Speaker 1: Every week we are joined by the Victorian Police a
Speaker 1: different area or a different department, and this week we.
Speaker 2: Are And you know what, I am never short of
Speaker 2: amazement of how many different departments there are of the
Speaker 2: Victorian Police. Well, this one is serious, though, Ja.
Speaker 1: They are recruiting as well. Remember whether it's Dogs, Squad,
Speaker 1: General Judies, Highway Patrol or from the Special Operations Group.
Speaker 1: These are the boys that are not here to muck around.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, look at the outfits. They're not here.
Speaker 1: Good morning.
Speaker 2: They're not costumes, I said, uniforms. Uniforms. We have team
Speaker 2: lead morning guys.
Speaker 1: Ben from the Special Operations Group joining us this morning. Morning.
Speaker 1: Betty's just taken off the helmet. Morning Ben, I'll get
Speaker 1: you to boost that. Mike. How a mate.
Speaker 3: Good, Thanks for having us morning, Ben.
Speaker 1: Now, I'll be honest, I've been trying.
Speaker 2: To you're scary looking.
Speaker 1: I know I was going. I've been trying some gags
Speaker 1: on the boys and it's a tough crowd.
Speaker 2: You guys are some of the most serious within the
Speaker 2: Victorian Police. But when we were talking about having you in,
Speaker 2: I said to Jason, I'm sure they're all just big
Speaker 2: teddy bears inside and Jace got to meet you before
Speaker 2: I did, and Jas was like, you know what was
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're right about being teddy bears.
Speaker 2: These guys are tough.
Speaker 1: How long you be doing big soft?
Speaker 2: Is it hurt?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Jace did try and walk in while I was getting dressed,
Speaker 3: so we got off on the wrong.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was my bad. How long you've been in
Speaker 1: the force? Bed?
Speaker 3: I've been in for fifteen years in the past force,
Speaker 3: and I've been at the Special Operations Group for eight years?
Speaker 1: Right? How many years would someone normally be in the
Speaker 1: police before they can move to special operations?
Speaker 3: Look, it really varies. Historically we probably wanted more experienced
Speaker 3: police officers, but we do recruiting of really junior members now, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: you can be as little as two years in the
Speaker 3: police force, really, and if you pass the selection program,
Speaker 3: then you'll come to the unit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right.
Speaker 2: And Ben, for those of us who aren't really familiar,
Speaker 2: which is probably a good thing with a special Operations Group,
Speaker 2: what exactly do you guys.
Speaker 3: Do you'll I heard you guys use the example before
Speaker 3: about the SWAT, so that's probably one that everyone can understand.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: The SOG is classified as a police tactical group. Every
Speaker 3: state has one, every state in territory has one, and
Speaker 3: our main role is as a counter terrorism response. Right.
Speaker 3: So look, we thankfully that stuff doesn't happen every day
Speaker 3: in Victoria. So we spend our time chasing some of
Speaker 3: the worst defenders around Victoria, mainly because they're using and
Speaker 3: carrying forearms, right, And that's what we do.
Speaker 1: So let's say, if I try, is there a lot.
Speaker 2: More of that happening than we actually hear about, like
Speaker 2: behind the scenes, because we obviously get some stuff reported
Speaker 2: in the media, but I imagine there's a lot more
Speaker 2: going on that we don't know about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think so. Look, we arrest over two hundred
Speaker 3: people a year. Really, that's a job every few days,
Speaker 3: and right, you probably only see a handful of those
Speaker 3: high profile ones actually making news. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So if I hypothetical I try and pull off a
Speaker 1: bank job in the city, right, and I hold it
Speaker 1: up with hostages, would I see you boys?
Speaker 3: Hopefully you in the CS but we'd be there, how
Speaker 3: fright that is Jesus?
Speaker 1: So? Can I imagine there's there's different positions in the team,
Speaker 1: Like is there a sniper for example?
Speaker 3: Yeah, we've got specialists, so once you're at the unit,
Speaker 3: you can specialize. We've got snipers, which everyone's probably heard of.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 3: We've got a tactical canine, handlers, breeches and meetings on
Speaker 3: the team. We've got specialists roping and repelling capability, airborne
Speaker 3: and water operations capability. Yeah, so there is specialties within
Speaker 3: the team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, Ben, You've got something like this very calm
Speaker 2: presence about you you're Is that part of the training
Speaker 2: or is that part of the profile of what they're
Speaker 2: looking for when they're when they're trying to find you guys,
Speaker 2: because I imagine you have to keep your cool under
Speaker 2: extraordinary amounts of pressure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is a high pressure job. And yeah, I
Speaker 3: suppose on the surface may do seem calm, but we
Speaker 3: react the same as every other person when a stressful
Speaker 3: situation happens. But it certainly doesn't help us in a
Speaker 3: stressful situation to lose our call, so we try and
Speaker 3: keep a level head.
