Closing the Technology Gap in Policing

Summary

Australian True Crime – "Closing the Technology Gap in Policing"

Date: November 16, 2025
Host: Meshel Laurie
Guest: David Bartlett (Former Victorian Police Detective and Founder, Safer Places Network)

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Overview

This episode explores the technological challenges faced by Australian police, especially Victoria Police, in keeping up with both the public sector and the rapidly advancing tactics of organized and street crime. Former detective David Bartlett—now leading the Safer Places Network—shares candid behind-the-scenes insights about the tech lag in Australian policing, stories from his career, and his vision for closing the technology gap with community-driven solutions like national CCTV registers.

A unique blend of firsthand policing experience and technological acumen brings to light the realities of modern law enforcement and community safety in Australia’s suburbs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Bartlett’s Policing Background & Passion

• Inspiration & Early Memories
  • Bartlett recounts a childhood memory (Patrick Hildebrandt’s disappearance) that sparked his desire to become a police officer.

    "I knew at the age of five that I wanted to be a cop... And my parents took me up to meet the police. That was a really positive interaction... Bit of a core memory." (05:22)

• Tech and Policing Journey
  • Initially steered into tech by skill, but ultimately followed his passion into the police force.
  • Managed to combine technical expertise with frontline policing.
  • Describes starting on Melbourne’s trains, emphasizing the importance of "soft skills" and true community policing—even in environments that might seem less glamorous.

The Tech Gap in Victoria Police

• Current State of Technology
  • Bartlett reveals Victoria Police is seriously behind global standards:

    "I would say they are at least five to 10 years behind where other people are." (00:49)

  • Attributes some of this to bureaucratic inertia, a risk-averse culture, and heavy reliance on slow, expensive tech contracts:

    "They have a long history of working with the biggest tech companies that charge the most... It’s not always the right way." (13:08)

  • Tech adoption hampered by organizational resistance and lack of change management.
  • AI adoption is particularly slow:

    "The Victorian government has actually put a pause on anything AI related for the next 12 months... But the problem is, 12 months in the world of AI at the moment is like 10 years." (13:25)

• Impact on Crime Fighting
  • Criminal networks exploit gaps and move faster:

    "Organized crime have no red tape, they have no bureaucracy, they have no borders..." (15:06)

  • Even basic national police databases have taken years to roll out, leading to tragic incidents caused by failures to share information:

    (Describes the fatal incident with WA police) "...no warnings on the system for the car, and that member ended up losing their life." (15:50)

Funding and Policing Effectiveness

• Balance Between Tech and Personnel
  • Tech isn’t a panacea:

    "Tech is not just the solution. It's about almost like the workflow of how members operate." (17:20)

  • Real challenge is organization-wide change—trainings, user adoption, behavioral factors.
  • Cites audits finding poor planning for policing resource distribution.
  • Attrition rates rising—average career span now less than five years.

Organized Crime, Youth Recruitment, and Methods

• Organized Crime Structures
  • Higher echelons often live overseas and use technology to recruit vulnerable locals:

    "They use encrypted communications, they use social media, they use social networks to find runners... a fraction of the price without the risk." (25:58)

  • State police usually only catch low-level operatives at the end of the chain.
• Human Weakness as the Entry Point
  • Tech is the facilitator, but psychological manipulation (social engineering) is the recurring weak link:

    "I think the weak link for organized crime is the human element." (28:03)

• Australia’s Attractiveness for Crime
  • High per-gram street price makes Australia a target:

    "For a long time, we held the highest per gram price for cocaine in the world." (30:00)

• Tobacco Crime and 'Practice Runs'
  • Describes tobacco smuggling as a “gateway” operation for criminal training, with minimal penalties compared to drugs.

Money Laundering and Cash Flows

• Old and New Methods
  • Casinos heavily used for laundering—regulators only recently catching up.
  • Transition to cashless society could hamper everyday drug dealing, but sophisticated methods (like using international “ledgers” and high roller offsets) persist.

    "It's literally a spreadsheet...and then...who do I know in Perth who owes me 60 bucks...So it sort of sounds complicated, but actually it's very, very basic and old school." (47:23)

  • Historic "Silk Road"–style offsetting and remittance schemes remain foundational.

Life Inside (and After) Policing

• Social & Psychological Toll
  • Describes personal impact: being on call, secrecy, family disruptions, loss of camaraderie after leaving.

    "It's a lifestyle...I think there's the potential to, you know, potentially lose friends and lose connection with family." (50:14)

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The Safer Places Network: Bartlett’s Solution

Concept & Impact

• Origin: Motivated by repeated delays and inefficiency in obtaining CCTV evidence for investigations (notably the Jill Meagher case and Greg Lynn investigation).
• Operation:
  • A national, voluntary register of privately and publicly owned cameras (CCTV, doorbells, home security).

    "It's just about creating a register of CCTV cameras around Australia and all of us can get involved." (01:09)

  • Aims to replace labor-intensive door knocks with a notification system—getting crucial footage to investigators faster and reducing wasted police hours.

    "It's replacing a door knock with an sms, which is the way we've started describing it." (54:06)

• Civil Liberties:
  • No streaming or government access to cameras, just a way to alert camera owners in an area after an incident.

    "Police have got no time to just look at what you're cooking for dinner. That's not what we're talking about at all." (54:22)

• Evidence in Action:
  • References Jill Meagher:

    "The footage from the Duchess Boutique, it took 85 hours to get that into the hands of homicide detectives...and my worry now is if that was to happen again...it could still take 85 hours." (56:57)

  • Example of a Manchester UK synagogue stabbing solved because of a single doorbell camera. (59:58)
• Getting Involved:
  • Open to all Australians at saferplaces.com.au—registering takes about 60 seconds.

    "We don't ask for anything confidential, we don't ask for passwords, we don't ask for anything like that. It's purely you just saying know you. Yep, I've got cameras and I'll be cooperative with police if they come and if they need it." (62:50)

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Social Commentary & The Role of the Community

• Community Initiatives vs. Vigilantism:
  • Bartlett cautions against private patrols or security initiatives, advocating instead for digitally coordinated, community-enhancing programs like Safer Places and supporting Neighbourhood Watch.

    "The risk with either private citizens doing patrols or security guards doing patrols is they don't have the training...So if we can spend our time and effort in a more positive way to support our police...that's what we should be focusing our time on." (65:45)

• Morale & Public Safety
  • Growing public fear and declining police morale complicate solutions, but Bartlett remains optimistic about technology, the right kind of community involvement, and future generational engagement (noting, for example, efforts to draw younger people into Neighbourhood Watch).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Tech Lag:

  "The Victorian government has actually put a pause on anything AI related for the next 12 months...But the problem is, 12 months in the world of AI at the moment is like 10 years." — David Bartlett (13:25)

• On Organized Crime’s Human Element:

  "They still need to rely on humans at some point to do some kind of work. And that's where I think law enforcement needs to focus their efforts." — David Bartlett (28:03)

• On Money Laundering:

  "A Shoebox can fit $250,000 cash...if we went to a cashless society, I think it would make drug trafficking and drug dealing very, very hard." — David Bartlett (42:30)

• On Safer Places Network:

  "I'm trying to make it as efficient as possible for police to locate what I call a digital witness." — David Bartlett (54:06)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Childhood Inspiration for Policing – 05:22
• Early Police Tech Experiences – 07:18
• Victoria Police Tech Lag Admission – 13:00
• National Intelligence System Limitations – 15:00
• Impact of Funding, Attrition & Recruitment – 17:20
• Organized Crime and Youth Recruitment – 25:58
• Encrypted Communications & Social Engineering – 28:03
• Australia's Drug Market & Money Laundering – 30:00, 42:30
• Personal Impact of Police Work – 50:14
• Safer Places Network Explained – 54:06, 62:50
• Community Involvement & Neighbourhood Watch – 63:58
• Warning Against Vigilante Patrols – 65:45

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Tone

The discussion is frank, engaging, and infused with both professional insider knowledge and dry Australian humour. Bartlett's practical, passionate approach balances deep concern for societal and organizational issues with hope for effective, community-led technological solutions.

