Raymond Wells Whitrod, AC, CVO, QPM (16 April 1915 – 11 July 2003) was an Australian police officer and criminologist.
He left to join the Royal Australian Air Force, seeing service as a navigator in north Africa and Europe.
In 1949 Whitrod moved to Sydney where he helped establish the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), and was engaged in investigating Soviet espionage.
In 1963 Whitrod attained a Bachelor of Economics degree from the Australian National University (ANU), which he had been studying part-time since the late 1950s.
He reported back to the retiring commissioner, who said that his departure date was fixed, and asked if Whitrod himself might be interested.
He organised for the Queensland Education Department to provide officers with classes in literacy and basic arithmetic.
In this case, however, they chose Terry Lewis, an inspector, who was known to be a close associate and bagman of the corrupt former Police Commissioner Francis Bischof.
Whitrod believed all his efforts for seven years to eradicate corruption would be undermined if the appointment went ahead, and he asked to speak to Bjelke-Petersen.
Prior to leaving Queensland for Canberra, Whitrod and his wife were subject to harassment and intimidation.
A large number of personal files, detailing police corruption, were mysteriously lost in transit between Brisbane and Canberra.
The Fitzgerald Inquiry in the 1980s revealed institutionalised corruption in Queensland during Bjelke-Petersen's time, and vindicated Whitrod's stance.
In retirement, Whitrod's extensive community involvement included the first national presidency of the Prison After-Care Council, and membership of the South Australian Government's Commission for the Ageing.
Whitrod's memoirs were published as Before I Sleep (University of Queensland Press, St Lucia).
Whitrod was made a Member of the Fourth Class of the Royal Victorian Order (later regraded as Lieutenant) in 1954.