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- [00:04]
A
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. And we know that you love hearing from a retired copper as much as we do, so we've got one for you today. His name's Anthony Macklin, A former detective inspector with the New South Wales Police Force. Anthony's career saw him undertake roles in the Child Protection and Sex Crime squad, investigating complex, protracted serious sexual offences across the state. For all that, he's still got a very cheerful outlook on life. Joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about his career. 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.
- [00:53]
B
Look, I spent 18 years in New South Wales Police, so we go back to 2004 and I'm a young detective working at Cogger, which is now St. George, and I'm only me, like a probationary detective at this time. The homicide happens on a Thursday and the interesting thing to this is this young woman has come to the police probably a week before seeking help because she's got concerns about her ex partner. Now, the police officer, junior police officer at the front counter, did everything by the book at that time. There was no grounds for any immediate action, but he took a statement, did the event properly, he applied for an avo, but it wasn't, as we had it now, he, it wasn't grounds for an urgent avo, so basically she had to wait for a couple of weeks before this could be put in place and he would have to be served to, to attend court and know that was coming through as well. In that time frame, things have escalated and he's basically gone to her house and shot her at her unit. And the interesting thing is of this is they've done the search warrant, they've done the, the crime scene at, at the home. They know where he lives, he lives in a location in Banksia. They've put surveillance on that location, but this guy is not anywhere. They don't see any lights coming and going, but they haven't got any lights in the house the whole night. But they haven't had surveillance on until they work out who the likely suspect is. So that's being kind of 10 o' clock at night. They're looking for activity on his phone. There's no activity on the phone. They've gone all the locations that they think this guy might be. There's like an all points bulletin out there. We can't find him, no one knows where he is. We've even had people search the different locations where you might expect someone might try to do something terrible to themselves. There's just no sign of him. So it comes up and they're like okay, we're going to go do a search one on the house on Friday morning. I'm like okay, so the sergeants are having a discussion about this and I'm new guy. And they're like okay, well it looks like we're going to have to do go into it ourselves. Which wasn't unusual at the time, but not for a guy that's just committed a homicide. I've done a bunch of search warrants before. It wasn't really an issue. However, on this one I was a bit concerned because the sergeants are like this is not good, this is a bad situation. And so a few people are brought up, well why don't we get the tactical operations unit, the SWAT unit to come and come do the clearance for us and just do the entry. And they said we tried. However, we've pushed it up through our inspector and the superintendent at the time was an acting superintendent who was on the promotions list and the standard operating procedures were tactical operations unit will not attend unless you know he is on site and it fits their criteria in armed and all the rest of this. Pretty good chance he's in there. We really don't know.
- [03:57]
A
Surely I'm not the only one thinking he could be sitting at the window with the gun pointed out waiting for us to rock up.
- [04:03]
B
Exactly right. So we come to this point and everybody's like we've tried to push it but you know, you need a system commissioner level authority before they'll let tactical operations unit roll out. And everybody just says no, not happening. We didn't have enough staff. So I ring up the anti theft team and a guy I used to work with, older detective style guy, I'm like look, we need you to come and help out with a, with a search warrant. So he's turning up, we're taking a girl out with us who's only just come back. She's on restricted duty, she's not supposed to be out in the field because she's also had a knee Rico. So they're kind of like, well you shouldn't be out but we don't have enough people so you're going to come and just be the video operator which we need to take for a search warrant. And they're like who wants to do the door? Like crack the Door. I'm like, okay, well, I'll do the door with the sledgehammer. I haven't done that before. Something new and different. So we turn up, we get everything in order. We've got an inspector from another command that has to come to be the independent officer. And we explain the situation to him. He's like, so tactical operations unit aren't coming out? I'm like, nope. So to go into this house, it's