Speaker 1: It loaded down that suv so low that it pushed
Speaker 1: the springs right down.
Speaker 2: It was totally overloaded. They had left it with.
Speaker 1: Eight live rounds in the magazine and a semi automatic rifle,
Speaker 1: which is a cardinal's sin of gun handling. Other cartridges
Speaker 1: that have been taken were nine millimeter pistol ammunition. They
Speaker 1: took lots of it from his place. None came back,
Speaker 1: not one round. All these nine millimeter pistol ammunition had vanished.
Speaker 1: I'm andrew rule, is this life and crimes. Funny things
Speaker 1: happen out there in the world of policing, particularly when
Speaker 1: police are asked to do extra things like seas firearms
Speaker 1: and ammunition, and sometimes they have to do this. It
Speaker 1: happens when maybe a licensed shooter has died and they've
Speaker 1: got to go out and pick up their guns and ammunition,
Speaker 1: or it happens when a licensed shooter gets into some
Speaker 1: sort of trouble with the law and they've got to
Speaker 1: go out and pick.
Speaker 2: Up the stuff.
Speaker 1: And it often happens that police are raiding are suspects
Speaker 1: premises and they might find guns or ammunition not properly
Speaker 1: locked up, and they might find guns and ammunition which
Speaker 1: is not kept securely in a safe as it should
Speaker 1: be by law, and therefore naturally they seize it. And
Speaker 1: so there are a lot of reasons for police. Victoria
Speaker 1: police and every other police force in the country two
Speaker 1: have to from time to time sees firearms and ammunition.
Speaker 2: And that's a good thing.
Speaker 1: However, there's always a butt, and the butt is this
Speaker 1: there is I would suggest a disturbing undercurrent discernible in Victoria.
Speaker 1: One keeps hearing stories of legitimate licensed shooters who have
Speaker 1: a grievance against one particular branch of the police force,
Speaker 1: if not more. But the particular branch of the police
Speaker 1: use force they have a grievance against is the licensing
Speaker 1: and Registration branch, which has headquarters in Collingwood, where there
Speaker 1: is a police Property office and where along with all
Speaker 1: sorts of other property, firearms and ammunition is stored are seized. Now,
Speaker 1: it would appear some would say that the organization of
Speaker 1: the branch is so chaotic that firearms and ammunition get
Speaker 1: lost in the system. They get lost forever, and it
Speaker 1: is alleged by some people that they vanish that firearms
Speaker 1: and ammunition, particularly ammunition, because that's so anonymous there's quite
Speaker 1: a lot of it that it just disappears like twenty
Speaker 1: cent pieces down the back of the couch. All of
Speaker 1: this brings us to a fresh example, and that is
Speaker 1: the example which is the subject of a story which
Speaker 1: I had reascent published in the Sunday Herald Sun.
Speaker 2: And that is the.
Speaker 1: Story of a man called Sam Mahfood. And Sam is
Speaker 1: a man now in his seventies. He came to this
Speaker 1: country in nineteen sixty eight when he was about nineteen
Speaker 1: years old. He came from Syria. When he got here,
Speaker 1: he couldn't speak much English, but he was a very
Speaker 1: good mechanic. He'd done his apprenticeship in Syria. He was
Speaker 1: a very able mechanic, clearly a capable hard working man,
Speaker 1: because he got jobs at General Motors Holden and later
Speaker 1: on at the Ford Motor Factory and other places garages
Speaker 1: or whatever. And he was promoted into positions of trust
Speaker 1: where he would be running a division at the Motoruka
Speaker 1: assembly plant. And he really became quite a trusted, practical
Speaker 1: mechanical engineer. And Sam was able to marry I think
Speaker 1: possibly his childhood sweetheart, and he had quite a big
Speaker 1: bunch of kids and they all grew up and had
Speaker 1: more kids, and really Sam Mafud and his wife Vicki
Speaker 1: are one of the great success stories of post war
Speaker 1: migration in Australia. Now, Sam, like a lot of other people,
Speaker 1: had a hobby. Some people play bowls, some played golf,
Speaker 1: some ride bikes, some go fishing.
Speaker 2: Many go fishing.