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For Listeners

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in how technology, policy, and human factors intersect in modern policing—offering rare, actionable insights into both Australia’s crime landscape and how the average person can help make a difference. If you have a camera, consider registering with Safer Places; if you care about policing, understand that real change is both a tech and a people problem.

Transcript

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Before we begin today's episode of Australian True Crime, I want to tell you about a new project we've been working on behind the scenes. It's called she Matters. It's a new podcast from award winning journalist and femicide researcher Sherrelle Moody. Each week, Sherrelle speaks with families of women and children killed in Australia, sharing who they were, the joy they brought and the love they left behind. She Matters isn't a true crime podcast. It's about lives lived, lives loved and lives lost. She Matters is produced by Dash made podcasts in association with bravecasting Media. She Matters is available wherever you get your podcasts. Victoria's Chief of Police has announced a major overhaul of the force in a bid to get more officers back on the streets to tackle crime.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yep, you've got to do the paperwork.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But you should be able to do.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It out in the field. There is technology around the that will enable our people to do that, so we've got to bring it in. I was quite surprised by where they are in terms of their technology. I would say they are at least five to 10 years behind where other people are.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Our guest today is David Bartlett, a man with an extraordinary CV. He's a former Victorian Police detective with 11 years of service. He spent six years with the Australian Crime Commission across operation and intelligence roles. He has experience in major investigations into international drug operations and terror networks. These days, David is focused on the technology gap between law enforcement and criminals. He's the founder of the Safer Places Network, which is such a simple idea, it's hard to believe it didn't exist already. It's just about creating a register of CCTV cameras around Australia and all of us can get involved. David Bartlett joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about the challenges facing modern policing and his work with Safer Places. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created. The Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

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[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

I knew what my passion was as a child, but I diverted from that when I had external influence in late high school and I found out I was really good at something else. But it wasn't necessarily my passion. So I had a gift for technology, but I'd forgotten that my passion or my vision for life was to become a police officer. I knew at the age of five that I wanted to be a cop. And it was the moment that Patrick Hildebrandt went missing in Tidal River, Wilson's prom in 1987. And they did a big search. SES was down there, Victoria Police was there, the Air Wing was there, and the air wing landed in the car park at Tidal River. And I was amazed by this police helicopter. And my parents took me up to meet the police. And that was a really positive interaction I had with the police at an early age. Bit of a core memory, and this.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Is of course, the brother of Joe Hildebrandt, and Joe has spoken at length about that. It's one of those enduring mysteries where a family went out for a walk. Not even particularly a bushwalk, I don't think. Was it like on a trail?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Very, very easy trail. Yeah.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

One of the kids ran ahead and when the rest of the family got around the bend, he was gone. And he remains missing decades later. So I can understand how that could stick in a little boy's mind and memory.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

And my parents got me a little cut down police uniform and a little police hat they got from a former member. And there's actually a photo of that on my mantle downstairs. And, you know, I'd forgotten about that for a long time. And when I got into high school, I was naturally good at tech. I was really fortunate to have a computer at home, and I just naturally did a tech degree at Swinburne after uni, and just kind of followed that until I was running a business in Hawthorne two years after uni and a friend of mine from the Kew police station came in and I hadn't seen this guy for a couple of years, and he came to visit me and he was in his police uniform and he into my office and I was like, whoa, hang on a second, like, what are you doing? When did you join the police? It basically just triggered that memory, sent me right back to a five year old. And I thought, hang on a second. I've always wanted to be a cop. And I'd literally forgotten about it for 15 years or more.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But you managed to marry your childhood passion with what you're good at, which is the ideal situation, really.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah. And when I went into the police, they tried to get me into all these technology programs and projects, but I just wanted to be a cop. So there was a lot happening back in 2005 when I joined with the police and I just wanted to get out and work with the community. And working on the trains for the first year was great because it just gave me an opportunity just to meet community, even give people directions. And I remember seeing my reflection in the glass of a shop on Collins street and I'm like, I saw myself in uniform. I'm like, how did I get here? Like, I was just so proud and I still am proud that I was a member and I'm really proud of that organisation.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Tell us about that, the time on the trains. Because of course that's a foreign idea to us now in Melbourne, where you were. Because we have specific guys who work on the trains as security. So what did police used to do on the trains?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, so this predates psos, so only by a few years. But when I graduated in late 2005, you had two options. And I say option, but they were directing you. So you had one, one pathway and that was to go to a police station somewhere in Victoria. The other pathway was to go on to the trains and they used to call it Transit Safety Division. And it was a bit mocked at the time because it wasn't really considered real police work because you weren't driving the van around, you weren't going to domestics or more traditional community policing. But for me it was a perfect segue. You know, what I considered quite an empathy led career. And I was always more for talking to and understanding people, including crooks and victims and witnesses. So for me it was a really good introduction into the softer side of policing, which a lot of people don't talk about. But it was real community policing. So you're on the trains, literally walking up and down the carriages, you'd go from Lillardale all the way into Flinders street and you'd spend the whole time on the train, get off of Flinders street, you might spend two hours there, then you get on a train and go all the way back to Lillardale. So PSOs are often kind of stuck on a station, but we were moving all over the network all the time.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

So it could be anything. It could be drunk people, it could be scared people, could be mentally ill people, could be, I would think, medical emergencies. I mean, everything.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, everything. You know, people are losing their life in front of trains and things like that. So there's a lot of critical incidents that we had to attend and manage their mental health concerns, people having breakdowns on the train, lost kids, lost elderly. There was a lot of things like that. So very diverse. But Quite different to what would be more considered traditional van led community policing.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

It's interesting you say that because a lot of older retired coppers talk about what's been lost in police, not literally walking around neighbourhoods. And it's those sorts of soft skills they'll talk about. They'll talk about how you learn to diffuse situations and things like that when you're literally on foot, face to face with people just wandering around, seeing what happens.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

I heard one of your previous guests, Andrew Stamper, talking about that, that you can't go from Mr. Angry to Mr. Nice. And that's something that really does get instilled. He knew in the academy and I always led with that. It's much easier to escalate than, you know, de escalate. So that was always my attitude. And I took a lot of early guidance from the likes of him and Ron Indels and learning and listening about how they went about their investigations. And yeah, it went well for me. And I, with my technology background, it allowed me to natively use all the resources that I had in front of me. And I was very fortunate in that regard that every organization the size of VICPOL has, you know, 30 different systems you have to use. And I was fortunate enough to be able to jump around those really easily. And although I spent 12 months at transit, I moved even within transit. I worked in a plain clothes unit probably only four months after graduating. So I spent about four months in uniform and then I moved into a unit that our only job for three months. Our name was Twit, which is pretty funny, the Transit Warrant Investigation Team. And it was our job just to look for people that were wanted on warrants, so they might have not attended court. And the magistrates offered a bench warrant and they're saying this person's now a wanted person for not turning up upper court. And it was just our job just to find them. So within four months I was basically doing the work of a, almost like a missing person's detective. And there was only a team of about three of us. And there's one particular guy that had been missing for a long time and I read in one of his antecedent profiles that he was a methadone user. So he was trying to get off heroin. I thought, well that's good, good on him. But I did a bit of research and I realized that to get issued methadone in Victoria at that time, and it's probably still the same, you have to be on a methadone register. And to be on the register, you have to be registered with a pharmacy. So this person had to be registered with a particular pharmacy to get his methadone.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Every week it has to go to the chemist three times a week or whatever to get his methadone.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, spot on. Yeah. So I found the pharmacy, went and spoke to them, and I looked at the log of when this person often comes in, and we just sat at the front on a bench seat and waited for him to come and get his methadone. So the fact that I was doing that within four months of graduating, I was just. Yeah, it's in dreamland for me. I loved it.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, that's that passion I'm talking about, though. It seems to me that you've always been very ambitious and always kind of looking for the next challenge. Is that fair to say?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, and I guess that was the allure of Victoria Police. I don't know what the slogan is, but, you know, there are literally thousands of jobs you can do at Victoria Police. You know, for me, I'm onto my fourth career, if you put it that way. So I started out tech, went into the police force. I then ran a private company for the last five years in the private sector in a different industry, and now I'm back to working in the tech and law enforcement space. So, I don't know. I think the world is so small now and so accessible that universities are going to find it harder to attract people, university degrees are going to be less required for jobs. I think, you know, the world is. It's very open now. It's not as regimented or rigid as it used to be.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But one thing that we know for sure is that technology is playing a bigger and bigger role in our lives in policing, in every industry, in just every corner of the world. I heard you say that Victoria police is about 15 years behind other law enforcement around the world when it comes to tech. So that's terrifying statement.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

