Honourable to the end Raymond Wells Whitrod, AC Policeman, teacher and innovator Born: Adelaide on April 16, 1915 Died: Adelaide on July 11, 2003

The entire nation saw just how deeply Ray Whitrod abhorred corruption when he resigned as Queensland police commissioner in 1976. His bold step came as a response to the decision of then premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, to appoint known-to-be-dishonest cop, Terry Lewis – later jailed – as assistant commissioner.

From 1970, when Mr Whitrod took the top police post, he had set out to eradicate corruption, raise educational standards and bring women into all fields of policing.

But forces within and without the police service – including the government – had thwarted most of his initiatives. The Lewis affair was, for the man who refused to abide corruption, the final straw.

He packed up and left for Canberra where, for the next three years, he taught criminology at the Australian National University.

In the late ’80s came the Fiztgerald Inquiry, which unearthed deep-rooted corruption in Queensland, and vindicated Mr Whitrod.

He later spoke of concerns for his safety in Queensland, and revealed that he had slept with a gun under his pillow.

Irrespective of the inquiry, Mr Whitrod’s long-standing reputation for integrity remained intact for the rest of his life. Sadly, however, the man Australia best knew as the honest cop died in Adelaide last July after a long illness. He was 88.

“Ray was courageous in the way he dealt with integrity issues,” said Police Association of SA president, Peter Alexander. “But he also genuinely believed that police had to better educate themselves – to exist in a changing world.

“He wasn’t a status-quo person, which is unusual in people with high rank. He was prepared to put positions that other people in policing were not prepared to do.”

Adelaide-born, Mr Whitrod grew up amid the hard times of the Great Depression, but matriculated from Adelaide High School. After a search for work as a fruit-picker in the Riverland and, urged on by his then future wife, Mavis, he joined SAPOL in 1934.

By mid-1937, he had taken on detective work, in which he remained until he left the force in 1941 to serve as an RAAF navigator during WWII. He saw action in Africa and Europe but, in 1945, returned to SAPOL, where he resumed his detective role.

Approached to help establish, and work for, ASIO, Mr Whitrod moved to Canberra in 1949. He began as one of the organization’s first field investigators and soon inquired into the so-called Soviet spy ring.

The timing of his stint with ASIO also placed him at the centre of investigations into Russian spies, the late Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov, who defected in 1954.

Some years later, he joined the Commonwealth Investigation Service as its director. When the CIS became the Commonwealth Police Force (now the AFP) in 1960, Mr Whitrod scored the job as its first commissioner.

Before his six tempestuous years in Queensland, he would serve as Papua New Guinea police commissioner, from 1969 to ’70. But relations with key figures would prove thorny during that year in pre-independence PNG. When Mr Whitrod left, he had not, to his disappointment, achieved the success for which he had striven.

In 1979, after his three years at the ANU, he and his wife returned to Adelaide. There, he conceived the idea for, and helped establish, the Victims of Crime (now Victim Support) Service. This was an Australian first, which provided previously non-existent support for families of crime victims.

Anne-Marie Mykyta and Judy Barnes – who lost children in the Truro and Family murders, respectively – were among those who used the service.

Under Mr Whitrod’s guidance, the service went on to establish itself across the nation.

Mr Whitrod played a significant role in forming the National Police Research Unit (now the Australasian Centre for Policing Research) in Adelaide, and the Australian Institute of Criminology. He had himself attained a postgraduate degree in criminology at Cambridge University in 1965.

In retirement, his extensive community involvement included the first national presidency of the Prison After-Care Council, and membership of the SA Government’s Commission for the Ageing. He was also the driving force behind the establishment of the Australian Society of Victimology.

Equal Opportunity Commission chief, Linda Matthews, worked with Mr Whitrod on the Correctional Services Advisory Council in the mid-1990s. Council members’ purpose was to visit prisoners and report issues of concern to the relevant minister.

“While Ray was passionate about victims’ interests, he didn’t think that meant prisoners should be treated badly,” said Ms Matthews. “He thought the deprivation of liberty was the punishment.

“Sometimes prisoners would make silly claims about ill-treatment, and Ray was well able to discern what sounded (and did not sound) like something plausible.

“But he saw that it was in victims’ interests for there to be rehabilitation in prison, because if they were going to come out and re-offend, how was that going to be good for anybody?”

During his eventful working life, Mr Whitrod received many honours, including the Queen’s Police Medal in 1967. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987 and, in 1993, a Companion of the Order of Australia. In 1997, he received an honorary doctorate in laws from the Australian National University.

Police from across the country, and Papua New Guinea, joined a 300-strong congregation to farewell Mr Whitrod in a service at the Flinders St Baptist Church, Adelaide, on July 17.

His wife Mavis, whom he had married in the same church in 1938, died in March 2001. In that year, Mr Whitrod also lost his son, Andrew, and daughter-in-law, Diane, in a car crash.

He is survived by his son Ian, daughter Ruth, nine grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.

– Brett Williams