Speaker 1: But Sam was always a fan of target shooting. And
Speaker 1: he started out as many people from Europe and the
Speaker 1: Middle East do. He was keen on shotguns and he
Speaker 1: transferred from the idea of hunting live game to shooting
Speaker 1: at clay targets and he did that and he got
Speaker 1: quite good at it. Then he took on rifle shooting,
Speaker 1: and as he got more spare time in middle age,
Speaker 1: he took up pistol shooting as well. So he was
Speaker 1: a prolific target shooter in all disciplines of firearms, or
Speaker 1: most disciplines of firearms. And in fact he's a collector.
Speaker 1: He's got everything from air rifles and air pistols all
Speaker 1: the way through to quite heavy caliber sporting rifles and
Speaker 1: heavy caliber handguns which he uses for club target shooting.
Speaker 1: This is what he does, this is what he likes doing.
Speaker 1: He's also been a guy that's owned Broad Acres. He
Speaker 1: had a pretty big property up in the Heathcote which
Speaker 1: has recently been sold, which is relevant to our story.
Speaker 1: And he's also got a property up closer to Ballarat
Speaker 1: where he lives in retirement with his wife Vicki, and
Speaker 1: his biggest hobby, of course, is to go to the
Speaker 1: local target shooting venues and shoot targets. But then a
Speaker 1: strange thing happened to Sam Muffoot, respectable grandfather, back in
Speaker 1: the year of twenty twenty one, during COVID, he decided
Speaker 1: that he would sell his large block of land which
Speaker 1: is up past Heathcot and it's open country, bit scrubby,
Speaker 1: lots of fox and rabbits and all.
Speaker 2: That sort of stuff that he used to shoot.
Speaker 1: And he decided that it was time to sell it
Speaker 1: because presumably he'd owned it for a couple of decades
Speaker 1: and had gone up in value. And he spread the
Speaker 1: word that he wanted to sell it. And one of
Speaker 1: the people he told was a female state agent. Now
Speaker 1: whether this person was a registered state agent or not
Speaker 1: does not matter. This person said to Sam, yes, Sam,
Speaker 1: I know you. I think I can sell your block,
Speaker 1: your farm, and you know I'll do it for X
Speaker 1: amount of commission, a percentage, whatever it might be. And
Speaker 1: he said, yes, that's very good to this lady. And
Speaker 1: he knew her because he used to go target shooting
Speaker 1: with her brother. So brothers were keen target shooters, and
Speaker 1: that's how they knew each other. And so this woman
Speaker 1: adds Sam's block to her list of properties for sale,
Speaker 1: but she doesn't actually sell it. She doesn't come up
Speaker 1: with a buyer in the matter of weeks, and Sam meanwhile,
Speaker 1: has found a buyer himself.
Speaker 2: Elsewhere.
Speaker 1: He found another buyer, possibly through another agent, don't know,
Speaker 1: but he sold the place to someone else. And when
Speaker 1: the first agent heard about this, she was not happy,
Speaker 1: and she came to Sam and said, look, you owe
Speaker 1: me the price of the commission because I've lost the
Speaker 1: opportunity to sell it. Whereas you told me that I
Speaker 1: could sell it, and now I can't because you've sold it,
Speaker 1: and you owe me three hundred dollars or something something
Speaker 1: like that, a bit over nine grand in commission. And
Speaker 1: Sam said, no, you didn't sell it. I don't know
Speaker 1: you anything, but seeing as you're upset, I'm going to
Speaker 1: give you half. I'll give you four and a half
Speaker 1: thousand dollars just to go away and leave me alone.
Speaker 1: She said no, She said, you know, sort of buy
Speaker 1: your bum basically, and she said there'll be repercussions. I'll
Speaker 1: fix you up, or words to that effect. And what
Speaker 1: that woman did, and this is an indictment on the
Speaker 1: way that our system can be abused pipulated. She went
Speaker 1: to broad Meadows Police station, now not the Ballarat up
Speaker 1: where Sam lives. She went to broad Meadows and she
Speaker 1: went in there and saw a sergeant and a policewoman,
Speaker 1: two police officers, and she said, I want an AVO,
Speaker 1: an apprehended violence order against Sama Mafood. His real name
Speaker 1: is Samir sm Mafood. And she spelled it out to
Speaker 1: them who he was, where he lived, the whole thing,
Speaker 1: and she said, i want this apprehended violence order because
Speaker 1: I've had a disagreement with him, and I know that
Speaker 1: he's got guns and ammunition and so forth, and I'm
Speaker 1: scared that there'll be a problem that he might try
Speaker 1: and intimidate me or frighten me, and I need this AVO.
