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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 and he. He 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. I have to say I still started, I left school thinking I was going to become an accountant. Many people tell me I've got the look of an accountant, so that would have fit. And I got. I don't know, I was putting myself through university, doing security, as of all things, couldn't, didn't want to do the kind of Oz study thing. And it was 24 hours and it was just something to get me through. A friend of mine got me into it and I kind of enjoyed it. You like, for example, I was working in King's Cross back in the late 90s and doing patrols and things. And then I went and worked in a hospital in Sydney and like, this will be so cruisy. It was a bloodbath. It was. I was like, the things I saw there. However, I got to work with people with mental health issues. I got to deal with grieving families. There was a methadone clinic attached to the location where I was working. So you dealt with people that had addiction problems and then there was just this raft of constant thefts and assaults and things and you kind of start doing a little bit of the basics of investigation and then obviously the police come and take it over. And it just sparked something in me. I really wanted to do something more and so much to my parents chagrin, I decided I was going to go join the police. No one could really understand this concept of accounting and world domination through corporate takeovers through to now. I'm going to go become a police officer. Sometimes I question my own decision on that.
- [02:28]
A
You must have seen a lot of policing when you were knocking around King's Cross as well.
- [02:32]
B
Yeah. Look, I know this is going to shock some of you viewers, but I was a Very nerdy kid, right? Look at me now, you wouldn't think I was a nerdy kid, but I was. So I had this kind of, kind of sheltered lifestyle and I, I remember working in King's Cross and just like King's Cross today is very different to what it was mid, late, late 90s, you know.
- [02:53]
A
Oh God. I know. I was knocking around there in the late 90s and a lot of fun and it was very exciting. I mean that's where you went just for a bit of excitement and it always provided it. And I was in Sydney a couple of months ago with my kids and I said after dinner, let's go down, let's I'll take you to the cross. Thinking I'd give them a bit of excitement, you know, they're 16 and oh my God, it was so boring. It was just, it was dead what's happened.
- [03:17]
B
I know and look, it's a great thing but it's also that point of, you know, when you talk to people about what it was like then versus now, they are chalk and cheese. Totally different things. Like, you know, you'd like three o' clock was like a witching hour. You'd have. People just kind of came out of all the cracks and crevices and there was, there was people on the nod in the street. And for those who don't really know, on the nod means after you've had some, had a, had a shot of heroin particularly, you start to go into almost like this comatose state. So you see people just bent over in the street, standing on their feet, but their head nearly touching their toes and they're about to fall over because they've just had a shot, brawls everywhere.
- [04:02]
A
But then juxtaposed with that was the energy. So you've got that going on, you've got people on the nod, but then you've also got this incredible energy frisson around the place. Like you just don't know what's around the corner or who's around the corner. You've got blokes in doorways saying, hey, come up and see the girls. You've got, you know, all that kind of drunks, bucks nights, hens nights. And it's a really small space as well. So it's a lot going on in a small space.
- [04:29]
B
Yeah, exactly right. And it was just for me I just felt like this wide eyed kid going, what is this? What have I found myself in.
- [04:37]
A
I've noticed about a couple of former police and some serving if I run into them around the place. But There just seems to be a common theme of young people from, I'm going to say good homes in adverted commas, young people from stable homes where they're very supported by their parents, very encouraged by their parents, well educated, all of those things in the suburbs going into policing. And I've heard a number of them say, oh God. It was an eye opener for me because I'd never seen anything like that in my life. I'd never lived like that in my home. I'd never. That seems to be a common thing. And I always wonder if this, something about growing up in a comfortable, safe environment creates caregivers. Sometimes people who want to help want to be of service and then they end up in policing and end up shocked. Does that make sense to you?
- [05:31]
B
Yeah, yeah it does. And I think there's a number of points to that. For my own, I kind of, you know, became a Christian partway through university. So my ideas of corporate domination didn't really resonate with where I was then. So I saw policing as a way to help the community. But there's a saying amongst. I came, came across this very late in my career and actually was a someone who was a psychologist that dealt with cops a lot and she said to me, look, cops are mainly control freaks that get enjoyment out of taking something that's chaotic and making order out of it. And I was like, I don't, don't know if I'd ever come across that before, but I think it's got something to do with that.
