00:00 A familiar problem and a familiar reaction.
00:05 How many times does your client have to be reminded that last minute production is absolutely unacceptable?
00:13 It is disruptive of the inquiry's proceedings.
00:16 Ten minutes before a witness was due to give evidence, police produced a document Council Assisting said was of central importance to the questions.
00:24 The Forces Council was blasted.
00:27 I'm sick and tired of your client's attitude in relation to these documents and it is yet again testimony to the fact that I think your client doesn't know where half its records are.
00:36 The inquiry is investigating dozens of deaths in New South Wales that may have been gay hate crimes.
00:41 The mystery document's relevance was soon clear.
00:44 In 2012, former cold case detective Alicia Taylor reviewed the case of American Scott Johnson who died at Cliffs Inn Manly decades earlier.
00:54 She urged police to consider an investigation targeting known persons of interest who have been charged with offences against homosexuals in the Northern Beaches,
01:03 which may produce further lines of inquiry and enable covert opportunities to gather information.
01:10 The inquiry has previously heard that four of her superiors ranked the priority as nil, which meant closing or suspending the case.
01:18 The witness had never seen their document before.
01:21 I can't make comment on what decisions were in this process of making this prioritisation.
01:27 The recommendations I thought were valid at the time I did my review.
01:31 Scott Philip White was arrested in 2020 and is serving a nine year jail sentence for Dr Johnson's manslaughter.
01:38 That case may be solved, but issues around how it was handled are still in focus at the inquiry.
01:43 Tomorrow's witness is one of the four senior officers who signed off on the nil priority score.
01:49 [BLANK_AUDIO]
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