a semi detached house, so it's got a common wall. You go up about five or six steps to the front door. The doors on the right hand side as you look the premises, there's two windows to the left and then there's a driveway and there's a big banister about waist height. Now I'm 6:3, and it's about waist height for me. We funnel up there. The girl with the bad knee is inside the. You can imagine there's like this small grassed area. My former colleague that's there from anti theft Unit who didn't want to come, he's. He's there standing in the fatal funnel. So on the footpath down the stairs, the case officer is standing opposite me and I'm standing between the door and the windows and that little brick pillar with like couple of entry tools. So it's a sledgehammer. It's what we call, I think it's a handsard tool and a couple other crowbars and things like this. Oh, and I should say there's a couple of people around the back just in case he decides to run out the back. So the case off the nox, no answer. Knocks again, no answer. So he's like, hit it. So I pick up the sledgehammer. I'm about halfway through my swing when this almighty boom comes through the door and everything goes to slow motion. So you see like, I literally see like a black dot open up in the wood of the door. My ears are ringing instantly. There's like shards of wood going everywhere and I'm, you know, and there's a split second when you're like, what the was that? This shot's come through. The guy across from me, he's legged it. He's jumped down there, jumped and started running. But here I am, I'm stuck now. I'm in this no man's land. If I run across the doorway, I'm in the. In the fatal funnel, so to speak. I've got to, got to get across. If I try to climb over the balcony, I've got a. I've got a height to drop off, but I'm in front of the windows and if he opens the door and comes out, I'm going to be straddling this balcony. So, all right, not much else I can do. I drop my stuff and I run down the stairs and kind of jump over to the other side. What I didn't know because my ears were ringing and actually came up later was there were another two shots fired at that time. I didn't hear anything, to be honest, because my ears are ringing. And you just, you're in this fatal funnel like this. It's just like, like I've never been shot at. I've never been on the wrong end of a gun at this time. And I had no idea.
- [07:39]
A
Explain to us what's a fatal. You've used this expression a couple of times and.
- [07:43]
B
Oh, okay, sorry. Yeah, yeah.
- [07:44]
A
What is that?
- [07:45]
B
So in policing we talk about the 10 fatal errors and one of them is standing the fatal funnel. And the doorway is considered to be the fatal funnel because when you and I walk up to a doorway to go see our neighbors knock on the door and you stand at the door because someone's going to open the door and greet you. But in policing or law enforcement or anything tactical, the fatal funnel is that they expect you to come through that entry or they know you are going to be there. So it's not uncommon for people to shoot through a door, open a door, shoot, or even try to use long edge weapons to poke through a door, et cetera. So you tend to stay out of that. That what we call the fatal funnel and go to the site. This just comes to mind of how close we came. Is that okay? Sure. I nearly copped a couple of rounds, but the guy that was there that I said was old school from anti theft, he had just been standing there. And so there's a couple of steps up, obviously, like I said. And this came out at waist height. The rounds came out about waist height about the time when I'm picking up the sledgehammer, he decides about time someone should get their gun out and he goes down, because he's old school to get his gun out from his ankle holster. So the rounds went over his head and probably where his head would have been or in that vicinity.
- [09:09]
A
That's what I was thinking. If it was waist height at the top of the stairs, it was about head height at the bottom of the stairs.
- [09:15]
B
Exactly.
- [09:15]
A
Right.
- [09:16]
B
If he had been wearing the standard holster that everybody else was wearing, that could have been a totally different end for him, and I will say that was the end of his policing career. This isn't the end of the scenario. Obviously, he's inside and we've all taken cover now. And now, first of all, I'm behind a tree with. From the neighbor's place. But then I realized the tree doesn't give me a great deal of protection. So they had a double brick barrier around their front porch. So I go into the. The townhouse next to it or the, the semi detached place next to it. I'm kind of taking a position there in case he comes out of the door and I've. I can be behind him. But now we've got all this open ground, all these cops spread everywhere and there's still shots going off. So this time we call for tacular operations unit and they do attend, which is lovely.
- [10:04]
A
Thank you. Yeah, I think, I think we've hit the criteria. Guys, get round here.