- [06:12]
A
And then because to me, I couldn't like that I couldn't live in an environment like years ago, I was a receptionist in brothels for a couple of years. And even that level of not knowing what's going to happen next, just a cons, just dealing with drunk people every Friday and Saturday night, even that just, it shattered my nerves. Eventually after a couple of years I thought, I can't stand it anymore, this chaos. And I certainly didn't have any illusions that I could fix it or I didn't want to try, I just wanted to get away from it. So it's not in my personality at all.
- [06:44]
B
And interestingly enough, it wasn't in mine. Originally. My very first instinct was what fresh hell have I found myself in? But then you become a little bit more accustomed to it and you become blase to it a little bit and then you only get the rise, as I experienced later in my career. You only get a rise when there's something really big happening, so you don't have this roller coaster anymore that you used to. You just kind of flatline, and then you get these little peaks up and down, and that changes things as you go.
- [07:15]
A
That's probably not good. No, it's probably not good, is it?
- [07:18]
B
We'll get to that. But that was one of the reasons why I decided I should leave. There was a couple of things, but that was in the back of my mind as well.
- [07:28]
A
Yeah. Because now that you mentioned that, I think about people, PTSD sufferers who talk about not being able to feel anything, and I wonder if it's related to that.
- [07:35]
B
Yeah. I think I read something about this recently where they said, effectively, you get so good at trying to compartmentalize and not feel things that then you don't feel things. And even to this day, I don't. Even though I've been out for a number of years, I don't get high levels of joy or high levels of sadness. You know, like, you know, when you watch a movie and get this and that, I don't get that. You know, like, you can go and do something really amazing, and people like, that was the best thing ever, and they're like, how was it for you? I'm like, yeah, it was good. But, you know, it's. It's not the same excitement. You don't get that same thing as where you've walked out. I've had jobs. You walked out and you thought, I'm gonna die in here. And you're high five. And you. You're almost dancing when you get out because you're like, that was so cool. Like, did you see the size of that knife? That was huge. But, wow, we came so close. But, man, that was great fun. All right, who wants a coffee? Right?
- [08:33]
A
Like, that's a coffee or a beer.
- [08:38]
B
Yeah. Yes. It depends who you are. I'm a coffee guy. But, yeah, a beer for a lot of people would have gone, well, yeah,
- [08:45]
A
well, at least that's a bit more positive. A coffee, I guess, is a celebratory coffee. But, you know, again, a lot of people would say, well, it sounds nice to not ever have depths of sadness or whatever, but I can imagine it's actually. It's not really human, is it, to. To flatline like that?
- [09:01]
B
I guess the problem is it's not that you don't. It's about how you get there, right? It's not that you don't have the depths of sadness. It's that you wouldn't get out of bed and function tomorrow if you saw. If the average person that was feeling that and felt it as it was. You know, it's very hard to function and keep going because it is so traumatizing. And it's one of those things where they say you always. You end up living. Living through it, no matter what. So oftentimes, when people get out, that's when they're dealing with what they've seen, and that's where they're trying to process that. And that's why they're a bit of an emotional wreck by the time they leave the police.
- [09:42]
A
And we're aware of that now, I think so much more so than we were. And even I was thinking when you said that about that book, the Body Keeps the Score. And I think we're aware now that it doesn't go anywhere. You can't push it down. And so that it never comes back. I mean, it's always. It's there until it's dealt with. It's. It's there.
- [10:01]
B
Yep.
- [10:02]
A
So I know. I mean, do you. Do you talk about cases? So many former police and barristers and lots of people will say to me, oh, you don't want to hear my war stories. And I think, well, I do. And also, that's what the podcast is about. You know, we all do. We want to hear your war stories. Do you feel like that? Do you talk much about your time in the service?
