Cross-dresser's new job catches cops on the hop

16.08.2002

By PATRICK GOWER

Sergeant Ana Williams would drive around in her patrol car, doing routine
jobs and ordering her colleagues about.

But Sergeant Williams was not what she seemed.

She wasn't a police officer. And she wasn't a woman.

The busy cop was a 22-year-old cross-dressing fraudster on a three-month
crime spree.

Williams stole a police shirt, jumper and boots and the accessories - a set
of handcuffs and a police pepper spray.

He took the car as well. At the end of a "shift", he would park it back
outside the police station and pick it up again later.

On the beat, Williams would go to jobs as they came over the police radio,
escorting a drunk punter from the Sky City casino and turning up to a
shoplifting incident at a Farmers store then handing it over to another
officer.

Yesterday, Williams - also known as Turori Chapman and listed on court
documents as a male of no fixed abode - was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in jail
for a raft of crimes committed between his release from prison in April and
his arrest in June.

The Manukau District Court was told Williams wanted to be known as a female
and said he had changed his name by deed poll.

Police had not confirmed his claim to have had a sex change operation.

Privacy issues mean it is not known whether he will serve his sentence in a
male or female prison.

His crime spree began when he walked into Wellington Hospital, picked up the
keys to a fleet car and began heading towards Auckland.

At Taupo, he swapped cars, again stealing keys from inside a hospital.

In Hamilton, he said he was a doctor and left a motel without paying.

In Auckland, he impersonated a Koru Club valet parker at the airport and got
away with a $38,000 late-model Commodore from an obliging traveller.

In early June, he climbed through an open window into the women's toilets at
the Onehunga police station and took a female constable's uniform and
equipment.

After his first police "job", at the Farmers store on June 5, he went to the
Mangere police station, where he walked in with a group attending a
recruiting meeting, spoke to an officer in the foyer, and then ducked
through an open door into a restricted area.

He took a set of keys, went to the carpark and got a patrol car.

Williams spent the next few days driving around, filling up the car on the
police petrol card.

He listened to the police radio and told people he was a "roving sergeant".

Police captured Williams on June 16. They got some of the uniform items
back, but could not find the pepper spray.


The officer in charge of the Mangere station at the time, Senior Sergeant
Mark Richards, resigned last week after being cleared of criminal offences
raised when a newspaper published emails in which he discussed using hard
drugs.

Counties-Manukau District Commander Ted Cox said security had been improved
at the Mangere station, and the entire district had been told to review its
security.

The acting Auckland District Commander, Chief Inspector John Palmer, said
the Onehunga station was being renovated at the time of the burglary and the
toilet window had been left "slightly ajar" for paint to dry.

Security was tight otherwise.

"It was just one of those things ... It is more than a trifle embarrassing,
but I guess these things happen."

END

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