And to be honest, that's not even my words. They're the words of Mike Bush, the new Victoria Police Chief Commissioner. He actually said that in the media in probably in August this year.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

That's the boss.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

That's the boss. On top of that, he said he was quite shocked at that fact. So not only are they behind, you know, you've got an incoming chief commissioner that has been shown their systems and is shocked by it. And coming from New Zealand, and I've had a little bit to do with them, they're a very progressive, smaller agency. They're national, but they're smaller. But they have a Much more open mindset when it comes to working with smaller private sector companies. Whereas Victoria Police has got a long history of working with all the biggest tech companies that charge the most and, you know, have the biggest kind of appeal, but it's not always the right way to go. So, yeah, I think, you know, Victoria Police and I still talk to members now, hasn't really fundamentally changed from an investigative perspective. They're still running the main intel system they were running when I was there and I left there early 2019. So the fact that nothing's really changed in six years, if not longer, is pretty concerning. And I hear this a lot with state governments and federal governments that their adoption of AI is taking a lot longer. And they're very nervous about AI because there's a lot of protected information within governments. They're not sure where that information is going. And even Victorian government has actually put a pause on anything AI related for the next 12 months until they bed down an AI policy. But the problem is, 12 months in the world of AI at the moment is like 10 years. Yeah. Like, there are literally things coming out every single week that are assisting the private sector, but the public sector. So our government departments are just getting more and more behind. So when they put things off for a year, that's going to put them behind a decade. It's absolutely frightening. It's literally a chasm of technology or emerging tech in terms of what we were just talking about, just accelerating. And there's government agencies just being stuck and they're not adopting, they can't. They don't have the money, the resources, the time to do R and D. It's just widening. And for them to catch up is just means they're going to have to spend even more money to try and catch up to what's happening in the private sector, at least.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, and, you know, along with the private sector, the criminal sector is also embracing technology. Always does.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah. We're here to talk about crime, so. Yeah, absolutely. And the thing with organised crime is that they have no red tape, they have no bureaucracy, they have no borders, which is a really crucial thing. We're still not great in Australia in terms of sharing information across borders. I mean, we've only had a National Criminal Intelligence system operational for probably the last three or four years. And that in itself, I worked on that when I was in Canberra in 2017. That has taken over 10 years and not everyone's even using that system yet. So the fact that organised crime can operate almost with impunity across Australia across continents and around the world. How do police stay up with that? It's so hard.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

We've only had a national register of unidentified remains for about three years. I mean, to me that seems basic. That's data entry.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

You know.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

No, you're spot on. And that was one of the reasons that the NCIS, this national system, was commissioned back in 2016, is because there was an alleged murder on the run from Sydney who shot someone with a firearm and he escaped over to wa, and I don't think he killed the person in Sydney, but he was wanted. There were alerts in New South Wales for him and his car. Everything about him was on alert in New South Wales, which is great. Only problem was he drove across to wa and up in Northern wa, a WA police member pulled him over on a random intercept in the middle of nowhere. They got into a scuffle and the offender ended up shooting that member dead. And there was no warnings on the waypole system for that person, no warnings on the system for the car, and that member ended up losing their life. So that was the case study that was used to get funding basically for the national system, and that was only 2016 and that system isn't even fully rolled out yet. So they're working hard within the constraints of government and I understand that's tricky. But, yeah, what's happening with organised crime is accelerating, what's happening in the private sector is accelerating. It's going to be even harder to stay up to date.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I know funding is a boring, torturous conversation that no one ever wants to have, but if we look at the sort of the facts in Victoria specifically, at the moment, Victoria's government is on the bare bones of its ass, to put it in its technical terms, and Victoria Police is having trouble recruiting. But I read that the idea is to invest in tech rather than more cops, that police could work more effectively, more efficiently if we put the money into tech. Is that your idea as well?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It is, but I'd probably say it's a combination of systems and tech. Tech is not just the solution. It's about almost like the workflow of how members operate. It's not just tech is the answer. So I think what's happened in the past is there's been some amazing product that some huge tech companies offered to sell to a Victoria police or any law enforcement agency and they buy that product and they think that's just going to solve a whole lot of issues. But then you've got behavior change of members, you've got training Cops love to find workarounds, so the minute a system is not doing what they need, they will find a way to get around it and either build their own system or do something completely different. So what is hardest in an organization of 20,000 people is that change management piece. So the tech is just part of it. The tech might cost you $100 million, but then got this huge, expensive tale of training and awareness and change management, which is really, really hard because cops are a bit of a different breed. They just want to get the job done as quickly as possible so they can move on to the next job and if it's not seamless for them, they just won't use it. And unfortunately, there's been some systems that have been brought in that have been white elephants that have cost a bit of money.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But God, it sounds like radio, to be honest. Radio loves to go with the most expensive option, thinking that'll be the best one. And then you spend the next three or five years with everyone refusing to use it and then have to reinvest again.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, that's really common. And it's not just for police, It's. Yeah, it happens in a lot of organizations. But I guess for me, I would look at where the biggest pain points are for police. Where are they wasting the most amount of time? And, you know, Mike Bush did come out recently and say that he wants to potentially replace watch house members with public servants and members returning from retirement to personnel watch houses so that operational members can get out in the van and get back to doing community police. So he is looking for areas where police are wasting their time and should be reallocated to other tasks. And it's not just in tech, it's personnel and staffing. Victoria Police has always had a struggle knowing where to position staff. So a few years ago, the Audit Office talk about funding. The Audit Office of Victoria did a report into Victoria Police's approach to how they allocate members. And they had a lot of robust things to say about how Victoria Police decide where to send members. Back to your earlier point, when Victoria police ask for 400 more members, there wasn't really a robust plan as to exactly where are those members going to go? Yeah, like which station 20 of those members going to go to? Like there wasn't really a plan.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, and if you read certain kinds of media, they should all go to Brighton, you know, they should all go and protect the Bayside homes of Beg Chartered her friends, you know.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Well, you hit the nail on the head. So it's like okay. So depending on who's in power at that time, it will depend on where those 400 members go. And that's what the Audit Office found. Was kind of pretty scathing about it. If you read the report, it's all open source now. This was back in 2021, 2022, middle of COVID So I kind of disappear, disappeared. But they were basically saying that. They were basically saying, where are the members going to go when they graduate? Who knows? Like there's a lot of politics around all that. But there wasn't really a method to where those members should go. And as taxpayers, those 400 cops probably cost us $150 million to train and then deploy for the rest of their career. But the other challenge now with police is I've heard that the attrition rate at Vic Pole now, like the average career span is less than five years. And when I joined it was 10 years for men and seven years for women. And now it's basically five years or less across the board. And I know some good members that are off on sick leave and that have resigned and they are facing a bit of a perfect storm of funding and morale. And the chief's got a big task on his hands and obviously I wish him all the best, but it's a.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Big task and media problems as well because we have this, you know, crime wave affecting Victoria. How accurate the public feeling is, I'm not sure. But there's certainly issues socially for us here in Victoria at the moment that are impacting policing as well.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Absolutely. And I've heard this many times. But Victoria police can't arrest their way out of this. This is a broader social challenge. And because of our financial situation in Victoria, there's a lot of social community programs that have had funding cut which could have potentially prevented offending in the first place. So there's a lot of that pre work that needs to be done to stop someone offending. Making sure people are staying in school, making sure people have got alternative education pathways, all of that, that all predates them potentially offending. And then police are kind of left to clean up the mess. And yeah, that's their challenge.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

