May 1999 Volume 80 Number 5 "serving the protectors"
Left Out of the FIRE
By Brett Williams

Sergeant Vin Conley and his family have been shattered by a SAPOL decision to cut him from its Fire Investigation unit. After 15 years’ devotion to his field of expertise, Conley says the decision has “done me out of a job”.

His axing follows a Focus 21 assessment of his now former unit, which was staffed by one sergeant (Conley) and two senior constables.

Contrary to expert advice, Focus 21 insisted that the unit would be better served without Conley’s near limitless investigative talent. It recommended that the body of investigators be made up of three senior constables - and no sergeant.

Conley had intended to stay in the fire investigation field for the rest of his police career. And, with impeccable credentials, he remains one of Australia’s most expert and highly qualified fire investigators and trainers.

Since 1984 he has:

• Studied at the National Fire Academy in Emmitsburg, USA.
• Completed a fire technology certificate course in Australia.
• Trained in “wild fire” investigation and criminal profiling with the FBI in Quantico, USA.
• Designed a two-year training programme for and trained SAPOL fire investigators.
• Trained SA country and metropolitan fire services’ personnel in fire cause investigation.
• Trained SAPOL and NSW police crime scene examiners in fire cause investigation.
• Assisted the Australian National Institute of Forensic Science in the compilation of its fire training materials.
• Co-written national fire training competencies and standards.
• Presented papers to interstate forums on arson, including a Tasmanian conference attended by police and scientists.

Conley, 46, was also a trained bomb-scene investigator and formed a vital part of the Bomb Response unit.

His former investigators’ supervision is now left to a range of Forensic Services sergeants without Conley’s vast expertise.

Police Association president, Peter Alexander, says he’s staggered that Conley’s expertise is “being lost for what appears to be no apparent good reason”. “Vin deserves better than that,” he says.

“I know the work that he’s done and his commitment to the South Australia Police.

“You can’t afford to lose people who have the expertise and knowledge to perform a function. When the expertise is lost, the organization is a loser - and the community is a loser, too.”

Conley first heard of his then pending dismissal in circumstances which made him feel intensely degraded. Unceremoniously and without warning, one of his superiors broke the news as they stood in an office photocopying room at SAPOL’s then Technical Services branch last October.

Says Conley of the encounter: “I was shattered to hear about it like that, and I was also shattered to hear that others had been told prior to me. I thought: ‘If this is the way management wants to do its thing, then it’s a pretty poor effort’.”

But Conley’s devastation was a response to more than just the “no-sergeant” model which Focus 21 had adopted. A month earlier, Conley had submitted a plan of his own to Focus 21, which became known as the Conley model.

In it, he recommended a merger of SAPOL and MFS (Metropolitan Fire Service) fire investigators. He believed their combined resources would bring about increased safety by always allowing at least two officers to investigate at fire scenes together.

He also recommended that this merged team should include one sergeant and two senior constables from SAPOL.

“I co-wrote the memorandum of understanding between the fire service and SAPOL, and did the costings for it (the merger),” he says. “I did everything; nothing needed to be done.

“The Focus 21 team decided to run with that, and I had a meeting with them. Even at that time, no suggestion that they were going to change the make-up of it was ever made.”

Meanwhile, with the understanding that his concept had won Focus 21 endorsement, and the belief that it would soon be implemented, Conley travelled to Melbourne for a two-week bomb-scene examiners’ course.

The emotionally crushing blow from the now infamous exchange in the photocopying room took place immediately after his return to Adelaide.

“I thought the decision was wrong,” Conley says. “I believe in my heart of hearts that this is purely and simply a financial issue: they wanted to save some money.

“All I got from them was: ‘It’s a balanced decision; it’s a right and proper decision’. But I still believe that the monetary factor was very prevalent in their thinking.

“The whole thing left me very cynical. The handling of it was exceptionally poor, for both myself and my section. To me, it was something that you wouldn’t expect people with management experience to do. You start to question whether people with ideas should put them up...”

Conley went to exhaustive lengths to explain what he always believed was the folly of Focus 21’s decision. But his protests, he says, fell on deaf ears.

An emotionally hurt and dejected Conley packed his belongings and vacated his beloved Fire Investigation unit in late February. The memory of all that drew him to fire investigation work 15 years earlier, however, remained as fresh as ever.

“It was such a fascinating and challenging path to take,” he says, “because no two fires are ever the same. Each investigation’s got to be different. So, you have to be flexible enough to put skills and disciplines that you’ve learnt into practice, and then come up with a cause for the investigating team.”

But was Conley himself blameworthy in the demise of a career path for fire investigators? This was a question about which he did “a lot of soul-searching”. But he came to realize he had always strived to guarantee South Australians a “ professional and effective” fire investigation service.

The frustration of his tragic predicament has passed. But anger, disappointment and disillusionment remain.

Even Conley’s family was traumatized by his abrupt removal from the unit. His wife’s response was sheer disbelief; his two teenage children suffered stress. Tension was, for a time, part of all their lives.

But could Conley salvage something from the tatters in which his fire investigation career had been left? He was given some hope when, in a meeting with Focus 21 personnel, he was told he would be assigned to SAPOL’s new Physical Evidence section.

Time passed, however, and no transfer instructions emerged. “I actually had to ring (a superior) on my off-duty time to find out exactly what was happening to me,” Conley explains. “The words I got were: ‘The Physical Evidence section sergeants will remain the same - unfortunately that means you miss out’.”

Focus 21 was contacted for comment but refused to communicate with the Police Journal unconditionally.

The fire investigator in Conley seems unlikely to ever die. Even today, when he hears of his former colleagues investigating a fire, he makes enquiries to “see how they went”.

He would love his now dormant talents to be returned to use but knows the system too well to live on hope.

So, with great sadness, he now recognizes that his time as a fire investigator with SAPOL is over. With uncommon dignity, he accepts that he must carry on - in both work and life.

But with qualifications which could open doors for Conley almost anywhere around the globe, will South Australia lose him to an interstate or overseas agency? “I looked at the possibility of moving on,” he says, “but my father was a police officer, and I’m just following in dad’s footsteps.

“I can’t move interstate - I’ve got family commitments. My only alternative would be (that of) an investigator for one of the fire services. If that was to come about I would consider it, but at this stage I’m a police officer who simply wanted to provide a service to the police industry.”

Conley has endured the uncertainty of temporary attachment to SAPOL’s Media Liaison section since his gut-wrenching February departure from his former post. Now, his future post within SAPOL seems just as frustratingly uncertain.

Much more soul-destroying to Conley, however, is that no gratitude for his tireless efforts in fire investigation has ever been expressed by SAPOL management.

“(I) devoted my time wholly and solely to investigating fires,” he says. “To do that, I’ve sacrificed family life for study and to be available to do fires. I’m still waiting for: ‘Thanks for a job well done’, but I don’t hold my breath.”

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