Speaker 1: And the police, God bless them, they just wrote it
Speaker 1: out as if it was a raffle ticket. They wrote
Speaker 1: out in a v O and handed it over, and
Speaker 1: she was very happy because she knew that as soon
Speaker 1: as they communicated the fact of the AVO to their
Speaker 1: counterparts at Ballarat, which is the relevant police station where
Speaker 1: Sam and his wife live, she knew that state agent
Speaker 1: who's basically trying to punish him over money. She knows
Speaker 1: that those police will be obligated under the regulations to
Speaker 1: check Sam's firearm status on the database and it'll come
Speaker 1: up that he's a shooter, license shooter and he's got
Speaker 1: x y Z guns, quite a lot of guns, probably
Speaker 1: more than twenty actually, because he shoots in so many
Speaker 1: different disciplines and he's a licensed collector. It's nothing sinister
Speaker 1: about it. And he's got a lot of ammunition. So
Speaker 1: the Ballarat police of course do this. It's routine, they
Speaker 1: have to do it. So Ballarat Police, I think, might
Speaker 1: have got it. This is where it gets cloudy. They
Speaker 1: might have got one or two police from nearby Balan,
Speaker 1: which is sort of the play where Sam and his
Speaker 1: wife lives, might be between Ballarat and the land, let's say.
Speaker 1: And so they put together a bit of a mixed
Speaker 1: bag of police to go out and seize the firearms
Speaker 1: and the ammunition, and it would appear that what happened
Speaker 1: was they go out to the property. The front gate
Speaker 1: is locked. The house is about five hundred meters in
Speaker 1: from the front gate. They haven't made an appointment to
Speaker 1: meet Sam or get the gate unlocked, and I think
Speaker 1: somebody sat there with the two police cars while I
Speaker 1: think two or the other police jump over the fence
Speaker 1: or jump over the gate, climb over it and walk
Speaker 1: up to the house. Now this is not strictly dimensional
Speaker 1: or necessarily even legal. I think probably what they're sposed
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: At least, it would be very.
Speaker 1: Good manners and good policy for police to make an
Speaker 1: appointment and then have a gate open for them and then.
Speaker 2: Go up there. So they walk up to the house.
Speaker 1: Now Sam's not there, he's shopping in Ballarat or somewhere,
Speaker 1: and missus Mafood, Sam's wife, who I think actually possibly
Speaker 1: has a serious illness. She's lying down on her bed
Speaker 1: in her bedroom having arrest as she's entitled to do
Speaker 1: it at the age of seventy odd and she's got
Speaker 1: two little grandkids there, just young kids. I think one
Speaker 1: was six or seven and one was a bit older,
Speaker 1: and they've run into their grandmother saying, Grannie, Grannie, there's
Speaker 1: these men knocking on the window and they've got guns
Speaker 1: and they say they're the police, and she's quite perturbed.
Speaker 1: She gets up. She opens the front door and asks
Speaker 1: them to come in, which they don't do, which is fine,
Speaker 1: And they said we're here to see Sam, a licensed
Speaker 1: her about his firearms, etc. She said, well, he's not
Speaker 1: here and we'll ring him. So she wrings sam'sy's come home,
Speaker 1: come home.
Speaker 2: The police are here.
Speaker 1: They want to see your guns and stuff. So Sam
Speaker 1: comes home. He opens the front gate and drives in
Speaker 1: and this allows the police sort are left at the
Speaker 1: gate with the cars to bring in two police cars,
Speaker 1: two SUVs, one blue one on one white one. As
Speaker 1: I understand it now, the numbers of police and things
Speaker 1: are a little bit cloudy here. But the truth is
Speaker 1: that when Sam gets there and it all settles itself,
Speaker 1: what he finds is two police cars and three police officers.
Speaker 1: Sam calls one of them the detective. Now this would
Speaker 1: suggest that this person was wearing casual clothes, not uniform.
Speaker 1: He thinks the other two were uniform police because I
Speaker 1: think they had on the sort of black gear. That's
Speaker 1: the way Sam saw it. Sam might be wrong. Sam
Speaker 1: might be right, but as he told the story to me,
Speaker 1: and he has no reason to change it or make
Speaker 1: it up, because who cares. He calls one of these officers,
Speaker 1: the detective, and the other two and as he sees it,
Speaker 1: the person he calls the detective was in charge. He
Speaker 1: was running the show. And Sam thought, this is unusual.