Speaker 1: But so for example, you know, when like your order
Speaker 1: Uber eats and you find out the drivers on a
Speaker 1: pushbike not a car, do you.
Speaker 3: Know I've become more enraged than an Uber driver than
Speaker 3: than I do find account terrors an operation.
Speaker 1: Sorry, I was just going to ask massive story, obviously
Speaker 1: global story, the assassination attempt on Trump. You guys would
Speaker 1: have looked at that and pulled it apart. Surely.
Speaker 3: I was glued to the news like I was watching
Speaker 3: Clint as he broke it down. And I don't know
Speaker 3: why he just couldn't commit to calling it an actual
Speaker 3: assassination attempt instead of a possible because it was pretty
Speaker 3: obvious at the start.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I would.
Speaker 3: Love to be a fly on the wall in that
Speaker 3: debrief because I even saw some AI generated stuff about
Speaker 3: Trump turning his head and how close it actually was
Speaker 3: he was.
Speaker 2: It would have been Have you not seen that? Jason?
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, But do you look at things like that
Speaker 2: and think, how the hell did that guy get on
Speaker 2: the roof and they didn't notice because looking at you,
Speaker 2: Ban New would have spotted him.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, America is a different beast. We train for
Speaker 3: every worst possible situation, obviously, but I've got a huge
Speaker 3: amount of faith in our snippers, so we would like
Speaker 3: to think, however, I wasn't there. We would like to
Speaker 3: think we'd have that covered a huge amount of faith.
Speaker 2: Some of the crazy crazy training and pressure tests you
Speaker 2: guys have to go through to get into your position.
Speaker 3: So probably the most well known within police is the
Speaker 3: selection phase of the course. So it's a ten day
Speaker 3: selection phase and really that's where we want to break
Speaker 3: down the individual to see what their true character is.
Speaker 3: If they're successful during that selection phase and they're deem suitable,
Speaker 3: then they'll most likely come on board in a training capacity,
Speaker 3: so we'll teach them over thirteen weeks. We'll then teach them.
Speaker 3: But I would say that selection phase, you know for
Speaker 3: the first time that you do it, grateful only have
Speaker 3: to do it once. Yes, some of the one of
Speaker 3: the biggest eye opening things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I commend you guys for the job you do.
Speaker 1: But also having to go home to a family after
Speaker 1: some of the bad stuff that you guys would have
Speaker 1: to do must be incredibly tough. Is it hard to
Speaker 1: leave work at work?
Speaker 3: It is. I've got a young family, yeah, and I
Speaker 3: suppose I prioritize trying to detach from work as much
Speaker 3: as I can so get home, really invest in the kids.
Speaker 3: MU sure I'm present for them. It is hard, though,
Speaker 3: I just use that drive home usually after a job,
Speaker 3: the adrenaline is high. To decompress, put on a bit
Speaker 3: of music. Yeah, and hopefully when I walk in the door,
Speaker 3: I'm good for my most important job, which is out
Speaker 3: of three young kids.
Speaker 2: Because are you allowed to talk about what happens in
Speaker 2: your day? Because I know that, like you hear about
Speaker 2: whatever our equivalent of the Secret Services. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that's what it's called here, but you're not allowed
Speaker 2: to talk about it. And so you guys must hold
Speaker 2: because there's so much confidential information that you're dealing with.
Speaker 2: You must have to hold so much in deal with
Speaker 2: it on your own. Is that is that tricky?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: It is. Yeah, Look, we do we're not allowed to
Speaker 3: share a lot of information about the jobs that we do.
Speaker 3: I suppose a lot. We were fortunate that a lot
Speaker 3: of them go well, So we don't celebrate the success
Speaker 3: of those jobs. Really, it's just onto the next one.
Speaker 3: So you just internalize that feeling have success, and that's
Speaker 3: what brings you back to work the next day for
Speaker 3: the next job.
Speaker 1: I'm just looking at all the gear you're carrying on you.
Speaker 1: It's very different to the walky talkies I got from
Speaker 1: Tandy for the kids. Can we just quickly go through
Speaker 1: the gig because you've got scissors on there as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there my trauma she is. So if you're injured,
Speaker 3: I'm going to cut your clothes off.
Speaker 1: Oh this is a new shirt, if you could take
Speaker 1: it off. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So obviously we carry firearms. Now, there's no secret. You
Speaker 3: can see that.
