from
1995-1999.
Brian
Frances Murphy was another officer who was named by Beach.
Murphy
was acquitted in 1971 of manslaughter following the death of a man in police
custody.
Beach recommend a charge of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice
was bought against Murphy.
Paul
William Higgins was a senior constable at the time of the inquiry, and the
charges recommended against him were assault, two counts of conspiring to give
false evidence and one of malicious damage.
In the immediate aftermath of the
inquiry, Victoria was bought to the brink of a state-wide strike by the then
6429 serving police officers.
Nine months after the inquiry
ended, 17 of the 55 officers had been bought before magistrates in committal
proceedings and 15 had been discharged with no case to answer.
Eventually the remaining 40 were
discharged.
Beach said in a 1997 interview
that after the inquiry, he was subjected to "all sorts of
vilification."
Two years after Beach bought down
his findings, a government committee of review rejected most of the Beach
Inquiry recommendations for improvements to police procedures.
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