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[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I feel like one aspect of the youth crime situation, I'm not going to call it a crisis, but the situation in Victoria Melbourne at the moment that isn't spoken about much or certainly not enough is the recruitment of vulnerable young people by organised crime. You're an expert in organised crime, you've spent many years working in that area. Talk to us about that aspect before we talk about organised crime more broadly.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah. So organised crime costs Australia, I think it's upwards of $80 billion a year in terms of financial impact. And that's everything from police time, justice, corrections, victimisation, all that kind of stuff. So what we found when I was working with the Federal Police was the vast majority of significant organized crime is controlled by people who live overseas. So in 2017, the Australian government set up a program where they were identifying the highest impact individuals that were living offshore and then working with our overseas partners to try and dismantle them. And the reason I bring this up, and I'll bring it back to the youth crime, is that these are people that live in Dubai, Mexico, Colombia, Western Europe, America, North America, and they use encrypted communications, they use social media, they use social networks to find runners, to find people that can do the dirty work for them a long, long way from home at a fraction of the price without the risk of them being exposed. So one of the frustrations for state police is that they often end up arresting the people at the very end of that spectrum. And I found that personally, that, you know, you go and open a container and, or someone's open a container, it's full of drugs, cops roll in, they arrest a 18 year old who's been paid 100 bucks to go and open a container. Yeah, you know, they're all high fiving each other because they found 100 kilos of cocaine and some 18 year old who was just looking for some cash has gone and done it. Now they spend the next 25 years in prison. Like, is that a good outcome for people? I don't believe so, but that's a lot of the time. All the police can really deal with because state police don't have an international remit. So they don't really know who's organized that 100 kilos of cocaine. And now with. With encrypted comms and social media, it is so easy to recruit people. You obviously got the dark web, but it's not as prolific as people say it is. I think you can just do as much in the normal Internet as you can in the dark web.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, that's it. I was going to say, I don't think you need the dark web anymore when you've got Facebook encrypting direct messages, for example, for what purpose other than to make it a space for people who don't want their communications accessible.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Even WhatsApp is fully encrypted. And crazy thing is, when I was working with the feds and even some of our overseas partners, they were even using WhatsApp. Know, not so much the Australian agencies, but some of the overseas agencies were very blase about that. But on the flip side, they also knew that that technology was actually pretty good and it was actually very encrypted. So back when the dark web started, that was before WhatsApp was even encrypted. So they had to look for alternatives like that. But now with Signal, WhatsApp, Telegram, there's all these platforms now that you can operate pretty openly as a crook. I think the weak link for organized crime is the human element. And we find that even with cyber security, where I think it's something like 85% of cyber security breaches come to a human involvement where they have either been socially engineered, so someone's rung them and with a sob story, and they're like, you know, my son's really sick. I need to get access to my bank account. And that's social engineering. They're leveraging someone's emotions to get access to a system. And yeah, it's kind of the same with organized crime. They still need to rely on humans at some point to do some kind of work. And that's where I think law enforcement needs to focus their efforts. Because like we just said earlier, technology is accelerating. But I speak spent probably 10 years of my law enforcement career managing human sources. So what that was was managing like Lawyer X, managing informers. And I think that's where law enforcement almost needs to go back to basics and Start looking at that again as opposed to trying to play catch up.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Because technology's accelerating, but humans aren't. We're still as vulnerable as we've ever been, right?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

100%. That's exactly why. And I think, you know, the Lawyer X issue has put a bit of a dampener on that. I know members are a bit more nervous about trying to recruit sources, and source forces themselves are probably nervous about working with police because they're not sure if their security is guaranteed. And it never can be guaranteed. But that, I think, is where police could be and should be working to fight organised crime.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Is Australia an attractive place for organised crime? It sounds like it is, but more so than anywhere else.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

For a long time, we held the highest per gram price for cocaine in the world.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And we do love our drugs. We know that.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yes, exactly. So it's simple supply and demand for them. They will go wherever that demand is. And, you know, if we're paying $400 a gram for coke and you can get it for $20 a gram in Medellin in Colombia, then, you know, that's where a lot of it's made. But, yeah, if you're selling it there, that's 20 bucks. And then in Europe, it's probably $200 a gram. So they would just keep sending submarines full of coke into Australia and all kinds of things to keep servicing our demand. And that's why it's interesting that, you know, drug use is as much about education and awareness as it is about enforcement.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And what about the tobacco wars? I mean, surely that's an example of organised crime flourishing in plain sight in Australia?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Abso. Absolutely. And the import laws changed a little bit in 2019 for tobacco. They made it a little bit more harsh. But unfortunately, the penalties for importing large amounts of tobacco are still kind of tied to the Customs Act. There are imprisonment terms available to magistrates if people get caught importing a ton of illegal tobacco. But it's very different to importing a ton of cocaine. Like you're instantly going to prison for 50 years. If that happens, tobacco, you might cop a million dollar fine. You could go to prison for 10 years, maybe, if you get the maximum sentence. When I was in the job, and it's very much still the same, we used to consider tobacco as kind of like a practice run for crooks. It's much less risk for an organized crime syndicate to test importing tobacco before they take on more serious drugs. And we all would have all heard the term, you know, cannabis is a gateway drug to other Drugs and you hear your son or daughter's had a joint and you think, oh, suddenly they're going to be a heroin addict. But it's kind of like that's the same argument in law enforcement where you think, okay, so you've got, got a syndicate that's importing tobacco now, but they're getting used to how they do it, they're learning how they do the import, they're getting their system sorted. Maybe in a year they'll up it to. Maybe they'll just drop 10 kilos of cocaine in the same shipment, see how that goes. Then they'll do 50 kilos of coke, then they'll do a hundred kilos of coke. It's basically a training ground for professional drug importers.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

A very lucrative training ground. I mean, it's worth billions in Australia. It's again a perfect storm, isn't it? Because the government, however many years ago, decided to put a lot of tax on tobacco to try and stop Australians from smoking. And then someone saw the gap in the market, saw the loophole. And it is astounding to me how open this trade is. No one bats an eyelid and the shop's full of mums and dads like me buying their illegal smokes.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

I personally don't know what the financials look like for those smaller operators, like what kind of profit margin they're running to get involved in that trade. But as we've seen with the firebombings in Melbourne, there's a lot of turf wars. There's a lot of groups vying for control of those small operators. And there probably are small mums and dads stores that are getting extorted or getting dragged into those wars just so they can try and make money.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Negative encouragement. I could be wrong, but with the.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Fire bombing, there's a lot of extortion. Yeah, yeah, there's heaps of it. And we're just lucky that not too many innocent bystanders have been brought into that yet. But there's a lot of harm, a lot of harm associated with tobacco.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I think sometimes we can be shocked at how basic smuggling is. The basic methods that are used. Not when you talk about submarines. That's pretty impressive, but it's more advanced. Yeah, but recently we spoke to the daughters of an Australian woman called Donna Nelson, who is in prison in Japan as we speak. She's got a six year sentence for drug importation. Donna Nelson was arrested in January last year at Narita International Airport. Authorities allege the Perth woman tried to bring almost 2kg of methamphetamine into the country. Ms. Nelson has been held in Chiba prison ever since, prohibited from speaking to anyone on the outside other than her lawyer. Her family do not believe their mother, who was married to a police officer, would knowingly carry drugs. Oh, it's a nightmare. And the Japanese court accepted her story as factual, that for two years previous she had been, she thought, in a relationship with a man speaking many times on the phone, and he was supposedly living and working in Japan and eventually invited her to come and visit. And sort of long winded stories to how he introduced a suitcase to her luggage halfway through her trip, and when she got there, it was full of methamphetamines. To me that seemed like, God, that's a long game. Two years to convince this nice lady to trust you enough. You know, that seems really unsophisticated to me. But explain to me how what's really.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Happening there, it's the profit that, that would entertain is still life changing for that person.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Right?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

