Speaker 1: They can explain the lousy paperwork, the lousy database. They
Speaker 1: can blame the nameless, faceless contractors for stuffing everything up.
Speaker 1: If you leave officers and public servants in charge of.
Speaker 2: Property as they call it in the police.
Speaker 1: Force, specifically in charge of guns, drugs or cash, there
Speaker 1: is always the change that human nature being what it is,
Speaker 1: that the rats might start to nibble at the property,
Speaker 1: the rats in the ranks. I'm Andrew Ruhle, and this
Speaker 1: is life and crimes. We often circle back to the
Speaker 1: subject of guns. We mentioned them the other day in
Speaker 1: regards to an old time heist of handguns in South Melbourne.
Speaker 1: But I have to say that some things don't go
Speaker 1: out of fashion, and that crooks have been keen on
Speaker 1: pinching guns, obtaining guns, buying guns on the black market,
Speaker 1: selling guns, and using guns and waving them around it
Speaker 1: other people since about the time of the gold rushers
Speaker 1: at the very least, and nothing much has changed. Despite
Speaker 1: the fact that we now have pretty tough laws about
Speaker 1: all guns, especially handguns, it has not hosed down the
Speaker 1: enthusiasm among some people for owning them or obtaining them
Speaker 1: without the requisite licenses and so forth, and that has
Speaker 1: led to a situation where gun dealers come under pretty
Speaker 1: justified scrutiny because obviously there are a lot of gun
Speaker 1: dealers out there. Some of them will be known to
Speaker 1: potential gun thieves, some of them will be known to
Speaker 1: criminals who want to obtain black market weapons. Some of
Speaker 1: them will be known as gunsmith's or useful people at
Speaker 1: repairing guns so that people can bring guns to them
Speaker 1: to repair, and so on and so forth. So we've
Speaker 1: got a situation which, to some extent has been open
Speaker 1: to exploitation by some elements. It would appear, according to
Speaker 1: some people, that wroughts and alleged raughts happen on both
Speaker 1: sides of the law. And so I'm going to tell
Speaker 1: a story here that has been published in some form
Speaker 1: in the Herald's sun. If it's proven that seized and
Speaker 1: surrendered guns and ammunition have quote vanished unquote from Victoria
Speaker 1: Police's grungy storage warehouse in the north somewhere, it won't
Speaker 1: be a surprise. The public has heard similar scandals before,
Speaker 1: such as the disgraceful episode in which Bent detectives stole
Speaker 1: seized drugs and precursor chemicals from a police storage unit
Speaker 1: to sell to favorite criminals Back in the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: That racket ended when a straight drug squad detective blew
Speaker 1: the whistle on a bunch of crooks, but it cost
Speaker 1: him his career and his peace of mind before the
Speaker 1: law finally moved against rogue cops, the real rats in
Speaker 1: the ranks. Dedicated listeners will recall that that straight drug
Speaker 1: squad detective who is a man who came in here
Speaker 1: and spoke to us at some length, and his name
Speaker 1: is Lochlan McCullough.
Speaker 2: We did a whole series with him.
Speaker 1: One fat rat, thieving detective Kevin Hicks, was jailed and
Speaker 1: some slippery characters quietly moved on to the quiet relief
Speaker 1: of relatively on US colleagues. One of the slippery set,
Speaker 1: the man known.
Speaker 2: To other cops as Grave Deed, was.
Speaker 1: Publicly named after a Beretta undercover pistol went missing from
Speaker 1: a drawer in the drug squad. And when we say
Speaker 1: an undercover pistol, we made a pistol probably unregistered and
Speaker 1: not police issue, a pistol used by detectives when they
Speaker 1: are as drug dealers or criminals. So it obviously has
Speaker 1: to be not a police issue weapon. It has to
Speaker 1: be an orphan something that looks if a crook had it,
Speaker 1: and the undercover coppers would use that when they're out
Speaker 1: and about pretending.
Speaker 2: To be dirty, filthy crooks.
Speaker 1: Okay, that pistol mysteriously disappeared and then mysteriously reappeared when
Speaker 1: the alarm was raised.
Speaker 2: But grave deed decided.
Speaker 1: To resign, as did another officer subsequently charged over serious offenses.