Speaker 1: Usually they don't send detectives out to pick up firearms
Speaker 1: or ammunition. He knows this from other members of the
Speaker 1: target club. Usually it's this uniform job. And he said,
Speaker 1: how come detective came? How come you're here? And the
Speaker 1: detectives said to him, oh, I shouldn't be here, but
Speaker 1: I got roped into it because there weren't enough people
Speaker 1: at the station. Now was he saying Ballarat station? Was
Speaker 1: he saying the land station? I don't know for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know who that person was. I don't know
Speaker 1: if that person was a detective or was just some
Speaker 1: other guy and playing clothes.
Speaker 2: I do not know.
Speaker 1: But what we do know is this. There were three police,
Speaker 1: three male police with all the you know, they've got guns,
Speaker 1: they got the full equipment belt, and they've got the
Speaker 1: body cameras. Body cam which is interesting and will prove
Speaker 1: probably very interesting in future if this court, which it may, well,
Speaker 1: they demand Sam's key's for his gun safes. Now, Sam's
Speaker 1: a little old bloke. He's in his seventies. He's small.
Speaker 1: I won't say he's frail, but you know he's not
Speaker 1: twenty five years old. He's seventy something. He says that
Speaker 1: the one he calls the detective was quite bumptious, quite rude,
Speaker 1: quite brusque, and the other two, in fact, were quite
Speaker 1: polite and quite pleasant. And he thought quite embarrassed at
Speaker 1: the way the detective treated Sam. Sam thought the detective
Speaker 1: treated him badly and was rude to him and borderline racist.
Speaker 1: Sam is a Syrian by birth. He's Middle Eastern. He
Speaker 1: has a thick accent.
Speaker 2: He's English.
Speaker 1: He is sort of semi broken. It's quite good, but
Speaker 1: it's broken. He didn't learn it to leave us twenty
Speaker 1: years old. So the one he calls the detective push
Speaker 1: into the bedroom, he says, he opens the safe with
Speaker 1: the key, and he reaches into the safe and pulls
Speaker 1: stuff out. Now this makes Sam unhappy because he said, well,
Speaker 1: he should be asking me to do that. He should
Speaker 1: ask me for this firearm. Or this, firearm ors whatever
Speaker 1: from a list that he's printed out, and then I
Speaker 1: would hand them to him as he asked for them,
Speaker 1: which is the procedure. But this bloke just went there
Speaker 1: and started to help himself. And Sam, not that he's
Speaker 1: overly suspicious, but he didn't trust this process because he thought, well,
Speaker 1: apart from anything else, they could plant something in the safe.
Speaker 1: If you let somebody into the safe ahead of you,
Speaker 1: you don't know what they might do. They might be
Speaker 1: able to plant something incriminating in the safe and cause
Speaker 1: trouble for you, and that wouldn't be good. So Sam
Speaker 1: was quite agitated by this, and he made his point
Speaker 1: to them without being rude or anything, and said, you're
Speaker 1: not doing this the right way. You didn't ring me,
Speaker 1: you didn't make an appointment handling this stuff without me
Speaker 1: handing it to you. And what I do want you
Speaker 1: to do is to write down what it is you're taking,
Speaker 1: because what Sam had was, apart from a big safe
Speaker 1: full of guns, he had two other saves full of ammunition.
Speaker 1: And I'm talking large safes and large amounts of ammunition.
Speaker 1: Because Sam is one of these guys, it's became a
Speaker 1: borderline o possessive hobby. And I've seen guys like this.
Speaker 1: We've all seen them, guys that play golf for ride
Speaker 1: bikes or something. They cannot help themselves. They go and
Speaker 1: buy a better putter, they buy a better driver, They
Speaker 1: buy you five dozen really high class balls because they're
Speaker 1: four dollars off, and they end up with a shed
Speaker 1: full of gear that really they don't need at all,
Speaker 1: They only need some of it, but they can't stop
Speaker 1: themselves collecting the stuff. And Sam had spent most of
Speaker 1: his adult life going to sports shops, gun shops, and
Speaker 1: gun shows, where if he saw or a bargain in
Speaker 1: the way of ammunition, he would buy it. And he
Speaker 1: thought his attitude was, well, if I can buy it cheaply,
Speaker 1: I can split it up with my friends at the
Speaker 1: gun clubs, and you know, it's a good thing to have.
Speaker 1: And the price of ammunition goes up continually year on year.
