Full, Unredacted Copy of SAPOL Whistleblower Letter

Earlier this year, a disillusioned senior SAPOL officer wrote a scathing 4-page letter detailing the decline of SAPOL under current commissioner Grant Stevens.

At the time, the only publicly available copy of this letter was a heavily redacted version.

SouthAustraliaPolice.com has obtained the full unredacted letter. It is clear the letter was redacted – not because it reveals sensitive information or names individuals (it doesn’t) – but because it is highly critical of the current commissioner (Grant Stevens) and the deputy commissioner (Linda Williams).

Stevens has proven himself to be extremely intolerant of criticism. In an unprecedented display of petulance, Stevens launched a failed 2020 legal action challenging the results of a coroner’s inquest into a fatal police shooting. Stevens didn’t like the coroner’s fairly benign suggestions, so he tried to get the report changed.

After repeatedly evading Covid-related questions by the media, Stevens got up and stormed out of a press conference during the height of coronavirus hysteria. “You keep asking the same questions!” a grumpy Stevens complained to the reporters, knowing very well the reason they kept asking is because he kept failing to answer.

The senior officer who penned the letter of complaint portrays South Australia’s two highest-ranking cops as out-of-touch bureaucrats, saying he/she does not believe the deputy commissioner has ever sat inside a police vehicle and participated in a patrol since being promoted. The author also does not recall in Stevens’ “nearly six years in the job, the current Commissioner gracing the inside of a patrol vehicle or walking the beat for a shift, to witness what is happening out on the frontline” like previous commissioners did.

True to his vindictive form, Stevens suspended the officer who wrote the letter.

Here is the unredacted letter in its entirety.