So, you know, a two year investment to never have to work again could seem like a good investment for someone, depending on their situation. There is a lot of extortion, there's a lot of blackmail, there's a lot of threats in duress associated with money laundering and drug trafficking around the world. So you can't discount the fact that this person was even being under duress, was entertaining this scam for this time for another syndicate. So that's a possibility. I mean, this is the social engineering element that people will take advantage of every weak spot. And back to our earlier conversation, you know, humans are the weakling. And unfortunately, you know, this woman was in the right place at the right time with the right mindset to be taken advantage of. And that's why we see so many cyber scams, love scams, all that kind of thing. It's really sad. And you know, even yesterday I took a phone call from my bank about a potential fraud on one of my cards. And I just started talking to them like I knew they were legit, but I was in the middle of gardening, trying to put stuff in a bin.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I had the same thing happen to me once. Yeah, I was at work, I got.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Off the phone and like, oh my God, I just gave him so much information. And then I started, started scrambling my. Was that the right phone number? Is that the right bank? And I started to freak out. I'm like, why did I do that with all my background? I was like, what an idiot. And it was legit, but I just had this moment where I'm like, oh, my God, they got me at a really inopportune time for me because I wasn't thinking clearly. And look at what could have happened. And this happens every day to millions of people.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Oh, you know, people who say they thought it was the tax department. Someone rings and goes, we're the ato, and if you don't pay us right now, this afternoon, boy, you're in trouble. We're gonna.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Oh, yeah. There's so much of that. That. And, you know, back to Donna, like, Japan is obviously very strict. They've actually just cracked down on immigration. They're what's called a monoculture. They're very Japanese focused. They are not a multicultural society like we are in Australia. And anything that threatens that they are going to take extremely seriously. And that could be why the profits, even on a small amount of meth, could be extraordinary. Because it's actually quite hard to get it into the country. Country. Because back to our original conversation that they need humans in Japan to do that work for them. And if that's really hard because of the entrenched organized crime already in Japan, if they need a local fixer, it could be really hard to identify that person, especially from Nigeria or overseas. So it's easier to send someone into Japan as a routine traveler than to try and source a trusted person within Japan.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And there was a connection in Laos as well. There was a man. The flight that she was booked on to go and see this person she thought was going to be the love of her life insisted the only flight he could get was she had to stop over in Laos for three days. And then when she got there, some other guy showed up and blah, blah, blah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, it's just. You follow the bouncing ball when you're like that. She's excited. The endorphins are kicking in and the adrenaline, and she's just running with it. So she got caught at a bad time.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I used to say, and this is politically motivated on my part, but I used to think, how can we stop boats of refugees coming in so effectively? And yet all the drugs keep getting in. Is that a dumb thing to ask? Are they just in completely different systems? I mean, I suppose refugees are coming on rickety fishing boats and these guys are coming in submarines.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, I mean, you just said it. So a lot of refugees do come across from Malaysia and Indonesia on rickety boats, and they are often very, very desperate. They've paid a lot of money, they've got kids, all that kind of stuff. They don't generally come across inside containers or submarines, so.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, they've paid a lot of money to them, but they're not worth the millions, billions of dollars that the drug trade's worth. Yeah, yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

And often those boats are barely operational. And when you look at the vast array of different ways to bring drugs in, you've got them. Saw one the other day, it was, it was a cross border import in a truck and the whole truck was just full of drugs. So I think it was in America. And they were using angle grinders to cut literally the back off a prime mover. So the main part of a truck, the back of the engine, they'll peeling the metal off the back of the truck and had pellets of drugs even behind the metal of the actual truck. And then it was a petrol hauling truck. So the big cylinder at the back, again, they were peeling the metal skin off this cylinder and it was just full of drugs. So that's very, very sophisticated then. Yes, you've got submarines. And the other way of doing it from a boat perspective is that a cargo ship or a large commercial vessel will come past Sydney or come past Perth, 100ks offshore and basically just throw the drugs into the water with a GPS tracker on it. And then a fishing boat will come out from Perth or Sydney or Melbourne, out to where the GPS beacon is pinging, pick up the drugs, put it into the fishing boat and then back into shore. And that commercial vessel just keeps going. So they're just paying. Again, a human that's on it, A commercial vessel just to throw over a box. It could be a lot more than that. Often is. But throw over this container at this marker and you get paid 100 grand or we don't kill your family or, you know, all kinds of things and it all just has to work.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah, I like the way you focus on that, you know, the various methods that are used. We're not talking about greedy people necessarily, we're not talking about people who are involved in the organized crime. There is a lot of extortion involved. Again, we tend to think, oh, that happens in Mexico or that happens in the really high profile, terrifying sort of environments. But it happens everywhere, right?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It happens everywhere. And to really hammer that home. When I started working with the federal agency back in 2012, within a month of me working there, we were following a Colombian hitman down Collins street in Melbourne. And he was there for that exact reason, to keep a track of what was happening in Melbourne. And I was just like, I'd only been in Vic Pole at that point, seven years and I was just with the feds, but within a month of working this agency, I was like, oh my God, why a is there a Colombian organised crime figure walking down Collins street and baby, is he actually a hitman? And they're like, yeah, he's his dossier. I'm like, and it's a DA dossier or whatever. And I'm like, oh my God, we don't see that. And it's good the general public don't see that every day. I was even, I was shocked. And that's exactly why I was working there. But you know, that happens every single day. There are people being tracked, being extorted, being monitored, even within criminal syndicates. Now we just talked about tobacco and the extortion that happens there, but it happens everywhere. Whether it's human trafficking, drug trafficking, money laundering. There are what we called professional facilitators. So they're people like accountants, solicitors, people in legitimate businesses that had to play a role in an organised crime system to make it work. And, you know, they're not hardened criminals, they're not bikies. You know, I spent seven years with the Feds, but I don't even really remember ever investigating one bikie. I think there might have been one who's involved in some money laundering. And I was like, where are the bikies? And they're like, oh, that's Vic Bowl's problem or that's New South Wales Police's problem. I was like, well, I thought we'd be looking at bikies. Like, nah, they're just, just like small fry. I was like, okay, so when you look at the spectrum of organized crime, there is an upper echelon that operate cross continent around the world with very sophisticated tech. And then when it gets down to the more local level, that's when you're dealing with bikies. And then down below, even to the lower street level. So to do one drug import, it might actually involve a hundred people from the very beginning, all the way to a street deal in Richmond in Melbourne. You know, that whole thing has touched potentially 100 people. And it's law enforcement's job to try and figure out who's the weakest link in that hunt and how do we get up the ladder? Because if you just arrest that person getting a hit in Richmond, you're only going to get one rung up the ladder. You're not going to get very far. But if you go after a professional facilitator, that might be a Solicitor or a lawyer or a banker that's operating on behalf of many syndicates or many people, then that's probably a good place to start. And we used to call it following the money because so much of what we investigate was money motivated. So organized crime just make a lot of money and they have to do something with that money. Money.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

How do you launder money? You know, just tell us how. Because, you know, in the movies, a great way is to go to a casino, put your money over the counter, get it back in chips, walk around for an hour and go and cash out your chips. I'm sure people are onto that if I've seen it in so many movies. But also, now that we're moving to a cashless society, even we just are, naturally. But without the government sort of sanctioning it yet, I would imagine that would make laundering money harder because I used to think, oh, there's plenty of industries that mainly deal in cash, but now there aren't.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