Speaker 1: Two guns on it, that rifle. Yeah, a song just started.
Speaker 1: You can pause to it. I'm not I'm not wrapping.
Speaker 1: You can stay on the air for as long as
Speaker 1: you want. Ben, absolutely all right. So what else you
Speaker 1: got on there?
Speaker 3: So? Yeah, we carry e SpeI ammunition, a taser, stun grenades,
Speaker 3: some caps can spray, yeah right, and can communicate to it.
Speaker 1: So I've seen and bear with me. I was watching
Speaker 1: Bad Boys with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith and they
Speaker 1: threw in the is it stung grenades? Right, So they
Speaker 1: go in, they lot off a huge loud bang and
Speaker 1: then is it a flash? Is it?
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah right, they're louder.
Speaker 3: They're louder than you can ever imagine. Yeah right, they're
Speaker 3: so loud.
Speaker 1: I'm going to take your word for it. Hey, hey,
Speaker 1: we're going to go to a song when we come back.
Speaker 1: I know you were involved in a very famous case
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty one here in Victoria, which included two
Speaker 1: young children being kidnapped. It's a full on story. We're
Speaker 1: going to come back and chat about that. But just
Speaker 1: to go into the song, I've got something if you
Speaker 1: want it to take back to the training facility. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what. I'm not sure what you guys use
Speaker 1: as target practice? Can we bring in the oversizer? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Bring in bring in the target suggestion. So Clint has
Speaker 1: just done a photo shoot for Men's Health and we
Speaker 1: have a giant cardboard cutout.
Speaker 2: Now do you wreckon yours?
Speaker 3: That's work?
Speaker 1: It has isn't it?
Speaker 2: It hasn't it? Dreking your snipers could shoot those abs
Speaker 2: off in one.
Speaker 3: That's as dream. Right there, we are.
Speaker 1: On the air or with the Victorian Police this morning.
Speaker 1: The SOG boys are in the house. More with them
Speaker 1: right after do a leap bar on Novar Jason Lawrence.
Speaker 2: Tell me what's you know?
Speaker 1: My favorite segment. Every couple of weeks we get a
Speaker 1: different area of the Victorian Police in this morning, we've
Speaker 1: got Ben who is the team leader of the Special
Speaker 1: Operations Group. These are the SOG boys that get dispatched
Speaker 1: hostage negotiations terror, a stramas.
Speaker 2: All the really serious stuff.
Speaker 1: Ben is ready girls in the any females in the squad.
Speaker 3: No, not in our units. So we work closely with
Speaker 3: other specialist units and we do work with females in
Speaker 3: those units. But yeah, no female has been able to
Speaker 3: pass sle phase yet. Yeah, right, interesting.
Speaker 1: Sorry, it's just gonna say I've seen Lauren in full
Speaker 1: flight up against her partner and she would be a
Speaker 1: very good weapon for the Victorian police.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no one, No one gets away from me.
Speaker 3: There's definitely some untapped skills out there.
Speaker 2: Ben, just quickly. Do you ever get scared? Has anything
Speaker 2: ever frightened you? Because you guys are so tough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you probably get a little bit caught up in
Speaker 3: the pressure of actually doing the job. But we react
Speaker 3: the same as any other person. So there's certain times
Speaker 3: that I've been in situations and I've thought, yeah, this
Speaker 3: might be it for me, especially when you're driving at
Speaker 3: really high speed or you know, you're jumping out of
Speaker 3: a helicopter like it is quite dangerous. But we just
Speaker 3: react normally like every other person. We're not immune to
Speaker 3: We still put out pants on a monthly at a
Speaker 3: time in the morning, so we're not immune to any
Speaker 3: of those feelings.
Speaker 1: But if the moment comes and you get the green
Speaker 1: light to take someone out, you'll do it, no hesitation.
Speaker 1: I can't say no.
Speaker 3: Hesitating. I know.
Speaker 1: It's what I said before. Mate. They will take you
Speaker 1: out and go and get some nuggets. That's what they do. Hey.
Speaker 1: There was a famous story in the news in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one here in Victoria. Take a listen.
Speaker 4: He went to the family home in Melbourne's eastern suburbs
Speaker 4: and waited for his expose to leave before breaking in.
Speaker 4: Armed with a knife. He bound and gagged his wife
Speaker 4: and two kids, A three and five, before kidnapping the
Speaker 4: children for eleven hours.