Speaker 1: If I can buy it cheaply, I'm ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: And God bless him, that's his business, what he does
Speaker 1: with his own money, and what he'd done with a
Speaker 1: lot of it. He'd bought probably forty or fifty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars worth of ammo over, you know, probably two or
Speaker 1: three decades, so it's not out of the way. But
Speaker 1: it's a lot of ammo. And there are cartons of
Speaker 1: this ammo, and it's big and it's heavy, there's lots
Speaker 1: of it. For all that, it wouldn't be hard to
Speaker 1: count by the packet, wouldn't be hard to open a
Speaker 1: cart on and say, well, this is obviously twenty packets
Speaker 1: of forty rounds each, that's eight hundred or whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. They didn't do that, Samsung, please count it out.
Speaker 1: And the detective said to him, I haven't got time
Speaker 1: for that. We haven't got time. Just loaded up and
Speaker 1: he ordered the other two police, who were looking quite
Speaker 1: embarrassed about this. They didn't really think it was a
Speaker 1: great idea because they know SEMs just a nice old culture,
Speaker 1: and it all smelt.
Speaker 2: Wrong to them.
Speaker 1: According to Sam's thoughts about them, he thought they were embarrassed.
Speaker 1: They carry it out and placed in one of the SUVs.
Speaker 1: There is so much ammunition here, listeners, two big broad
Speaker 1: high safes full of ammunition that it loaded down that
Speaker 1: suv so low that it pushed the springs right down
Speaker 1: so that it was nearly bellying onto the tires.
Speaker 2: It was totally overloaded.
Speaker 1: They needed a one ton Newt and they're loading it
Speaker 1: into an suv. That gets a bit sad if it's
Speaker 1: got half a ton in the back, and it was sad.
Speaker 2: It was overloaded.
Speaker 1: And eventually they've loaded everything up, including SEM's firearms, which
Speaker 1: are right full shotguns, pistols. There's more than twenty all up,
Speaker 1: twenty something and they put them sort of in where
Speaker 1: the passenger seat would fold down, and they've put all
Speaker 1: the ammunition behind it. And then they've driven away. But
Speaker 1: they've written down the guns. You know, here's one Savage
Speaker 1: twenty two, here's one Ruga two two three, whatever it
Speaker 1: might be. But they haven't noted the ammunition. They haven't
Speaker 1: counted the ammunition. They've merely written on the receipt ammunition various. Now,
Speaker 1: that covers a lot of ground. That is like calling
Speaker 1: World War II an international incident. They leave, As far
Speaker 1: as we know, they go to Ballarat. As far as
Speaker 1: we know, they unloaded at Ballarat Police station. But how
Speaker 1: can we be sure. We don't know if they went
Speaker 1: straight there, We don't know if they went somewhere else first.
Speaker 1: We just don't know. No one knows it would appear,
Speaker 1: except possibly whoever drove that car. Now, not even all
Speaker 1: three of the police might know, because they had two cars,
Speaker 1: so at least one of them drives the other one.
Speaker 1: Possibly two of them drive the other one, and one
Speaker 1: drives the one with the ammunition. So at best we
Speaker 1: can say that one of those police knows where he
Speaker 1: took the ammunition and the guns. We believe it to
Speaker 1: be the beller at police station. If they diverted at
Speaker 1: any stage along the way, we don't know, and it's
Speaker 1: probably impossible to prove. What happens next is Sam takes
Speaker 1: the bogus avo, this AVO that should never have been
Speaker 1: written out. It's clearly obtained by someone who is ap
Speaker 1: plausible liar, essentially in order to punish him for daring
Speaker 1: not to pay her the commission she thought she was owed.
Speaker 1: It's an abuse of process at the very least, and
Speaker 1: it possibly involves Perge. Really if she's sworn falsely to this,
Speaker 1: a magistrate finds within a matter of days or weeks
Speaker 1: when it gets to court that the AVO is rubbish.
Speaker 1: It's a piece of junk. It should never have been
Speaker 1: drawn up, it shouldn't have been acted on, and essentially
Speaker 1: metaphorically speaking, the magistrate tears it up, so Sam Mahfoud
Speaker 1: is vindicated. It should never have been acted on. He's
Speaker 1: happy that that's been torn up, but he's unhappy that
Speaker 1: he's guns and his ammunition are.
Speaker 2: Still with the police. Now.
Speaker 1: As far as we know, the guns and ammunition did
Speaker 1: not leave Ballarat and go to the Police Property Office
Speaker 1: in Melbourne, in Collingwood. As far as we know, I've
Speaker 1: been told that by a Ballarat police officer who should know,
Speaker 1: and I would suggest there's no reason to obscure the truth.