I was absolutely amazed at the amount of cash getting around the country even a few years ago when I was still in the job. And that was people with literal suitcases full of cash wheeling them down the street or putting them into the boot of their car. And basically a ShoeBox can fit $250,000 cash. That was basically how we would measure how much money someone might be carrying if we were following them. And I think if we went to a cashless society, I think it would make drug trafficking and drug dealing very, very hard.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But we sort of are now, aren't we? Like, it feels like everyone's tapping and going, I go and get my nails done, I go and get my hair cut, I go to the fruit and veg shop. Not that I'm nominating those industries specifically for any reason, but I pay with the card. And oftentimes they'll say, have you got cash? And I don't. No one. I don't even have cash to give the bloke begging out the back of coals anymore. So where do they put it now? I've just handed over my meth, I've got my million bucks in my suitcase. What am I doing with it? I can't deposit it into my NAB account.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, look, so much of what we saw went back to the casino. And that's why Crown and Star have had so many issues, just because they couldn't answer that question either. You know, they were having people coming in and upending a bag full of 400 grand cash, and then everyone going, thanks. Go and Have a good time.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

So this was like the movies?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Well, yeah, it was. And that was what the regulators said. They're like, cool, but. But do you kind of want to maybe ask where they got the money from? Are you happy to deal with this? And that's why the Royal Commission went into overdrive with Crown and over the rest of it, because they were pretty lax about how easy it was for people to do that. Organised crime, the good ones, have just been entrenched in legitimate operations for decades, like the Mafia. Chinese organised crime's the same, Italian organised crime obviously, as well, with all kinds of different legitimate enterprises. And it's just a lot easier to drop a little bit of cash into this one, a little bit of cash into this one, a little bit of cash into this one. And. And then it's very, very hard to kind of pull it together.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Drangetta. I love that word, even though it's really hard for us to say in English. Your Italian organized crime has been well established in Australia for over a hundred years. And there's that fantastic book, Crimson Grass Castles, that's about the period of time around Griffith and that in New South Wales where farmers, men who appeared to have fairly modest means suddenly started building mansions out on their farm farms, you know.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah. And I think Australia's getting better at what they call monitoring undeclared wealth. So when you haven't lodged a tax return for 15 years, you're suddenly building a mansion in Griffith. We've come a long way in terms of laws and compliance with that and Austrac's doing most of the heavy lifting there. That's like a federal regulator for money. And that's really the only way to do it, is put more stringent control on declaring wealth. If you get money and you're buying a Lamborghini, how did you get the Lamborghini? Explain it to us. And if you can't, we take the Lamborghini off you. And the af, we have laws around that and they can do that if they can prove that it's proceeds of crime, and I did this many times. We can seize houses, cars, jewelry, handbags. There's been cases where search rights have been done and there's been a thousand handbags in there worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. They've all been seized, so we're getting much better at that. But cash is still getting around. And I don't really have an answer for you. People still have it. But the interesting thing is that cash goes straight from a drug deal straight to a high Roller. And I've told this story a few times, but I remember a case where we were monitoring a drug network in the western suburbs of Melbourne. Without going to specifics, we knew that they had a couple hundred grand in cash and we knew they had to launder it. And we basically just watched that drug dealer go and hand that 200 grand to a high roller gambler. And what had happened was that that high rolling gambler from China was arriving in Australia to gamble at Crown and they needed $200,000 of their own money from China. But it was very hard to get money out of China because it's so you just can't do an eft to Melbourne. So they had to come up with another way, this rich person in China, another way of getting cash in Melbourne to gamble with. So this person in China dealt with someone in Dubai and said, hey, I need to get 200 grand in Melbourne, can you help me? And he's like, yeah, cool, I've got a guy in Melbourne who's a drug dealer. He wouldn't say that. I've got a guy in Melbourne who has $200,000 he can give you on Tuesday. So the high roll is like, cool, I'm going to have 200 grand delivered to me. And it even happened to my brother, he works in the automotive industry and he's got a private company and he had money just dropped into his account by all these different people and he's like, okay. And then he's contacting the Philippines, said, oh yeah, your money should be in your account. But he had money dropped into him from like uni students in nine or $7,000 lots into his bank account. And it was the same thing. It's a form of money laundering where people from different geographic areas kind of offset the money with each other so that the cash doesn't have to get sent overseas.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

So like say you're in Sydney, you know, and I'm in melbourne, I need 20 bucks. You can ring your mate in Melbourne and go, can you give her 20 bucks? Because he ow you 20 bucks?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Pretty much exactly that.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It's a big ledger. Yeah, right.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

It's literally a spreadsheet where someone's keeping tabs of I need 60 bucks in Perth. Who do I know in Perth who owes me 60 bucks that can pay this bloke? And then. So it sort of sounds complicated, but actually it's very, very basic and old school.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It's so old school that it started on the Silk Road and that's why.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Oh wow. The actual Silk Road, by the way.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, sorry, not the dark, dark web one.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Wow.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

That actually started on the Silk Road because the issue they had was, well, got, you know, a ton of gold or I've got a ton of spices. Like I can't transport a ton of spices across thousand kilometers. So can we do another trade where I give those spices to someone local and then I get offset the money locally? So organized crime, love it. Because there's no paper trail. The only trail for organized crime is they've had to ring a professional facilitator. Like I said earlier, often someone who's overseas, someone who might be in Dubai, and the person in Dubai just sorts it out and they just take a commission. So it's like a money remittance, service requirement, crooks. But unfortunately the community use it too. It's a bit sad because community use it and then crooks have just latched onto it. And there's some really good documentaries online that you can watch about this stuff. So it's certainly out in the wild. But the interesting thing is that you've got these drug dealers giving pretty much cash with cocaine, a nice residue on it, straight to a high roller who then goes to the casino and gambles it. So that's how efficient, you know, that money connection can be and how closely.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Linked it can end up with legitimate business.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Exactly. And we arrested people often like that high roller with 200 grand cash. And they're like, like, hey, hey, this is my money, I bet. And we're like, no, it's not. You just got it delivered by a drug dealer. And like, no, no, no, this is my money and this is how I organized it. And that often happened. And we're like, oh, shit. Like again, back to our original conversation where you're just getting the people at the end of the trail. Like that person, for all intents and purposes, is fully legitimate and potentially doesn't.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Know it's drug money and doesn't know anything about it.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

And often they probably don't. They know they're using a system that gets around government monitoring. So they know they're kind of acting around. Cause you're meant to declare bringing money into Australia, you can't just turn up in Melbo. You know, if you're at the airport, you've ticked a little box. Do I have $20,000 cash or 10 or whatever it is now, you know, they've got around that. So they know they're skirting law enforcement. But, you know, they don't expect to go to prison for 20 years for money laundering for a drug trafficking organization, when they're just here to gamble.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

So it gets pretty murky when you're prosecuting that kind of thing.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

God, everything that you work in is so fascinating. I'm imagining you at, like, you know, some school do, just like, operating in the normal world, as obviously you do. You've got family, you've got kids, you're at a barbecue every now and then with normies. When they ask you what you do, even I sometimes think, oh, don't ask me, it's too interesting. Like what I do.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It's too interesting.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah. Sometimes I think I don't want to end up talking about myself all night because I've just met a bloke called David Bartlett who's, like, so fascinating. And if I start talking about what I do for work, I'm going to be talking all night and I don't want to do that. So how do you. How do you answer? Answer that.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It's a good question. I've been out for five years, but prior to that, you know, when I was deep in it, I couldn't really explain to people, you know, I wasn't. There was things that I couldn't even tell my life for seven years, you know, whenever I took a call, I had to leave. I had to go outside. And I used to have a favorite spot where I was living then and just go outside and sit on this favorite spot and talk to whoever I had to talk to. And I often had a laptop with things on it that no one else was supposed to see. And I'd be cooking dinner while looking at a laptop. I had a car with me. I had multiple IDs and multiple phones and I had a firearm with me, probably full time for. I don't know. So my kids had to get used to seeing that. And it was a lot. And we couldn't go out for dinner without me being interrupted. It was pretty intrusive.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Plus, I suppose you had to tell your kids things they weren't allowed to tell friends, surely?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Oh, yeah. My daughter used to deliver me the right phone, so I used to have four or five mobiles on my mantel. And she'd be like, daddy, the white phone's ringing. And she'd come and deliver it to me when she was little. And I was like, oh, God. But I didn't ever really use a cover story. I said, I'm in the job, just kept it pretty broad abroad. But some of my closer mates knew what I was doing. But I was traveling all the time. So it's definitely a lifestyle when you're in that kind of thing. And I think there's the potential to, you know, potentially lose friends and lose connection with family. Because when you're doing those jobs that don't feel like a job, and I've said this many times, but that's the famous saying, you know, if you find the job you love, you never work a day in your life. And that's kind of how I felt for 15 years.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And also, I guess that's how you end up developing really strong relationships with other people in the job.