- [10:23]
B
I do you more when things come up now. And look, obviously, specifically things like this. But it's funny, the I come home and I wouldn't talk about it a lot. You know, you might mention it in passing, but you didn't go into the details and you often don't recognize just how much you're holding onto. And I saw this book. A professor came out and did a tour for New South Wales Police. I think he did it for a few of the different states somewhere around 2014, 2015. And he described a number of things. And it was a book kind of for not just serving frontline, you know, operators or people, but also for the families. And he described this point where they. People come home, they just sit in the chair and they kind of just channel surf and they almost like blank and like, that describes me. And it's not that I don't want to engage with my family. Family are one of the most important things to me, the most important thing. But I just had to process the day, if that makes sense.
- [11:27]
A
Yeah, and we've talked about this, too. Like, why don't police services around the country, around the world, factor that in? I remember Talking to a serving guy who said that they had a gym and he was working in a particularly hectic squad. And he said that what he and a number of other people realized was that if they went and did an hour in the gym after at the end of their shift that they went home much lighter, much, much more able to just engage with their family and everything. And then something happened and they closed the gym like it was a funding issue or they needed the room or whatever and they just weren't listening to how vital that space was to them.
- [12:04]
B
It's amazing that you bring that up because I once when I was working in sex crimes I shared I had to fly down to Wagga Wagga to go and assist with an investigation. I they were bringing in a doctor of psychology to help work with some of the, some of the police officers have been through an experience and I was talking to them in the back of the car that picked us up and you know, it's kind of like a 20 minute ride from the, you know, airport to the police station and going through it a couple of different things with them. And what this doctor brought up with me was that they actually did studies with people from defense forces and they worked out that when they, they basically gave them a program of just working out for six weeks worth as opposed to do whatever you like. And a lot of that included alcohol or spending time just doing your hobbies. The people that had the workout scheme, the workout schedule were amazingly better in six weeks time. How they'd processed it, where they were in that and the people that had been left to their own devices were, were virtually had no recovery at all six weeks on. And it's interesting in that point of you look at in New South Wales police you can't get a discount for a gym members. You can't claim a gym membership on your tax unless you're in a particular unit that requires physical fitness. Now you'd think that would be everybody that wears a uniform but that's effectively only things like the dive unit, tactical operations unit, maybe PAWS where you have to re credit Every year I've been in there's some of the newer stations have gyms but they're not as you'd expect for a government building. They're not. There's not an awful lot in them, they're not an awful lot of space. And I remember one night I was at when I was working at Campsie finished at 11. I was the inspector, new inspectors taken over but he's covering two areas which was the arrangement at the time. So I'm in there working out at midnight, someone comes and gets me, goes, boss, look, one of the guys has been injured. You know, we can't get onto the other inspector. We need you to come up. So here I am wearing my, you know, big W T shirt and shorts, up at a crime scene, walking around, trying to get things organized. I've got nothing on me. And that's one of those things where people don't necessarily want to work out in the gym, but it's. It's exceptional how that impacts individuals and how that is not pushed on police to say, look, get out there. Here's an arrangement we have of a gym. Or you can claim that on your tax or you'd think it would make
- [14:21]
A
sense financially as well, because I don't know what the financial cost to police services around Australia is of members retiring early, members having to leave because of, you know, ptsd, other mental health issues. Yeah. You think financially it's at least worth trialling, having a great gym accessible one way or the other to all members and really encouraging them to use it.
- [14:45]
B
Oh, absolutely. And if you look at New South Wales, basic numbers would be about 2,000 short in numbers, plus about another 2,000 or. Or 3,000, depending on who you listen to. On. Off on long term sick. And a lot of that is ptsd.
- [15:00]
A
Yeah. Oh, my God, I had no idea the numbers were that huge.