Speaker 1: I'd see no reason to do it. So, as far
Speaker 1: as anyone knows, including Sam, his firearms and his ammunition
Speaker 1: were deposited either all of them or most of them.
Speaker 2: At ball At police station.
Speaker 1: He was told that they were put in some sort
Speaker 1: of storeroom thing where every time police at the station
Speaker 1: wanted to get it, you know, reams of paper or spare,
Speaker 1: uniforms of god knows what, that they were standing on
Speaker 1: the guns and walking through.
Speaker 2: Them and all the rest of it.
Speaker 1: And he believes that to be true because when the
Speaker 1: AVO is torn up and when Sam says, well, I've
Speaker 1: got to get my property back now, and they call
Speaker 1: him in and said, yep. He goes in there to
Speaker 1: pick up the guns and they hand them over, and
Speaker 1: he said, they're scratched. They've been on the floor, they're
Speaker 1: all scratched, they're knocked about.
Speaker 2: The sites have all.
Speaker 1: Been kicked around so that they're crooked, they're no longer
Speaker 1: sighted correctly. And not only that, and this made him
Speaker 1: particularly agitated. He said, clearly some of them had been used,
Speaker 1: and he knows this because he checked, being a very
Speaker 1: careful shooter who does the right thing for safety. He
Speaker 1: removed magazines from his rifles and he said, look at this.
Speaker 1: One of the magazines had eight bullets in it. Someone
Speaker 1: obviously had taken that rifle out shooting somewhere or give
Speaker 1: it a few test shots or whatever, and used it.
Speaker 1: And they'd left it with eight live rounds in the
Speaker 1: magazine and a semi automatic rifle, which is a cardinal's
Speaker 1: sin of gun handling. You just don't do that, and
Speaker 1: if you were a private in the army, you would
Speaker 1: get into a lot of trouble for doing that. It's
Speaker 1: a punishable offense in the armed forces to do stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and I think probably in the police force.
Speaker 1: You know, if you return with your side arm and
Speaker 1: you're handed around with bullets in the magazine and haven't
Speaker 1: properly cleared it. I think that would be a breach
Speaker 1: of regulations, and so it should be. But when Sam
Speaker 1: gets his guns back, they've been used in a used
Speaker 1: and one of them's been left loaded. He's deeply unhappy
Speaker 1: about that. But he's more unhappy about this. The ammunition
Speaker 1: they'd handed over. This included many thousands of rounds of
Speaker 1: twenty two ammunition, between twenty and thirty thousand rounds. Twenty
Speaker 1: two is the little bullets. You can buy them in
Speaker 1: big blocks of five thousand rounds, and he said there
Speaker 1: was between twenty and thirty thousand rounds.
Speaker 2: He got some of that back.
Speaker 1: Other bullets that had been taken, other cartridges that have
Speaker 1: been taken were nine millimeter pistol ammunition. They took lots
Speaker 1: of it from his place. None came back, not one round.
Speaker 1: All these nine millimeter pistol ammunition had vanished. Other pistol
Speaker 1: rounds had gone in the raid, the so called raid.
Speaker 1: Three point fifty seven caliber pistol ammunition I think forty
Speaker 1: five ACP. They call it forty five colt, which is
Speaker 1: a heavy caliber round for handgun and thirty eight special
Speaker 1: which used to be used. I think when police had
Speaker 1: the thirty eight revolvers back in the day in Victoria,
Speaker 1: they could use the thirty eight special ammunition. Interesting because
Speaker 1: perhaps some police somewhere might have come across a thirty
Speaker 1: eight revolver here and there and very interesting forty caliber
Speaker 1: semi automatic pistol ammunition. Now forty caliber semi automatic pistl
Speaker 1: ammunition fits the Victorian police issue side arm, that is
Speaker 1: the Smith and Wesson. I think it's a six steen
Speaker 1: shot semi automatic pistol. It's a very efficient, well thought
Speaker 1: of side arm for military and.
Speaker 2: Police use, etc. Etc.
