Dead man's mother calls for culture change

The mother of a man bludgeoned and left to die on the side of a Broome road says WA Police must institute systemic cultural change after a string of bungles, "misconduct" and "inexcusable, vile behaviour" by officers working on her son's case.

WA Police revealed on Saturday results of an internal investigation into the case of Josh Warneke, 21, who was killed on Old Broome Road in February 2010, had been presented to Police Commissioner Karl O'Callaghan but had not yet been made public.

Five officers were stood aside from their duties as a result of the investigation but remain on duty.

Another four are being considered for "managerial action".

Gene Gibson, who was initially charged with Mr Warneke's murder, last year pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to seven-and-a-half years jail.

Before his trial, a Supreme Court judge found police repeatedly ignored the law when interviewing Gibson and failed to caution him on his right to silence, or to provide him with an interpreter, ruling the interviews inadmissible in court.

As a result the murder charge was dropped.

Mr Warneke's mother, Ingrid Bishop, said she would be "watching closely" to see how Mr O'Callaghan responded to the recommendations of the report.

"I haven't seen the report," she told the Broome Advertiser.

"This has been a long uphill battle and I should not have been put into the position of demanding such action from WA Police.

"Their actions, or lack of, have had a devastating impact upon the process of justice.

"The impact of WA Police's misconduct is as compelling as the loss of Josh, as the justice process was our only way to right the wrong.

"Workplace culture is influenced by management and leadership of the organisation, so I will be watching with great interest to see how the commissioner decides to respond to gross misconduct across the areas of technical and behavioural conduct.

"The breaches are significant and have influenced the court process negatively, significantly and permanently.

"A suitable response and action is therefore required."

Ms Bishop said sacking the five officers stood aside from their duties would not bring her son back.

"(We) are still learning how to live without our beautiful Josh," she said.

"All we can hope for is courage and commitment from the agencies involved to say 'yes, we have made mistakes, we are going to learn from this experience and we will design and embed ways to improve our processes and procedures, training and, above all, our organisational culture'.

"There are some amazing, talented and committed police officers in WA and I feel for them that they can be tarred with the same brush as those of their incompetent work colleagues and leaders."

Ms Bishop said she hoped lessons were learnt from her son's case.

"WA Police is an agency tasked with leading, upholding and fighting for justice," she said

"When the system fails, as it did in Joshua's case, cover-ups and hiding will not be tolerated.

"Striving and instilling accountability, leadership and transparency are fundamentals that have been lost.

"It will take strong leadership and commitment to change current practice and it will be a hard, painful and long process, just like our healing process.

"Do I think WAPOL has what it takes to undertake reform and behavioural change?

"We shall see."