Speaker 1: The allure of stray guns, especially pistols, has been around
Speaker 1: as long as police have. They seem to bring out
Speaker 1: the dirty Harry in the mildest of public servants. One
Speaker 1: next detective told me his crew took a contraband pen
Speaker 1: pistol from a drug squad draw and made sure it
Speaker 1: was found in the draws as in knickers of Cath Petengil,
Speaker 1: remember her, that is Granny Evil, or the Montriarch as
Speaker 1: she's called. And that caused poor old cat quite a
Speaker 1: bit of grief, and it caused the drug squad quite
Speaker 1: a bit of amusement. That's not the sort of throwaway
Speaker 1: story that amuses Kel Glare, who is, of course, as
Speaker 1: older listeners will know, the former Chief Commissioner of Police
Speaker 1: in Victoria. Cops don't come much straight than Kel Glare,
Speaker 1: who after becoming the chief in nineteen eighty seven, campaigned
Speaker 1: against corruption in his five years in the top job,
Speaker 1: and he's now taken a stand against the way police
Speaker 1: apparently mishandled hundreds of seized and surrendered guns. Glare's statement
Speaker 1: about police actions and inaction over custody of firearms and
Speaker 1: ammunition at the force's gun storage throws a spotlight on
Speaker 1: what some see as a shady corner of police work.
Speaker 1: As Chief kell Glare oversaw a big cleanup overdue since
Speaker 1: the days when sp book makers, abortions, sly groggers and
Speaker 1: all the rest of it had half the police force
Speaker 1: in their pocket, a situation that set the scene for
Speaker 1: serious corruption in crime squads and red light districts because
Speaker 1: back in the bad old days, listens squads like the
Speaker 1: robbery Squad, the consorting Squad, the major Crime Squad, and
Speaker 1: districts like Saint Kilda in particular Paran around that area
Speaker 1: windsor Paran Corfield to some extent, those districts had a
Speaker 1: high percentage of offenders, a high percentage of prostitution, stolen
Speaker 1: goods receivers, pawn shops, et cetera. And because they had
Speaker 1: more crooks per square meter. They had more crooked cops
Speaker 1: per square meter. Kel Glare was one of a new
Speaker 1: breed of dedicated and educated officers who conceded that police
Speaker 1: should be rotated through the squads and through the districts
Speaker 1: where temptation was high. Except for the greatly respected Mick Miller,
Speaker 1: Glare's predecessors and some of his contemporaries had tolerated a
Speaker 1: brotherhood of police who let petty corruption flourish and turned
Speaker 1: a blind eye to serious breaches of the law, even
Speaker 1: if they kept their own snouts out of the trough.
Speaker 1: So what he's driving at is that some coppers who
Speaker 1: didn't actually pinch guns or money or whatever, weren't actually
Speaker 1: running brothels on the side or silent goods rackets themselves,
Speaker 1: they turned a blind eye to other police doing it
Speaker 1: because that was the brotherhood system, where you never dobbed
Speaker 1: in a fellow copper. In much the same ways ladies
Speaker 1: and gentlemen, jockeys don't die been other jockeys. It's very similar.
Speaker 1: Coppers and jockeys are more staunch than most crooks. We've
Speaker 1: said this before because it's true during and after Calglare's timers,
Speaker 1: Chief the drug Squad, the Licensing, Gaming and Vice Squad,
Speaker 1: and the once notorious armed Robbers came under stricter management.
Speaker 1: This resulted in a few prosecutions and a few sudden resignations,
Speaker 1: often for alleged medical reasons. Back in the good old days,
Speaker 1: they would say that so and so has been boarded out,
Speaker 1: as in the medical Board has said that that officer
Speaker 1: can leave the force because of an illness that prevents
Speaker 1: them from serving. And that was a way for an
Speaker 1: officer who's under a cloud to leave with their pension,
Speaker 1: with their superannuation, whatever, whatever, and without a black mark
Speaker 1: on their record. It would get them out of the
Speaker 1: police force, away from temptation, and would get rid of them.