Speaker 1: And it takes the forty caliber round. And I am
Speaker 1: told on good authority that that round is hard for
Speaker 1: civilians to buy in Victoria. There's not a lot of
Speaker 1: it about. The police obviously use that caliber for their
Speaker 1: side arms. People in security industry and so forth, they
Speaker 1: said it's not much fun having forty caliber pistols because
Speaker 1: you can't get the amma for whatever reason. Now Sam
Speaker 1: had some, He had forty caliber, but it didn't come
Speaker 1: back either. So when he gets his ammunition back, he's
Speaker 1: lost a fair bit of twenty two's. He's lost all
Speaker 1: the nine milk, and he's lost significant amounts of all
Speaker 1: these other pistol rounds. One of the things he did
Speaker 1: get back, this is funny. One of the things he
Speaker 1: did get back was all his own reloads. Now, Sam's
Speaker 1: one of those shooting enthusiasts who to save money, and
Speaker 1: because he's an enthusiast, he reloads his own ammunition. Is
Speaker 1: it something that I know? When I was young on
Speaker 1: a farm, relatives of mine would reload their own fox
Speaker 1: loads to shoot foxes and so forth. It was a
Speaker 1: way to save money. If around was worth a dollar
Speaker 1: to buy, they could make it up with gunpowder and
Speaker 1: a projectile for maybe a third of the cost or
Speaker 1: something like that. So it's a cost saving measure. Sam
Speaker 1: had lots and lots of reloads that he'd done himself.
Speaker 1: Those are regarded by shooters as sort of perhaps inferior
Speaker 1: to factory loads, or at least not as consistent as
Speaker 1: factory loads. And the fact of the matter was that
Speaker 1: Sam got back all his reloads, but he didn't get
Speaker 1: back nearly all his factory loads, the nice, shiny, clean
Speaker 1: factory bullets, most of them didn't come back. Sam says,
Speaker 1: he claims that he's lost something like sixty thousand rounds
Speaker 1: of ammunition. Now, whether it's forty eight or fifty three
Speaker 1: or fifty nine or sixty five thousand doesn't matter. It
Speaker 1: is a shed load. It is a ute.
Speaker 2: Load of ammunition that he's lost.
Speaker 1: And one of the points he makes about this, he's
Speaker 1: a couple of good points here. One is this that
Speaker 1: when he finds he brought all this stuff home, he
Speaker 1: was assisted by a friendly Ballarat policeman. I think it
Speaker 1: was probably the district firearms officer helped him move this
Speaker 1: stuff back home because it's quite heavy and Sam's a
Speaker 1: little old bloke, and so this kindly policeman who might
Speaker 1: have felt a bit sorry for him, helped him unload,
Speaker 1: then take it inside and lock it up. And Sam said,
Speaker 1: look at that. There's the two safes where the ammunition
Speaker 1: came out of. And the firearms officer said, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: and Sam said they were both full. But now look
Speaker 1: all the stuff that he got back fitted in less
Speaker 1: than one safe. He could fit it all in one
Speaker 1: safe and there was still some room. He lost about
Speaker 1: two thirds by volume of his cartridges of his bullets,
Speaker 1: and that is a big loss financially, It's interesting because
Speaker 1: Sam wasn't selling bullets on the black market, and so
Speaker 1: what it's worth on the black market doesn't matter the Sam.
Speaker 1: What matters to Sam is that if he wants to
Speaker 1: buy replacements, he's now got a gun by replacement ammunition
Speaker 1: for top dollar rather than use the stuff he'd bought
Speaker 1: cheaply in the past. But the black market price is
Speaker 1: relevant here because if it is possible that any of
Speaker 1: that ammunition leaked onto the street, leaked onto the black market,
Speaker 1: it is worth a phenomenal amount and bullets that might
Speaker 1: be worth in bulk forty thousand dollars. When it's sitting
Speaker 1: in a license shooter's safe out on the streets of
Speaker 1: the northern suburbs of Melbourne or the western suburbs of Sydney,
Speaker 1: or wherever else, there are people who want to buy it.
Speaker 1: Some of those pistol rounds, particularly particularly nine milk, because
Speaker 1: it can be used in many of the common semi
Speaker 1: automatic pistols and can also be used in machine pistols
Speaker 1: and sub machine guns. It's a universal round, very common
Speaker 1: and therefore greatly sought after by the bad guys who
Speaker 1: have got nine millimeter weapons and that stuff could bring
Speaker 1: whatever somebody wants to pay for it.
Speaker 2: Because if you're a.
