Cassowary Crossing

STEPPING OUT IN BLUE
An inside peek at two very different police stations

(c) David Astle

“It looked like a doll,” says Senior Constable Sarah Clark, 32, “a little blue doll, so perfect in every detail.” But sadly the doll was human, a baby draped lifeless in the arms of its inconsolable mother.

“The mother kept prodding the baby saying ‘please wake up, please wake up’. The desperation in her voice was heart-breaking.”

The scene was an ER wing in outer western Sydney, three years ago. The message on the police radio call had been a cot death, yet more details emerged as the two detectives – Sarah and her sergeant – stood in the airless room, negotiating for the body to be handed across. Evidently the mother, a known drug-user, had been breast-feeding that evening when falling asleep on top of the baby, suffocating the child.

“It was awful,” says Sarah. “I was eight months pregnant at the time….. In the end, when the mother calmed down, she refused to give me the body. She thought it might bring my own baby bad luck. It was amazing. She gave the body to the sarge.”

From bodies to break-ins, police carry all sorts of heartache. “You see the best and worst of the human condition,” says one member. Another prefers: “Cops get front row seats at the biggest show on earth.” While Sergeant Shane Flynn, 50 the one-man station in Victoria’s Mount Macedon defines his role as “First, a social worker, second a bottom-wiper, and third, you pick up the pieces.”

The list stands to lengthen as we enter two very different police stations. How do these places tick? What steels the crew to tragedy, lends them courage, a sense of perspective? Come enlist with some 40,000 other police members across Australia for a glimpse of cop-life.

First we venture into Sydney’s southwest fringe – Sarah Clark’s beat – the frontier wilds of Macquarie Fields with the Domestic Violence Investigation Team (DVIT). And if you last, we’ll cross the border to the rustic sprawl of Kyneton in central Victoria. Just as police clock onto work for 12-hour shifts around the country, you won’t know what to expect.

HUMAN EXPERIMENT

Let’s call the fugitive Gary. Early 20s, a missus-hitter, he’s broken bail twice and has breached a paper chain of restraining orders. His assault was on his de facto wife, mid-30s, who has five kids, though not all his.

Car MS99 cruises Macquarie Fields with a few addresses in mind – a fishing trip to see if we can’t snare a scofflaw. A dozen dead-ends reveal so many lovelorn rentals with cars on blocks, ditched trolleys, bric-a-brac lawns. A mattress sprouts kapok in the gutter.

Macquarie Fields, the name, once referred to fields some 30 years ago. Back then the land was patched by orchards and hobby farms. The Radburn model changed all that. Pioneered in New Jersey during the Motor Age, the build-a-suburb comprises a mazy enclave of townhouses, low-rise blocks, interior parks and pathways, all primed for the city’s poorer refugees.

“Great for its time,” admits the area’s top cop, Detective Superintendent Stuart Wilkins, 45, “but the model is meant to be linked to big shopping centres and hospitals, and all the people out here getting jobs, and off the welfare…and that part didn’t work out.”

Proof erupted in early 2005 when three young joyriders slammed their stolen car into a tree on Eucalyptus Drive. Both passengers were killed, the teen driver fleeing the law. That weekend hundreds of youths stalked the housing estate, waving palings and flares, wrongly blaming police for the fatal. Uniform members met the mob with perspex shields and baton charges. A riot boiled up into three days of suburban mayhem.

Yet since those scenes the news has improved. On joining the station a few weeks after the riots, Stuart Wilkins, along with his 184 staff, have set about writing a new script for the so-called mean streets. “I don’t want my van crews spending 12 hours in a car,” as Wilkins put it, a rangy ex-lock with a Homicide resume. “You don’t get to meet anyone that way.”

Meeting in fact has become the mindset at Macquarie Fields LAC, a local area command embracing 22 suburbs in a region the sweep of Bermuda. (Yet unlike the tax haven, nine in ten of the state’s public tenants here receive rent assistance.) If Wilkins and Co have yet to meet one such tenant – via the new drop-in centre, communal groups, Harmony Days, school visits, Camp Impact weekends for teens at risk – they can only be hiding.

Like Gary, our fugitive. Car MS99 enters Minto, an adjacent suburb. The cage truck is requested over the radio in case we hit the jackpot. “Good fence jumper this fella,” smiles Steve, the rookie of the Domestic Team. Sitting beside him is team leader, Sarah Clark, the fresh face of proactive policing.

“Once upon a time,” she says, “domestic violence was seen as private business, but community attitudes have changed. People are less ashamed to talk about it. They’re prepared to admit it’s an issue.”

Imported from Canada, the new model is a first among Australian states. Run by four investigators and three liaison officers, the pilot scheme aims to accelerate the court lag between first mention of violence and the trial’s outcome. Currently, with a pro-arrest strategy, victim photos and close case-tracking, the new approach is seeing trial time slashed from 24 to 14 weeks. In other words, police are less doorstep referees (as per historic models) than a victim’s support network.