Speaker 1: So the Medical Board was often used as a weapon
Speaker 1: to get rid of unwanted coppers without a scandal. Now
Speaker 1: there was another new broom chief commissioner. We all remember
Speaker 1: this one interstate apportee. She was Christine Nixon. Now, I
Speaker 1: thought Christine Nixon wasn't a bad stick myself, but I
Speaker 1: know that there was a lot of resentment of her,
Speaker 1: mainly probably because she came from Sydney. I think Victorian
Speaker 1: coppers didn't like the idea of a Sydney sider an
Speaker 1: interstate coming in and taking over as chief. There would
Speaker 1: have been several assistant commissioners and so forth, deputies and
Speaker 1: things down here.
Speaker 2: Who thought they should have got the job.
Speaker 1: They resented any outside appointment, whether it was from Sydney
Speaker 1: or London or Glasgow or wherever. Some of them, being
Speaker 1: old fashioned and pigheaded, might have resented the fact that
Speaker 1: a woman got the job, because it was then a
Speaker 1: rare thing for women to get the job of being
Speaker 1: head of a police force. But Christine Nixon came down
Speaker 1: without any baggage. She didn't have to protect any of
Speaker 1: her old mates because she didn't have any in Victoria.
Speaker 1: She'd come up through the system in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: Anybody she knew and liked or knew and hated, they
Speaker 1: were back there in Sydney, not here. So she came
Speaker 1: in with a clean slate, and for better or worse,
Speaker 1: she was able to talk to a whole range of
Speaker 1: people about who might have been naughty in the Victorian
Speaker 1: police and who might have been nice. And she would
Speaker 1: have taken on board the advice of various people, not
Speaker 1: sure who those people were, but she could consult people
Speaker 1: widely and get certain advice about certain squads and certain
Speaker 1: individuals in certain squads and in certain places, such as
Speaker 1: he aforesaid, some killed her and Paran and so on,
Speaker 1: and possibly you know, Foot's Gray and Preston and other places. Now,
Speaker 1: Christine Nixon did quite a lot of things, and there's
Speaker 1: no doubt she made the police force much more welcoming
Speaker 1: towards minorities, you know, gender, sexuality and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: She was a bit of a rainbow promoting chief commissioner,
Speaker 1: and that was good in many ways, although it did
Speaker 1: bring her into sort of conflict and ridicule with some
Speaker 1: of her own people, who thought might have been better
Speaker 1: to concentrate on catching crooks, you know, instead of leading
Speaker 1: the gay pride march or whatever. But she did it
Speaker 1: her way, and in many ways she might have been right.
Speaker 1: It's hard to know. Nixon probably these days would have
Speaker 1: been called someone who was semi woke. But her wokeness,
Speaker 1: such as it was, did not extend to waking up
Speaker 1: a very sleepy police backwater that went on just as
Speaker 1: inefficiently as it ever had. That backwater, of course, was
Speaker 1: the corner of the police force that looked after registering
Speaker 1: and licensing guns and gun dealers, and this was an
Speaker 1: area that had rusted on offices and public servants trusted
Speaker 1: for many years with storing a rising tide of seized
Speaker 1: unsurrendered firearms. Now let's just make a point here. If
Speaker 1: you leave people in the mounted squad, the people that
Speaker 1: ride horses, that makes sense because these people are horse people.
Speaker 1: They have handled the police horses, they have trained the
Speaker 1: police forces. They are experts at what they do. They
Speaker 1: can train other younger people on the way through, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc.
Speaker 1: You would tend to leave some mounted police in their
Speaker 1: own job because they're good at it and they're unlikely
Speaker 1: to become corrupted by riding police forces. They're probably not
Speaker 1: going to steal the oats.
Speaker 2: Or the boot polish.
Speaker 1: But if you leave officers and public servants in charge
Speaker 1: of property as they call it in the police force,
Speaker 1: specifically in charge of guns, drugs, or cash, there is
Speaker 1: always the chance that human nature being what it is,
Speaker 1: that the rats might start to nibble at the property.
Speaker 1: The rats and the ranks. Now parallel thing happens here.
Speaker 1: There were gun amnesties, plenty of them after the Hodel
Speaker 1: Street massacre of nineteen eighty seven, and it was pretty
Speaker 1: clear at that time that if you found or had
Speaker 1: under your bed or under the floor in the ceilings
Speaker 1: some old gun that dad or granddad or somebody else
Speaker 1: had left there, that you could actually wander into a
Speaker 1: police station handed in, no questions asked. It was a
Speaker 1: bit of a given. And indeed a lot of guns.