Speaker 1: Drug baron or a tobacco war king making fifty grand
Speaker 1: a week or one hundred grand a week, or God
Speaker 1: only knows lots of money illicit money, you don't care
Speaker 1: if a box of bullets cost you fifty bucks or
Speaker 1: one hundred bucks or five hundred bucks. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: to you because you just want the bullets. Because you
Speaker 1: don't actually need ten thousand bullets you're a crook. You
Speaker 1: probably want fifty at best, because you want two magazines full,
Speaker 1: and you might shoot a few off at a tree
Speaker 1: somewhere to make sure you know what you're doing. And
Speaker 1: otherwise you don't need big numbers. You just need some
Speaker 1: bullets to do the dirty work that you're going to
Speaker 1: do to stand over somebody by shooting at their house,
Speaker 1: breaking their windows, shooting up their cars, or indeed to
Speaker 1: use the illicit weapon as a weapon to injure or
Speaker 1: kill somebody. You don't need big numbers of bullets to
Speaker 1: do that. In so price is no object. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the dark sides of this story. If
Speaker 1: any of those bullets, any of this ammunition, found its
Speaker 1: way on the street. It is going to go to
Speaker 1: the very people that are the most dangerous people in
Speaker 1: the community. That is, armed criminals, the sort of people
Speaker 1: who are not only shooting each other, but may well
Speaker 1: shoot innocent people by accident when they're trying to shoot
Speaker 1: other crooks, or they might use it against police. They
Speaker 1: might use it against police. So the culpability of any police,
Speaker 1: and we're not saying this happened, but the culpability of
Speaker 1: any police who leak seized ammunition back on the black
Speaker 1: market is very high because it could be used against
Speaker 1: themselves or against their own colleagues. And if I'm a
Speaker 1: copper and mildurer and I've seized a moment, I've sold
Speaker 1: it to some blog behind a pub somewhere and that
Speaker 1: ends up in the streets of Northcote, it could get
Speaker 1: one of my own police colleagues killed. That is very
Speaker 1: bad news. And that is the suspicion here. The suspicion
Speaker 1: is that some seized weapons in some cases not in
Speaker 1: this case, and seized ammunition could find its way back
Speaker 1: onto the black market. Now, Sam Mafud deeply unhappy. He
Speaker 1: briefed a law firm in Melbourne. That law firms drawn
Speaker 1: up legal documents in order to take the Victoria Police
Speaker 1: in the state of Victoria to court over the missing ammunition.
Speaker 1: And they're claiming you certain things. They want damages and
Speaker 1: they want exemplary damages and the whole catastrophe. Now, it
Speaker 1: would seem to me, as an amateur bush lawyer, that
Speaker 1: they probably have a reasonably strong case despite the fact
Speaker 1: that this has been reported to Iback, and Iback, in
Speaker 1: its wisdom, handed it back to the police and said, well,
Speaker 1: you investigate it yourself. And apparently it's been investigated internally.
Speaker 1: And I think it was another neighboring police station, so
Speaker 1: it's Ballarat, that's the one in the gun here, So
Speaker 1: it's been another police station in the general area has
Speaker 1: been asked to look at it. And you know, whether
Speaker 1: that was Balan or Jealong or Sumbury or something, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure. But the point is that police investigating police
Speaker 1: is never a great look, even if it is kosher,
Speaker 1: even if it is sincere, and even if they're trying,
Speaker 1: it doesn't look good. The net result of this does
Speaker 1: not look good. It doesn't look good at all. It
Speaker 1: looks as if it's been put in the not to
Speaker 1: be solved basket. It's been put into that basket marked
Speaker 1: nothing to see here, please move on, and that is
Speaker 1: not a great thing. The official response to Sam's claims
Speaker 1: is that there's nothing in them, that they've investigated and
Speaker 1: found nothing wrong, and that basically they are denying that
Speaker 1: it's true. Now Interestingly, no one in the police force
Speaker 1: at any level is calling Sam Mafood a liar. No
Speaker 1: one has come out and said he tells untruth, he's
Speaker 1: telling porkies, he's just trying to leverage this against us.
Speaker 1: No one has made that allegation about him. They don't
Speaker 1: want to call him a liar. One of the problems
Speaker 1: the police force has if this goes to court is
Speaker 1: this that when they say we handed back all the
Speaker 1: bullets that we took, all the ammunition we took Sam's lawyer,
Speaker 1: is this going to say, how do you know you
Speaker 1: refused to count it, you didn't count it, You don't
Speaker 1: know how much ammunition you took, and you don't really
Speaker 1: know how much you gave back.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for
Speaker 1: True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton for my columns,
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