“A lot of victims want the violence to stop but they don’t necessarily want their partner charged,” says Sarah, a relaxed mother of two. She joined the force in 1997 when she realised her BA degree meant Bugger-All. “I know it’s a cliché but I become more passionate the more I do this sort of thing. If you treat people with respect you build a rapport with the victim. As time goes on you see how much of a difference you can make.”

Topping Sydney’s metropolitan rate of domestic violence, Macquarie Fields was hand-picked for the trial. In the wry words of commander Wilkins, “If it was going to work here, I suppose, then it was going to work anywhere.” And the model is working, albeit at the risk of a clogging court system. But these wrinkles are set to be ironed in time.

Knee-high weeds swallow a two-wheel tricycle in the yard of Gary’s missus. The TV antenna dangles off the roof. Rolling down the lane, the cage truck lurks at the back gate, in case Gary tries his Vander-Kuyp routine again.

We tap on doors, crane through broken blinds. Nobody’s home. The game of tag lives another day. The cage truck is called to a break-in near Mark Latham’s old office, leaving the DVIT to head back to the red-brick Kremlin the region owns for a cop shop.

Punching keys, we open the door into an office warren. General duties officers (or GDs) stream the halls, most still damp from the Goulburn academy. Upbeat, collegial, the mood is reminiscent of a tight-knit staffroom at Hard-Knocks High.

We meet Lauren Sharp, a probationary constable in her early 20s pairing up with the ursine Sergeant Michael Grace, 40 – both detailed to foot patrol in Ingleburn where duties entail “stopping, propping and tipping over crooks”. Neither timid nor belligerent, police work is governed by the acronym on the wall, ETHICAL: Excellence, Trust, Honour, Impartiality, Commitment, Accountability, Leadership.

“Your offender’s ready for court,” says Rachel Clark, Sarah’s twin sister in the DV office. Thirteen minutes older, Rachel also has two stripes on her shoulders, two young girls and a futile arts degree. Both women married cops – though Sarah’s marriage folded last year, and Rachel’s husband has quit the force to start a new career in finance.

“Before Mac Fields,” says Rachel, “I worked in Child Protection in Liverpool. Those were tough times. I was late 20s, the team leader. I was going to bed with a pager – if it went off I had to decide whether to go out, or leave the situation to GDs [if a child was not deemed at risk]. Then I’d lie in bed awake, not sleeping, worrying if I’d done the right thing.”

So similar, the twins can cause Joe Public to double-take. Once a cornered junkie in Cabramatta grew so paranoid on seeing the same copper existing in two places he possibly quit the gear for life.

“Paperwork done?” asks Sarah. Rachel nods to her sister’s desk. The offender in the downstairs dock, arrested overnight, allegedly stole his estranged partner’s car to drive twice over the same estranged partner. Photos on the desk depict tyre burns across the woman’s back.

With 16 equivalent cases on her desk at any one time, I wonder how Sarah copes with the affronts. “This case?” she says, beaming, gathering the charge sheets. “This one’s a good one. The victim rang us direct, ten days after the assault. We’d earned her trust, and she wanted us to help arrest the offender. That means something.”

Before I can pursue my line of questioning the young mum is out the door, leading her partner, Steve, and his half-gnawed kebab. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go to court.”

NED KELLY SLEPT HERE

A century ago, when those ethereal picnickers went missing at Hanging Rock, the rank and file of Kyneton police joined the searchers. Roughly an hour north of Melbourne, Kyneton is home to 6000 people, a blend of pastoral clans, working-class families and tree-changers.

Livestock agents share High Street with Capones Pizzeria and the Pig & Whistle pub. A dogleg right takes you to the police station, a brick box with a flagpole out front and Bart Simpson at reception.

Sergeant Bruce ‘Bart’ Simpson, 42, greets you with a handshake and ushers you into the nerve centre. The watchhouse, a cozy clutter of computers and shortwave radios, has a live TV-peephole into the bluestone cells where Ned Kelly once slept overnight. This Friday though, at 0740hours, the lockup is empty. Three women tap on keyboards.

“Nothing much happening at the moment,” explains Bruce. The smile in his voice you realize is a Kyneton tic, as though informality wields greater force than the extendible baton on his hip.

Bruce always wanted to do Search & Rescue. “Except I can’t stand the idea of skin-diving,” he admits. So he earned an electrician’s ticket before joining the force in 1995. A straw poll of the women reveals three resumes in a single room: Donna (meteorologist), Jenny (primary school teacher) and Tanya (geneticist). “Police work is pretty similar to science,” Constable Tanya Lang adds. “You investigate. You write reports in the same sort of language. You get down to the nitty gritty.”