- [10:09]
B
Yeah. So they're at the command post which is now set up down the road, and the tactical operations unit inspector says, well, what are we going to do about the guy that's stuck next to the house where the offender's in? Like he's, he's way too close. So they get the most. People familiar with the Bearcat is like the big armored truck the cops have. They want to come and extract me and that their plan is to come and get me out with a Bearcat. And they ring me because I don't have a radio, and they say to me on my old Nokia, they're like, macklin, here's what's going to happen. We're going to send the Bearcat up and they're going to throw the wing, throw the door open, won't you run and jump in? I'm like, that's really good. Only problem is there's like a sapling tree out the front and there's three cars parked along there and there's a retaining wall between them and the cars. So that's a, that's a fair bit of distance if this guy's watching. This Bearcat rolls up and basically drives down the footpath and writes off three cars to get little old me out. I throw open the door, I run down like a goose, jump in there in my, you know, suit from Lowe's. And I'm like, thanks, mate. And off we go. Now I go back to the police station and they're like, you can't. Like, after we get a couple of things sorted at the, at the command post, they're like, okay, Macklin, You've got to go back to the police station. Like, I've got to finish my shift,
- [11:27]
A
I was going to say. And I bet they expected you to show up the next day for your shift. It never occurred to me that they would push you to finish that shift after you've just been shot at.
- [11:37]
B
So I'm like, okay, I guess I'm not going home. But then I walk out and they say to me, look, everybody else can go home because they're already on overtime, but we've only got two people left. So Macklin, it's you and the other guy. One of the other acting sergeants, we need you to stay in case this guy comes out or they arrest him. There needs to be an arrest team, an interview team and that's your job. That shift turned into a 26 hour shift while I worked overnight, eventually going, spending most of my time back at the command post taking notes and sitting in meetings while they're discussing what's happened, what we can do. So it comes to about, effectively 8 o' clock the next morning, 9 o' clock the next morning, I go home, I get relieved and they're like, okay, come back in the afternoon, get your eight hours off, come back. I did that. And with no communication, they've decided they're going to blow the door. So they got what's called debt cord or detonation cord by my understanding. I'm not a bomb tech, so I probably got that wrong. And they've kind of put it around the door and they put it on the front and effectively use that to gain entry to the door because they don't want to, don't want to risk going in and having him shoot at them, do whatever. And New South Wales police guys aren't, they just haven't done this before. So when they've blown the door after we've, after it's all done, we found shards at the front door, in the back door because they use probably a bit too much cord. And the door was obliterated. It wasn't just like blown off the hinges, it was gone. It did not exist anymore as a door. And then effectively they go in and this gentleman's, my wife's calling him a gentleman. This individual has taken his own life now. Oh wow. The other thing, okay, but this has been going, this is 36 hours and in the midst of that, like some of the best, I have to say, some of the greatest heroism of that day was by the technical guys. So we, New South Wales Police has a technical team. They Effectively said to the guys, we want you to go in and try to put devices in the roof to hear what he's saying, where he is and what his movement is while he's in. While these guys are in the roof, he's literally shooting at them through the roof, so through the ceiling. So these guys are lying on, like, ballistic shields, trying to put microphones in. And the roof apparently looked like a Swiss cheese. I believe those guys got a bravery award out of it. But I don't think you could pay me enough to go and do that.
- [14:13]
A
God, that is a terrible outcome in every way.
- [14:17]
B
The funny thing is it actually, unfortunately, it's not funny, it's devastating. But it really took the death of a police officer before they changed the sops around search warrants and how they were managed. So a few years later, Bill Cruz was shot and killed during a search warrant in a command not too far away from Kolgra. And it was only after that did they start instituting a change to search warrant procedures, where they introduced a risk assessment and what level the tactical team could be employed and if a tactical team was needed at all. But, you know, they've come to this now so that almost every search warrant has a tactical team engaged for it.
- [15:03]
A
So it seems as though because you all survived that incident that you went through, there wasn't an energy around looking at it too hard. It's like, well, you know, all's well that ends well. Yeah, they all survived.
- [15:15]
B
I often wonder if that had been taken account of, if they had to change policies, if things would be different with the fatality we saw later on.
- [15:30]
A
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 1-800-Respect. Org au Indigenous Australians can contact 13Yarn on 139276 or 13yarn.org au.
- [16:01]
B
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders past, present and those emerging.