- [15:04]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's. And that's part of the problem we're seeing for police in today's day and age is that they can't recruit enough to make that up. So you've got cops off. And look, it's also. People still feel shame saying they're not at work because they've got ptsd, but they don't feel like there's anything physically wrong with them. So we go back to 2004 and I'm a young detective working in at Cogara, which is now St. George, and I'm only like a probationary detective at this time. I've kind of done my uniform, I've gone through plain clothes and I'm working as a junior detective, trying to come up to the point where I'm allowed to go through what they call a bull ring to get you into a permanent position. So as it was, my wife at the time was a cop as well, and she was having a knee replacement. So 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 ground 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 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 just a few blocks as it was from the, from the police station. So on that Thursday I'd been taking my, my wife at the time to one of her knee surgery follow up appointments and I see it on the news and I'm like, okay, this is, you know, haven't called me in but tomorrow this is what I'm walking into. So we'd Normally start at 7. I got in there a bit earlier. The guys have kind of worked overnight till about, some of them till about 2am, some of them till 6am and the interesting thing is of this is they've done the search warrant, they've done the, the crime scene 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 worked 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 different 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.
- [18:05]
A
But we know that he's got a firearm, we know he's used it. We know he's probably highly agitated.
- [18:11]
B
That's right. So he's got a firearm. He's obviously, it's not just a firearm, he's got the ammunition for it. He's expressed violent tendencies in the past. He's obviously carried out those violent tendencies. He's on the run, spoken to family and Things, no one knows where he is. So it comes up and they're like, okay, we're going to go do a search warrant 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 and do 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 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 work. 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. We've got pretty good chances in there. We really don't know. Basically, you have to turn up and then prove. If we'd seen activity in the house or something else we could prove, but we hadn't done that. But also, the guy could have been in there for hours before we did surveillance. We don't know. No one's really. We're trying to be a little bit covert. So we're not going and knocking on the door to see if anyone answers because we want to see if he comes and goes where he can arrest him in the street or do whatever or follow him to a safer location.
- [20:03]
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.
- [20:08]
B
Exactly right. So he's. We come to this point and everybody's like, we've tried to push it, but you know, you need assistant commissioner level authority before they'll let tactical operations unit roll out. And everybody's just says, no, not happening. And I've got to give it to tactical Operations. You know, I mean, those guys, they get like, I think it's a million dollars worth of training and a bare minimum now just to be basic level operator. There's a lot of those guys that have been former military that have worked in elite units. They, they have the equipment, they have the training to go and do that. And to them that's probably a piece of cake. Anyway, that's not what happens. So the only thing they come up with for us is, look, wear some bulletproof vests. Great. Doesn't cover my head. And maybe we'll get a police dog, a German shepherd. And once we open the door, we'll just put the German shepherd through to go search the house. And I'm a dog lover, so I'm like, I don't want to send a dog in there to get shot. I don't want a human to get shot either. But at least a human can shoot back. You know, like this is. And tactical operations unit have ballistic shields and things like this. So like I said, they are set up for this. Anyway, all that gets thrown to the ground and here we are. We're. We're going out to do this. Now the interesting thing about this is 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. He says, no, I'm not coming. I've got to go lock someone else else up. You know, with the only appearing call today, I'm like, homicide investigation. Beatshaw. Good's in custody. Not my call, mate. Take up the boss. So he's blowing up, but he's like, okay, I'll turn up. This guy's been in the cops 20, 25 years. Good guy, but, you know, old, old school. 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 Warra. 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. Like, not me, actually. The bosses were like, no, they're not coming. He's like, it sounds like a job for them. And we're like, yep, we agree. 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 six' three 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, 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 officer knocks, 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? Like, what, what's happened? And the funny thing is, just as I was picking up the sledgehammer, I recalled later on that the guy, the. The general purpose dog handler being in the driveway. And he said to me, movement of the curtains. But I'd already picked up the sledgehammer, so I'm already kind of in that space. And then this shots come through. The guy across from me, he's legged and he's jumped down there, jumped and started running. The girl with the. The knee, Rico, like that knee Rico was fine because she was gone like a shot. Literally hurdled the front fence. 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 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. 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.
- [25:43]
A
Can I ask, I've got two, two questions. Firstly, was it a shotgun? It sounds like a heavy.
- [25:48]
B
No, no.
- [25:49]
A
What was it? It was a handgun.
- [25:51]
B
It was a pistol, but it was a semi automated pistol. So it was like a, I think it was like a.45 or something.