Speaker 1: There was a strong trickle of guns coming into police
Speaker 1: stations for a long time after the Hottle Street massacre
Speaker 1: of eighty seven. And that's one reason that the old
Speaker 1: property store that used to be in the corner of
Speaker 1: the Russell Street Police complex had to be eventually replaced
Speaker 1: with the bigger premises elsewhere. Now that bigger premises, without
Speaker 1: telling everybody out there where it is, it's in a
Speaker 1: nearby postcode not that far from the old Russell Street
Speaker 1: Police complex, but you know, a good long walk, a
Speaker 1: decent walk sort of to the north somewhere. And that
Speaker 1: new premises was not particularly new. It was a big
Speaker 1: old s gungeygrungjy grotty red brick warehouse built I'd say
Speaker 1: around the time of World War One. I would think, well,
Speaker 1: look at it. Lots of graffiti, lots of pigeon manure,
Speaker 1: lots of mold and a nasty stuff like that. It
Speaker 1: looks very unloved on the outside. Apart from the fact
Speaker 1: that there are quite.
Speaker 2: Good security CCTV security.
Speaker 1: Cameras on that building and lighting and things, you probably
Speaker 1: wouldn't know that. It was allegedly a highly secure property
Speaker 1: branch where virtually all seized weapons, guns and other weapons
Speaker 1: and some other property is kept by the police force.
Speaker 1: But the licensing branch, as they're called, there's a word
Speaker 1: for them, and apart from those seized weapons which are
Speaker 1: sent out to McLeod to the forensic branch, they go
Speaker 1: through ceased weapons and they say, oh, we'll keep this
Speaker 1: one because we don't have an example of that particular
Speaker 1: one in our reference library. So they get a rare,
Speaker 1: you know, nineteen forty eight man and lick up whatever
Speaker 1: it is. They'll say, we haven't got one of those.
Speaker 1: We'll keep that in our reference library. We will get
Speaker 1: some ammunition for it, and we will shoot test shots
Speaker 1: so that we know what sort of rifling it's got,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, so that in the event that
Speaker 1: someone uses such a weapon in a crime, the police
Speaker 1: at the ballistics branch can identify a wide range of weapons.
Speaker 1: Great idea a firearms library. But if they don't need
Speaker 1: another entry for their library, if they've already got examples
Speaker 1: of things, they are then supposed to sign off on
Speaker 1: them for destruction. Otherwise, seized weapons seem to be piled
Speaker 1: up at this property store. Now there's a lot of
Speaker 1: conjecture about what is seized and what isn't and why
Speaker 1: it's there.
Speaker 2: But there are quite.
Speaker 1: A lot of gun dealers and former gun dealers in
Speaker 1: Victoria that are very perturbed and agitated about some of
Speaker 1: the things that happened to their property, to their property
Speaker 1: that was seized, and also to guns that were seized
Speaker 1: that didn't belong to the dealers but belonged to members
Speaker 1: of the public. And so we've got a situation where
Speaker 1: you're a small gun dealer in Bandy Wallop in Oyon
Speaker 1: or Wendaree or Hamilton or wherever. And there were many
Speaker 1: dozens of these small time dealers.
Speaker 2: They'd deal with local shooters.
Speaker 1: Farmers, so on. They became targeted back in the early
Speaker 1: two thousands because the licensing branch, rightly or wrongly, decided
Speaker 1: that those people were potentially the sort of people who
Speaker 1: might leak weapons firearms into the community and into the underworld.
Speaker 1: Now in some cases that would be right. This led
Speaker 1: to a series of raids, and it's those raids that
Speaker 1: are of interest to us today.
Speaker 2: That trickle of.
Speaker 1: Surrender and seized firearms became a flood after the Port
Speaker 1: Arthur massacre of nineteen ninety six. So in eighty seven
Speaker 1: we've got Julian Knight and Hoddlestraet. Nine years later we've
Speaker 1: got Port Arthur. And that changed things, cranked it up
Speaker 1: to a new level, because then we didn't just have amnesties.
Speaker 1: The laws were changed about guns that legit licensed owners
Speaker 1: and shooters could have.