Speaker 1: Then you were part of the crew that was responsible
Speaker 1: for rescuing the kids. Do you remember the job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll always remember that job. It will stick with
Speaker 3: me for a long time. Great result, obviously the result
Speaker 3: we wanted. But yeah, certainly pretty tense, tense day in Melbourne.
Speaker 1: That was so he'd stormed in and taken the kids hostage.
Speaker 1: And did he have a weapon, Yeah he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So I think the actual kidnapping I won't go
Speaker 3: into too much, but it was pretty traumatic for the
Speaker 3: kids and for the mother. I bet and pretty violent.
Speaker 3: So we knew from the outset that it was a
Speaker 3: serious job at ky Napping and that's that's one of
Speaker 3: our main jobs that we deployed to is those live
Speaker 3: hostage jobs. So we were deployed almost straight away.
Speaker 1: So just on that, like say, if it's a hostage situation,
Speaker 1: because a lot of the time we'll be watching on
Speaker 1: the news and the standoff can go I don't know,
Speaker 1: ten hours and being naive as a person at home,
Speaker 1: sometimes we're just like just bloody, go in and get them.
Speaker 1: Is there a time period?
Speaker 3: Not necessarily. Look, there's certain times where the hostage take
Speaker 3: will do something that forces us to act, but we'll
Speaker 3: always approach something from a negotiation, you know, safety first
Speaker 3: point of view. We at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: we want everyone just to come out peacefully in a life.
Speaker 3: But make no mistake, we're ready to go if it
Speaker 3: goes south and we need to act.
Speaker 2: I mean, you guys do such an amazing job in
Speaker 2: protecting people and keeping us all safe.
Speaker 4: Is there like.
Speaker 2: An expiry date for you guys on how long you
Speaker 2: can do it? Because it must be so stressful. Do
Speaker 2: people only last in this job for a certain amount
Speaker 2: of time or are there people that have been doing
Speaker 2: it for tens of years.
Speaker 3: It really varies, like I've been doing it eight years,
Speaker 3: and I think the key to lasting in the job,
Speaker 3: especially this role, is just having that balance, so making sure,
Speaker 3: as I said before, that you can go away from
Speaker 3: work and really detach and you've got something worthwhile to
Speaker 3: invest in away from work, because, like you're saying, laws,
Speaker 3: if you just commit to work one hundred percent of
Speaker 3: the time, you'll definitely burn out.
Speaker 1: But let's be honest, from a fitness level, there's no
Speaker 1: senior Sergeant Tom Croydon part of the SG squad is there.
Speaker 3: He may have been in a previous lot.
Speaker 1: Now he's got a desk job. Because there's some chubby
Speaker 1: cops out there. I've seen him, and I can say,
Speaker 1: because I am, they're not doing this job. They are
Speaker 1: not doing this job. Well, can we just say thank
Speaker 1: you for the work you do? Honestly? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And it's so brave.
Speaker 1: Will you guys be traveling into state when the Olympics
Speaker 1: are on the games?
Speaker 3: Sorry?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we do.
Speaker 3: We help our inter state counterparts with major events like that.
Speaker 3: So they've come down and traveled and helped us before.
Speaker 3: With recent events and hopefully we'll be able to support
Speaker 3: them the same.
Speaker 1: Right and just just finally, this is just for the police.
Speaker 1: Nerd in me. What vehicles do you guys get around here?
Speaker 1: Can you say?
Speaker 3: I'll say full drives.
Speaker 2: I feel like you should be in a tank in
Speaker 2: that outfit.
Speaker 3: We've got armored vehicles. We've got we've got some armored vehicles.
Speaker 1: What's the name of the big armored cat that you
Speaker 1: look like?
Speaker 2: A bear cat? Guy?
Speaker 4: Ben?
Speaker 2: In that outfit a manual job.
Speaker 3: It's an auto, it is, and it's it's left hand
Speaker 3: steer as well, because a big American company Lenko.
Speaker 1: Heated seats.
Speaker 3: No, no heated seats.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Chase, can it? Does it fit through
Speaker 2: the drive through? That'll be his next question, does it
Speaker 2: fit through.
Speaker 1: The drive.
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 1: Look, Ben and the crew from the Special Operations grow
Speaker 1: thank you so much for coming in. Boys. We really
Speaker 1: appreciate it.
Speaker 2: And thank you for everything that you do to keep
Speaker 2: us safe. You guys do an amazing job. We love
Speaker 2: the Victorian Police.
Speaker 1: Hopefully you don't see this through a scope anytime soon.
Speaker 3: Thanks having USC on your.
Speaker 1: Matelauren wake up feeling good on Nomber one hundred. Jason
Speaker 1: Lauren on socials,