Constable Donna Rundle, 30, also drives trucks for the Army Reserve. She dumped her weather career “for something more useful, with a bit of excitement.” In her four years of service she’s only fired a gun once – the station’s .22 to euthanase a horse. The rest of the time in uniform has been fairly low on agro, though not without terror.

“One night I babysat an abandoned drugs lab,” she recalls. “The lab was in a forest near Gisborne [closer to Melbourne] and I sat there alone for three hours, in case the owners returned. It was cold, foggy, scary. My nearest back-up was 40 minutes away. I tried hiding my badge in case it was too reflective.”

Super Mario’s twin brother wanders into the office. Senior Constable Joe Grbac, 50, is the Youth Resources Officer. “No school misses out,” he promises. “The region has 7000 kids and each one knows our bus safety program – and that’s just for starters.” Croatian born, Joe knows that school visits mean making bridges, and breaking down distances. “On the first week [in a school] it’s ‘Here comes a copper, then it’s Copper Joe, then Joe the Cop, and finally Joe.’”

A jigsaw of wall-maps captures the 1100 square kilometres under the station’s care, a rural Hong Kong with silos the region’s only highrise. Other towns in the district – Romsey, Woodend, Macedon – boast their own stations, but each with finite hours and skeleton staff. The only 24/7 centre, with “a-sergeant-and-five”, Kyneton is the district’s hub.

The phone rings. Overnight, parties unknown pinched some copper wire from a building yard. A cold burg in the jargon, with the burglar no longer on-site. Senior Constable Jenny Willmott, 37, the Mum of three “who wanted to leave the classroom”, collects her cap and fires up the van.

An hour later, Bruce suggests an AST during LAT. Translated, three members loiter outside the CH Watts Wool Pavilion asking motorists to blow into a straw. Again the tone is amiable (“Gday, how you going? Anything to drink? No worries. Have a good day.”) and the offence figures modest. Essentially our Alcohol Screening Test during Low Alcohol Time yields little.

Bruce disagrees. “It’s all about visibility.” The father of two loves his job, and defends his staff – despite the high turnover. In his five years at Kyneton, Bruce has “seen a constant turnover of connies [constables].” The tidal pattern owes to the ballot system operating in Victoria Police.

Put simply, a constable fresh from 20 weeks at the academy can opt for three stations of choice. Kyneton attracts its share of preferences due to its proximity to Melbourne. But more importantly, at least two years in a rural station entitles the subsequent senior constable to top-of-list status for any future placement of choice. (What cops call a free-kick.) This compares to the metro pathway where four years in town will see your follow-on options receive slightly less priority.

At 1500 hours, a tree falls over. “Where?” asks Bruce. “On the ground,” jokes Kursk, the ex-submariner, and part of the afternoon crew. Kursk and a woman called Footy (her first name is Sheryn) drive 30kms away to attend the offending gum on the road.

Other weeks in Kyneton, according to resident information officer, Sergeant Brad Rogers, have offered highway trauma, bushfires, a bikie melee, sieges and an ultralight crash on Mount Macedon. But not this week. Our Friday feels a win for law and order. A cold burg is registered, a necklace found in Safeways, while a tiler is done for driving without a seat-belt. Meantime Kursk and Footy, kneeling to inspect a fallen tree, are lucky to escape an angry cloud of 5,000 displaced bees.

“If that’s the worst of it,” laughs Brad, 40, the man to meet his policewoman-wife across the front-seat of a monoxide suicide in Tullamarine, “then you’re welcome up here any day of the week.”

POLICE PROFILES
NAME: Senior Constable Rachel Clark
AGE: 32
HOME LIFE: Married to an ex-cop, 2 kids
JOINED: 1996
REASON FOR JOINING: To make a difference
CURRENT STATION: Domestic Violence Liaison Officer, Macquarie Fields, Sydney
MOST SATISFIED: Building trust within domestic violence victims – and offenders
SCARED? “Getting surrounded by all these Asian guys my first few weeks into the job. Talking solves more situations than agro.”
BIGGEST CHALLENGE: Two ropy kids in the morning. “Do I use police methods to control them? Is bribery a police method?!”

+++

NAME: Senior Constable Donna Rundle
AGE: 30
HOME LIFE: Separated, no kids
JOINED: 2003
REASON FOR JOINING: “Always wanted to join as a kid [back in Townsville], but Dad talked me out of it. Now it’s back to the original plan”
CURRENT STATION: Kyneton, Victoria
MOST SATISFIED: An elderly couple in Woodend suffered a nasty break-in. “I stayed with them for a good while and chatted. The next day they dropped by the station to thank me.”
SCARED? “Searching for a suicide in Mt Macedon bushland when a kangaroo jumped in my path. I swear I nearly screamed.”

(Sunday Life, July, 2007)