Speaker 2: The laws were.
Speaker 1: Changed to say that unless you had a special reason
Speaker 1: and a special license, no ordinary sporting shooter or farmer
Speaker 1: or whatever could have a semi automatic weapon. And this
Speaker 1: meant that overnight, with the stroke of a pen, thousands
Speaker 1: of firearms across Victoria, many of them on farms and someone,
Speaker 1: became illegal for their owners, the legal owners to own them.
Speaker 2: Or to possess them.
Speaker 1: They could own them, but they couldn't have them, they
Speaker 1: couldn't keep them in their possession. So all these thousands
Speaker 1: of newly outlawed semi automatics were compulsorly acquired for destruction.
Speaker 1: The temporary dealerships were sent up centers where people could
Speaker 1: bring guns in. They would have dealers price se that's
Speaker 1: a BSA five shot data DA, that's worth two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty bucks. Here's your check, and so on and
Speaker 1: so on, and so they would do that, and in
Speaker 1: the end the authorities had thousands and thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of these newly outlawed semi automatics. Not only that, the
Speaker 1: public mood because of Port Arthur had swung in many
Speaker 1: ways against gun ownership, and people that have been neutral
Speaker 1: about guns had tolerated having guns around the place, as
Speaker 1: most people did. When I was a kid, Nearly everybody
Speaker 1: had a shot gun or twenty two. And now again
Speaker 1: in granddadd had go shooting ducks and so and so
Speaker 1: were goo shooting rabbits or whatever. That sort of gun
Speaker 1: behind the kitchen door thing died out in a big
Speaker 1: way post Port Arthur, and a lot of people who
Speaker 1: had never worried about it or thought about it much said, right,
Speaker 1: that's it, we're just handing in guns. We don't need
Speaker 1: them in the house anymore. And they took them in
Speaker 1: and handed them in, and so these collection points were
Speaker 1: overwhelmed with firearms.
Speaker 2: All sorts of firearms.
Speaker 1: Now, all sorts of funny things were handed in, not
Speaker 1: just all those old shotguns on twenty two's and fairly
Speaker 1: standard things, all three to zero three army rifles another staple,
Speaker 1: but quite exotic stuff. There'd be handguns that you know,
Speaker 1: Granddad brought it home from the bollwar, Webley pistol, so
Speaker 1: and so brought home a colt. A lot of World
Speaker 1: War One soldiers particularly had brought home Luger pistols from
Speaker 1: the battlefields of Europe. I knew one family in Gippsland
Speaker 1: where I think a couple of them went off to
Speaker 1: the war, and they brought home seven lugers and they
Speaker 1: used to use them shooting rabbits and kangaroos around the
Speaker 1: property and hello.
Speaker 2: To you, mister Lee.
Speaker 1: It was a thing. And now most of those guns
Speaker 1: are being handed in now. They were really supposed to
Speaker 1: be going.
Speaker 2: To the crushes. All these were such to go.
Speaker 1: To these massive crushes and be melted down and turned
Speaker 1: into scrap metal, and indeed many of.
Speaker 2: Them probably were.
Speaker 1: But the reality is that not every surrendered gun was destroyed,
Speaker 1: because not all reached the warehouse in the first place choice.
Speaker 1: Weapons with high collector value or black market value fell
Speaker 1: through the many cracks in the system, and of the
Speaker 1: vanloads of guns that reached the big warehouse near the
Speaker 1: city in a nearby postcode, not all seas firearms kept secure,
Speaker 1: with shrinkage occurring during a painfully slow and clumsy bureaucratic
Speaker 1: process to determine if or when their legal owners should
Speaker 1: get them back. What I'm saying is that you know,
Speaker 1: three thousand firearms might go into the warehouse in January
Speaker 1: and after several months there might be two eight hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty left that there've been shrinkage. Now, this happens
Speaker 1: in warehouses and shops and pubs across the land. It's
Speaker 1: amazing what goes walking. It goes out the door, it
Speaker 1: goes out in people's pants, it goes out in people's
Speaker 1: sports bags. It's amazing how things vanish. And also the parts.