[Casey (from Casefile podcast, advertisement speaker)]

Yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

And I did. And I still do have a really good network with the work I'm doing now. That's certainly helping a lot. Lot. But also, that being said, you know, when I left Vic Pole officially, I. I did feel like I lost a limb in a way. Like, there are people there that I haven't spoken to for a long time that I was very close to. And when you're spending eight hours in the van with someone or you're doing a surveillance shift that goes for 16 hours in the car with someone, you end up sharing stuff that you don't even share with your partner. You do build these really deep, very. It's like a situationship. So you're kind of in that situation, and you're very close, and then you leave that or you resign or you retire, and you really do lose that. And there are some people in police circles that feel like if you leave the brotherhood, sisterhood, if you leave that, you are on the outer. And some people do kind of cut you off. I haven't had that personal experience, but there are some people that have that mentality, whereas others are the opposite. And they're like, no, you'll be part of the bus forever. So it is a bit of a weird culture.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah. And there are certainly some who think, well, you can be part of us forever as long as you don't ever speak against.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, you know, I talk about the challenges that Victoria Police has got and that kind of thing, but I love that organization, and I'm still super proud of it. I. I just wish that they had more resources and there were ways to improve morale.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, you're actively trying to improve resources now. I mean, this, to me, shows how passionate you still are about the organization specifically. And also, you know, law enforcement safety in general. Tell us about what you're up to at the moment. When I was reading about it, I thought, oh, I can think of a great example of why this is important and necessary and obvious and that is the recent high country murders and the investigation into ground. One of the key pieces of evidence against him that Victoria police came up with was the video. There was a video, there was one camera. We're talking about incredibly isolated part of Australia and for about a million miles there was one camera on this highway that was attached to Mount Buller ski resort, I believe. But police only found that because they went up there and they drove around for days, weeks, months, months, trying to get the lay of the land. And they spotted this camera and then they were able to find out who it belonged to and get the footage. And in the end, the footage gave them a car that looked very much like Greg Lynn's car in a certain place and time. And I thought as I was researching you, reading about your work, I thought that should have been a phone call, that could have been an email. You know, like if we had a network, if we knew where all the cameras were could have been so fast.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Absolutely. And that's exactly what I'm setting up. I'm trying to make it as efficient as possible for police to locate what I call a digital witness. You know, cameras are like a digital witness that is recording all the time. It's not subject to going out for dinner or whatever. It's just recording there all the time. And police at the moment spend in Victoria at least a million hours a year walking around, going through the high country. Like you've just said, I don't know how many thousands of hours they spent on, on that, walking around just trying to a, find a camera. And then secondly, who controls that camera? So take the high country example. If they saw that trail camera strapped to a tree, they're like, great. But who actually owns and manages that camera? So what we're creating at the Safer Places Network is essentially a national register of cameras. It's voluntary. So we're encouraging the community to get behind it and say, look, if you do own a camera, it would be really helpful if you would just let police know, know that you have a camera and that his your mobile and your email address, just in case police ever need it. And I'm certainly not talking about live streaming or remote access to cameras. I've got no interest in. Police have got, we've just talked about it. Police have got no time to just look at what you're cooking for dinner. Like that's not what we're talking about at all. It's replacing a door knock with an sms, which is the way We've started describing it. The reason I came up with it was it was only in March this year, I was reflecting on the amount of CCTV evidence that was coming up in my social media feed that was coming up on the nightly news, especially here in Melbourne, and I thought, I wonder if Vic Pole in particular is still collecting that the same way. So I made a few calls and sure enough, they were still collecting CCTV the old way that they'd been doing it when I was in the job. So they were still door knocking?

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah, it's a part of the door knocker. Right. Just looking to see if you can see any cameras and then knock on the door and say, is that working?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yes, correct. And the other really significant case study we use is the 2012 murder of Jill Ma.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Absolutely, yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Which is, you know, ingrained in our psyches. And you probably remember the footage.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah.

[News Reporter (reporting on Jill Ma case)]

Just to illustrate what we know of her final movements, we know that she crossed the road after leaving bar etiquette with her friends. She walked north on Sydney Road until she got to this store, a bridal boutique store. And CCTV footage captured her at this point being approached by a man. They spoke for about 40 to 45 seconds, which police said seemed casual by appearance. Possibly they didn't know each other and were engaging in casual conversation. She continued to walk past the store after speaking to him for 40 to 45 seconds and stopped here, got out her phone, seemed to be fumbling around with it, and police say she might have then been speaking to her brother in Perth. But once she took her final steps past the boutique store, she's not been seen since. And police are hoping that this CCTV footage and people coming forward, perhaps as eyewitnesses, will help piece together her last movements.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

I talk about this a lot at presentations that I give. And similar to your example, the footage from the Duchess Boutique, it took 85 hours to get that into the hands of homicide detectives. So that's over three days. And, you know, that was really as a result of a huge social media outreach that her journalist friends managed, and they were just lucky. And my worry now is if that was to happen again on Sydney Road in Brunswick, there's a likelihood that it could still take 85 hours to get critical digital evidence into the hands of police. And that's what I'm trying to fix.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And with the Jill Maas situation, the police had a very clear route that she was taking. They knew what time she'd left the venue. It was a really tight frame of reference that they Were working with.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

It was.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah. So it's crazy that it took that long.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah. But that little camera was actually inside, obviously inside the Duchess Boutique. And some of those retail cameras are so small.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yeah.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Like they're on the ceiling. They're about 4 or 5 meters back from the entryway way. If the Duchess Boutique had been closed for two days, a member would have walked past, looked in the windows and gone, oh, there's no cameras. That's very likely what happened. Whereas with our system, if that was to happen again today and the Duchess Boutique was registered on our network, even if the owner of that store was in the Greek Islands having a cocktail, they would still get a notification saying, hey, look, there's been this incident. Would you mind reviewing your footage? If you've got any, please upload it here. So they could have, depending on their system, obviously they could have looked at their cameras on their mobile. Gone. Oh, yeah, we've got some people walking past at about that time. I'll send Vic Pole some screenshots. Vic Pole could have had that in minutes. When Tom, her husband, went to report her missing at 2am, that watch housekeeper could have actually sent out a notification to all the camera owners in that area and said, hey, have you got anything? It's 2:00am in the morning, so unlikely people are going to respond straight away. But our system can send out phone calls to wake people up if they opt into it, which many people won't. But if you're awake at 2am or if you're overseas, you get an SMS. There's a potential there that the watch housekeeper could have got that footage coming in while the husband was even in the station. Yeah. And a of people don't know this, but the offender, who I won't name, but he left and came back to get her body about three and a half hours later. Yeah. And that three and a half hour window, he could have come back to find the laneway surrounded by cops and their body being located and all that kind of thing. And Tom was, you know, he was pulled over the hot coals as the prime suspect because he's the spouse and Vic Pol ended up apologizing to him because of how they treated him. So there's a whole lot of all that trauma. I know women in particular were scared about going out after dark at the time and all that stuff could have been avoided if that footage had have come into the hands of police much sooner.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