- [25:59]
A
Lord.
- [26:00]
B
Now I don't know if he put that up to the door or how close he was. He was very close to it though
- [26:05]
A
because I didn't realize a round from that would go through that. Yeah. Would explode through the door cleanly like that.
- [26:12]
B
I didn't think so either. But having said that, I'm no ballistics
- [26:15]
A
expert, so I'm sounding very knowledgeable over here. But no, but also speaking of my lack of knowledge, talk to me, explain to us what's a fatal funnel. You've used this expression a couple of times and.
- [26:27]
B
Oh, okay, sorry, yeah, yeah.
- [26:28]
A
What is that?
- [26:29]
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, a shoot, or even try to use long edged weapons to poke through a door, etc, so you tend to stay out of that, that what we call the fatal funnel and go to the sides. So if you're going to knock on the Door. If you ever watch the cop shows and things like that, you will see they'll take some cover behind that. That space usually like a brick pillar or that space beside the door.
- [27:21]
A
Out of the fatal funnel.
- [27:24]
B
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 he should. 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.
- [28:05]
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.
- [28:12]
B
If he had have 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. From that point. He was like, nope, that was a moment to. I think he, like I said, 20, 25 years. Like that's too close. I don't need any more warnings. I'm. I'm done. So, yeah, he, he left. So then 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 the 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 attempt, which is lovely, thank you.
- [29:15]
A
Yeah, I think, I think we've hit the criteria, guys. Get round it.
- [29:20]
B
Yeah. So tactical operations unit come out and they extract everybody. But they're like, okay, we've. And I'm hearing this secondhand, 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. And if I can just take a step back whilst I'm taking cover behind the tree, a couple of the constables come, come around the back, from around the back to me, like, what's going on? Was that someone, like knocking in the front door? I was like, no, he's shooting at us. They're like, what? But the stupid thing is we didn't have enough radio. So not everybody had a radio. And in all the commotion, no one had. Everybody assumed that everybody knew what a gunshot was. So those guys have had to go around and take a new, new position up in a back alleyway. And he's like, oh, I was just a comedy of errors. You know, when you think cops have everything together, I mean, we do things better now, they do things better now. But back then it was. Could have been a lot better. But in this particular instance, going back to the, the forward command post, the tactical operations unit inspector says, well, how are we going to get this guy out? And they're like, we can just leave him there. And he says, I'm not going to have some effing so and so effing up my tactical operation. We'll get him out. 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 the
- [31:14]
A
three cars are reminding me were the neighbors home? Because I'm thinking, well, not only are you on the balcony, but for all we know there's a family of six in there somewhere.
- [31:21]
B
No, no, thankfully, because we'd ended up executing a warrant at 10:00am because of all the back and forth and a bunch of cops weren't allowed Back on shift to 8 or 9 because they'd worked the night before. We didn't execute till 10, so no one was in the house, which is great.
- [31:37]
A
Thank God. Yeah.
- [31:38]
B
So they, they wrote 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 this is where it comes back to what we were talking about before in regards to mental health and leadership and things like that. 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, very happy to do that. All I want to do is just tools down for the day, tackle operations units in there. They're doing a great job. Negotiators are on scene, everybody's done. I don't need to be doing anything at this stage. I'm junior, I'm useless to you. I just want to go home, right? Go home, see the other half, have a Coke and a smile and move on. Just deal with it. I get back to the police station, like, no, no, you have to speak to a counselor. Okay, great. Take turns seeing the counselor. And effectively the counselor brings me in and says, okay, how you feeling? Like, well, I don't have any holes. I'm a bit shaken, but I'm okay. They're like, what do you want to do now? I said, well, I'd really like to just go home. Like, can I just finish my shift here, do that. Well, you could. Except if you do that, we're going to put you on restricted duties and we're going to take your firearm off you. And you're not going to be able to work for four to six weeks while we do an assessment. And then when you come back, you'd have to do a reshoot. Even though I've not shot a. I've not shot my pistol. I've not done anything at all, but I've been in a stressful situation. You'd have to re qualify on your pistol before you could be. I'm considered active on the road again. And then basically it's up to the determination of the weapons instructors. And so I'm like, okay, then what do I do now?
- [33:38]
A
What's the alternative? What did they want you to do?
- [33:41]
B
Well, I've, I've got to finish my shift. So they're like, so, you know, by this stage it's 11:30, you know, coming up to 12, I'm like, okay, no problems. But I haven't. My wife is watching my ex wife now. Like I said, she's at home, knee operation. She's watching this unfold on the news. So, you know, she's got no idea what's happening.
- [34:05]
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.
- [34:15]
B
It gets better. So then I kind of like, I'm a fresh detective. I don't want to make any mistakes in the cops. You don't want to look weak, right? You don't want to be the guy that says, hey, this was pretty, you know, this is pretty bad. And it's rattled me. So that's why I've gone off for a couple of weeks. And it also leaves the whole team short. Right. I'm not a seasoned detective, but you know, we were pretty short staffed everywhere at that time. 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. 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 now if we talk about leadership and how things go. They decide at some point during the night, and this siege goes for 36 hours. They decide at some point during the night we're going to get a robot in and we're going to try to. Because this guy's not really answering the phone. They kind of get him on the phone and they don't. And they know he's under from their time on the phone. They realize he's had drugs and he's under the influence and the intoxicating effects of that. So they're trying to keep him awake, they're trying to negotiate with him to get him out, but he's not. He's not responding by this time. So they decide they're going to get a robot in. The first robot comes up and it runs out of battery.
- [35:57]
A
Oh my God.
- [35:58]
B
There's only three robots in Sydney, right? These bomb robots. The second robot got stuck on my entry tools, so I've left, like I said, crowbars and things like that at the top. And I didn't, I didn't care where they were. I just threw them down, you know, so now they're like, we don't want to, we don't want to send someone else up and like, well, where's the third robot? Well, the third robot out in western New South Wales. It's hours away. So we're just sitting there and everybody's kind of waiting for this guy, but he's not answering and nothing's happening. 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 called 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 of the front door in the back door because they used 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, I want to call 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.
- [38:32]
A
No. Do you remember when during this 36 hour siege, he took his own life?
- [38:37]
B
Well, no, because there were so many shots originally. And then going through the roof with the guys from the technical branch, no one really knew when that was, but it was, I think it was more early hours of the Saturday morning, I believe. Cause it was over the Friday day and Friday night that the technical team were trying to do the different microphone things and that were being shot at.
- [39:08]
A
God, that is a terrible outcome in every way for you. Specifically you've done. I'm just trying to do my math. You know, you've done about 32 hours in two days sort of thing on this. By the time it actually ends, then you allowed to have a day off or an afternoon off. Then are you allowed to go home from shift? What's the process?
- [39:32]
B
Then it automatically became like a coroner's matter. And because it was a critical incident, because police were involved when a life expired, effectively it's a critical incident. So a whole new team of detectives came in and kind of took that, took that over. So.
- [39:47]
A
So then you become a witness.
- [39:49]
B
Yeah, yeah. You're, you're professional witness. And they, you know, I didn't have much to do with it after that. The interesting thing about it is though, when it follows through after we kind of, they do these kind of debriefs, we are told as a detectives team that we're going to be able to go out, they're going to have this big debrief with all the different parties involved and we'll be able to have our say, our piece right. About what should have been done, what shouldn't have been done. And so all of us that were there were pretty excited because we're like, we want to see what's changed. We want to be able to say, look, this was bs if this had been handled differently, we wouldn't have ended there. Maybe he wouldn't have taken his own life. There's all these other things. We go up to the conference room, all the brass are there and we didn't get addressed once, we didn't get spoken about once. It was, we did the best we could, we worked with him. Policy and SOPs. So, yeah, who's up for morning tea? And that was really pissed me off. It pissed off everybody, to be honest.
- [40:46]
A
Especially when there was such clear problems and errors.