I think there's a climate of fear in Melbourne now as well. I mean, you know, we had A bloke at our local shops had his hand cut off with a machete. So there's a. Certainly. Yeah, there's an issue at the moment. My kids won't go anywhere. You know, they're at the age where they should be out with their friends at the shops, at the beach, at the train stations every minute they can get. But they won't go and their friends won't go either because they're scared. There's lots of reasons why this is a good idea. What you're asking for is for, even for us, for householders who have cameras.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

On our houses to register even a ring doorbell.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yep.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

There was a case in Manchester, there was a stabbing at a synagogue in Manchester in the UK a few weeks ago. And the thing that brought that to a head was a ring doorbell camera. The same as the Greg Lynn story. It was just a ring doorbell camera, but it could see through two hedges at the front door. They got a car going past with distinct hubcaps on the wheels. And that was a piece of the puzzle that Manchester police needed. So, yeah, Anyone homeowners. We've got about 23,000 cameras registered on the network nationally. And this is what we've talked about today is that crooks don't care about borders. And I was even reading this morning that that recent assassination of a tobacco connected figure in July who was killed in a laneway in North Melbourne somewhere, they're now saying that the offenders for that have come down from Sydney. So you've got crooks that don't care about borders, whether they're domestic, state borders or international borders. And unfortunately in Australia we've got state police forces and they're not great at talking to Australia each other. So the benefit of what we're building is it's a national system. So even a detective in Melbourne, if they know their offender has done something in Bendigo, they no longer have to ask the Bendigo police to take time out of their day to go and door knock for cameras. The detective in Melbourne can just use our system to go, oh, there's a camera in the main street in Bendigo. I'll ask that person for footage. And it's the same, oh, there's someone in Sydney, I'll ask that person for footage.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Well, let's not forget there are three Australian men in Karabakhan Prison in Bali as we speak, who I don't know if they've been charged yet with the murder of another Australian man in Bali. So when you say crooks don't recognise borders yeah, it seems to be getting truer.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

We need to do everything we can as a society to break down those silos between law enforcement and even just any kind of government agency that is restricted by red tape with jurisdictional issues. And you're right about Victoria, and again, that's the reason I started this business, because I wanted to give members more time to do what they love and that's catching crooks and making the community safe. And I say this a lot, but you don't join Victoria Police to not catch crooks. Crooks. So for members, for example, when they get an investigation, they can't close that investigation until they've exhausted all their avenues of inquiry. So if they've got a burglary they're investigating, for example, they need to say to their supervisor, there's no fingerprints, there's no DNA, there's no witnesses, there's basically no more further leads. So then they close that case off as unsolved and the risk there is that that goes unsolved. So that means that offenders essentially got away with that burglary and that means that victim, victim doesn't get any closure. So none of their goods are going to be recovered. They're not going to see someone go to prison for breaking into their house. And what I'm trying to do is give those members another avenue of inquiry that isn't too resource intensive but could lead to catching a crook. So our avenue of inquiry would be no CCTV evidence. Well, have you checked the network to make sure that all the cameras in the area haven't detected a red car or detected something strange in that, that space?

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

How do we, how do we get involved? I've got cameras around my place. What do I do?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Fantastic. Head to saferplaces.com au it's free to register the fact you have cameras. It only takes about 60 seconds. You can do it on your mobile or your laptop. I had a lovely 80 year old woman sign up about two weeks ago and she called me just to say thank you and to say that she'd signed up. She also sent me an email. So it's very straightforward. We don't ask for anything confidential, we don't ask for passwords, we don't ask for anything like that. It's purely you just saying know you. Yep, I've got cameras and I'll be cooperative with police if they come and if they need it. So like I said earlier, it's replacing a really expensive door knocking exercise with a really efficient email and sms. Across Australia, as taxpayers we estimate that we are spending about $500 million a year on police. Just door knocking. So if we get behind this, our taxpayer dollars can be spent in better places.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Yep. Get more police to Brighton. That's the most important thing that we can do.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Ironically, you' this but ironically, Bayside is our highest concentration of members and oh.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

That doesn't surprise me one bit because yeah, they do have the cameras and they're very paranoid.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

So yeah, good on them on that. It's important that we've got a really close relationship with Neighbourhood Watch and that's an organization that is gaining traction again. We probably all remember the safe house sticker from where we were kids and we're not going to go back to that for a lot of reasons. But Neighbourhood Watch as an organization and as a concept I think is really great and I wish the government would commit some more funds to it. They are running on the of an oily rag. They're great at doing community events, they're great at working with local organizations. They do safe plate days where they put special screws on your number plates to stop them getting stolen. They just do not have the marketing budget, the personnel, the support that they need, especially in Victoria. Bambi Gordon is the CEO, a very close friend of mine. Take Bayside for example, Bayside Neighbourhood Watch, who are a close partner of ours and they've contributed to a lot of our positive community engagement in Bayside. That organization there is run by two gentlemen in their late stage 70s. One's actually 80, I think, the other one's 79. They recently got a drone up to go over Brighton and they love it and they built the website, but they do love it. They don't have a succession plan, they don't have a continuity plan for when they're not able to continue to run Bayside Neighbourhood Watch and unfortunately that's quite common across a lot of Neighborhood Watch areas. And my wish and my hope is that younger people get involved in Neighborhood Watch. There's someone in Middle park who is just setting up a new Neighborhood Watch chapter there and he's probably in his late 30s, so that's a really green shoot. Good sign.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

But what do you think about. I think there's a potential issue and I'm singling it Bayside out because it gets a lot of media here in Melbourne. Right. So everything they do and say about crime we all end up reading about. And I did read that they've started patrols. That disturbs me a bit like private citizens. Dads are got themselves a roster system and they're out of a nighttime patrolling the neighbourhood. And I think that's problematic for many reasons. What do you advise about about that?

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

One of the other reasons we set this business up is to avoid that exact scenario. So what we're trying to do is get something that's community led, like our network. It's voluntary community led, like it doesn't work unless people register. It's a positive way to get involved in community safety and it gives police the tools they need to make us safer. Like you've just said, the risk with either private citizens doing patrols or security guards doing patrols is that they don't have the training, they don't have the arrest powers. It's often very temporary, scattered, it's not coordinated. So if we can spend our time and effort in a more positive way to support our police, to get back to doing what they love, and that's catching crooks and making us safe, that's what we should be focusing our time on. And there are security patrols in Trugganina, obviously. There's some in Melbourne that got announced last week. There's been some failed attempts down in Frankston. So those security patrols are hugely expensive and they have no legacy impact. You know, where they are at that specific time in that specific street. Yeah, maybe they might be deterring something, but the minute they go around the corner, corner, that street is open, slather. And once they stop, the funding stops after three months and they disappear and they go back to their other jobs. You know, there's no lasting, positive community impact beyond that.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

And there's. I think there's lots of risks. Unfortunately, we don't have America's gun culture here. But, I mean, I can't help but think about scenarios in which African American men go out for a jog and end up shot.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

Yeah, it is frightening. And I read the other, or I heard the other day on three or something that said that people are starting to get more gun licenses and particularly potentially have loaded firearms closer to their door when they know that that's illegal and they know they shouldn't be doing it. I know friends that have got baseball bats next to their bed or next to their door. I live in quite a safe suburb, but we have started locking our doors for the first time in, you know, five years, in the last six months. So it is a shame because I. I love Melbourne and me too. It does make me a little bit sad. I love landing back at Telamarine. I go, oh, my God, I'm home. But, yeah, the last year has been a struggle.

[Host (possibly an Australian True Crime podcast host)]

Thank you to our guest today, David Bartlett.

If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 131114 or contact 1-800-RESPECT on 1-800-737-732 or 1-800RESPECT.org au Indigenous Australia. Australians can contact 13 YARN on 139276 or 13 yarn.org au.

[David Bartlett (former Victorian Police detective and guest expert)]

The producers of this podcast recognize the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded.

They pay for respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.

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