- [40:50]
B
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Right. And I think, look, you. No one gets it perfect. I have messed up my fair share of things. I hate to say it, but it's the truth. Right. Sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Sometimes you just make a bad judgment call. But I've messed things up, but I've got to own that. And the organization needed to learn as a whole from that. And I think 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. 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.
- [41:49]
A
Be.
- [41:49]
B
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.
- [42:00]
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.
- [42:12]
B
Yeah, exactly right. And look, kudos to the. To the sergeants. The, like, my sergeants, I saw them, they worked hard, they tried to push up the chain of command. But unfortunately, in policing, you have a chain of command. You can't really go around it. You can only go around it to a certain extent. And it's not like anybody's got the assistant commissioner's number on speed dial to go back and advocate. I don't know where that got knocked back from. Like, if that was assistant commissioner level, if it was superintendent level or above or beyond, I have no idea. But that was a very close call. And I think if they had. 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. Look, I got divorced and I had kids that had their own challenges and needs, and I'd been a company man, and it was time. I spent more time at home with my family, so exited the cops, which was a shame because I loved what I did. But but it was the right time for me and in that instance, founded Rampart Consulting. And so we do security risk management, investigations. But when I left the cops, I did a little bit of work, postgraduate work on forensic psych, because I absolutely, I just loved working and understanding people in the police. I think one of the best things about police work was not just helping people, but that this strategy that went behind it, the challenge of working with people that are so unique, yet trying to predict what they're going to do and how they're going to come at you and how they're going to try to achieve their next bad act. So, look, I work with everything from, you know, domestic violence victims and single moms right through to multi billionaires, offering them both protection and working with, to working with them to prevent stalking and making sure that their investigations are covered and their safety is organized and things like we do, sweeping for bugs and listening devices and tracking devices, which are quite common, unfortunately, in today's day and age with domestic violence and trying to help corporates to make sure that they get their security right so their staff are safe. And in this day and age with Internet trolls, there's a lot of threats, There's a lot of people that are very easily found and the average person doesn't know that. So we help manage privacy and, you know, gather evidence and do all manner of things. So most of my clients are, as I said, in a range of spaces, but a lot of corporates, a lot of lawyers, et cetera, but definitely also working with the frontline DV support networks just to be able to give back a little bit there.
- [44:53]
A
Yeah, desperately need it. Unfortunately, we still do need private assistance like that that you offer because policing doesn't seem to be able to hold up or keep up with it. I guess just thinking about cyber, I guess a lot of it would be ascertaining how big a threat something really is online. You just don't know if it's a kid being mean or if it's really someone you need to worry about. Right.
- [45:20]
B
Well, look, this is an interesting point. So we talk about the path of intended violence. And so when you go back and consider any of those kind of things that you see those horrible incidents that happen at, say, a school or workplace, especially in the States, people talk about someone just snapping. That's, that's not really the case. There's usually indicators it could be two hours before, it could be weeks before. And so that's what we do in our threat management service. We're really looking at Assessing who is this individual? What have they got to do? What access do they have to different things. But once someone makes a threat, you've got to realize that they've turned their mind to violence. Right? Someone cuts you off in traffic, I'm sure you don't think about, I'm going to follow them home and get a crowbar and take to their car and then maybe, you know, go to every window in their. In their house. Right? If someone sends you a threat online, they've thought about that, they've thought about how that affects you, right? They've. They've not just sent it without the concept of this is going to have an impact. They know it has an impact. And then the question is, are they going to ramp up from there or are they just. Just a troll in their mum's basement, so to speak, with nothing better to do and no understanding, no capability. And that's kind of where we come in to assess who's who, what's where, how do we make you safe? How do we prevent them from doing this? How do we work with police? Because police in these instances are often just responding, they're not proactive and if they're responding, it's probably too late.
- [46:47]
A
Yeah. Unfortunately, I think you're in a growth industry as well, so good on you for moving in that area.
- [46:52]
B
Thank you. Yeah, no, it's look, and it's really, again, it's challenging, it's exciting work, but, you know, less shift work, it's. That is positive, more time with the family.
- [47:08]
A
If you need support after listening to this podcast, you can call Lifeline on 13, 1114 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.
- [47:38]
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.