Speaker 1: The magazines assailable because people want another magazine. The sites
Speaker 1: are telescopic, sites are sailable because people want them. The
Speaker 1: barrels or the gun butts or all the different parts assailable.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of these weapons that were there
Speaker 1: would be getting cannibalized by someone and would vanish.
Speaker 2: Out the back door. It's possible over.
Speaker 1: Being sold, it's possible being given away. It's possible that
Speaker 1: aliens or fairies took them. It's hard to know, but
Speaker 1: there's no doubt that there was shrinkage. Now, as highlighted
Speaker 1: by kel Glare's detailed statement which he made for a
Speaker 1: forthcoming court case, this was a porous and very broken system.
Speaker 1: And that system created the opportunity for the pilfering of
Speaker 1: the guns, the ammunition, the parts with the perfect smother,
Speaker 1: the perfect cover in fact, that any shortfalls can be
Speaker 1: dismissed with a blanket excuse that it's been mislaid or
Speaker 1: it's unaccounted for, when the real truth it's probably been stolen.
Speaker 1: The system is so lousy, the labeling system is nonexistent,
Speaker 1: the computerized database is so hopeless that it's impossible for
Speaker 1: anyone to say with certainty what is and isn't in
Speaker 1: the warehouse at any one time. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons for this, and I've actually seen these computerized records,
Speaker 1: one of the reasons is that they had contract inputters,
Speaker 1: people who are keyboard contractors, and they would be sitting
Speaker 1: there and they would look at a reference to say
Speaker 1: one BSA three zero three army rifle, BSA being Birmingham
Speaker 1: small Arms, the maker of that particular rifle. That rifle
Speaker 1: could be described on one line as a BSA three three.
Speaker 1: On another line, the same rifle could come up as
Speaker 1: a lee endfield a straight an army rifle. On another one,
Speaker 1: the same rifle could be described in a slightly different
Speaker 1: way each time and bolt action, ten shot, whatever. And
Speaker 1: I've actually seen these documents. What we've got is a
Speaker 1: situation where, for argument's sake, you've got one hundred firearms,
Speaker 1: but when you print out the list describing one hundred firearms,
Speaker 1: it's got a list of five hundred firearms. Because our
Speaker 1: contract keystrokers have either made an innocent mistake or have
Speaker 1: decided that they get paid by the keystroke and they
Speaker 1: have just kept inputting whatever they liked. And this has
Speaker 1: created a monstrous stuff up of the database that is
Speaker 1: controlling the system. And that means basically there is no system.
Speaker 1: And that means that because the people running it can't
Speaker 1: really put their finger on any particular thing, they know
Speaker 1: it's very hard to prove if anything is there or
Speaker 1: not there, and if something is missing, they know that
Speaker 1: their own lousy records will cover that fact up. They
Speaker 1: can just blame the lousy computer. They can just blame
Speaker 1: the lousy paperwork, the lousy database. They can blame the nameless,
Speaker 1: faceless contractors for stuffing everything up. And this has left
Speaker 1: open the opportunity for more shrinkage, for more guns, ammunition,
Speaker 1: magazines and gun parts to vanish from the police's own warehouse.
Speaker 1: It's a very serious situation. But this shrinkage of guns
Speaker 1: and ammo that I've just described is only part of
Speaker 1: the picture. That's the known shrinkage. What we've also got
Speaker 1: here is the unknowns. And the unknowns are the seized
Speaker 1: and surrendered guns that vanished before they were ever recorded
Speaker 1: in the first place. Now shooters call unregistered guns orphans.
Speaker 1: There are many stories of orphans turning into ghosts at
Speaker 1: police stations all over Victoria, and I'm here to say
Speaker 1: no doubt, all over Australia, there are many stories of
Speaker 1: receipts not being issued at all to people handing in guns,
Speaker 1: or being deliberately mishandled and manipulated to obscure the truth.
Speaker 1: And I now proposed to give some examples of this.
Speaker 1: In twenty thirteen, the Police Licensing and the Registration Division
Speaker 1: raided dozens of small gun dealers across Victoria, many of
Speaker 1: them regional or outer suburban specialists dealing from home. Four
Speaker 1: of the police targets were around Gelong. One of those
Speaker 1: was a dealer called Phil Walter. Now Phil is apparently
Speaker 1: a former Army marksman working from home in.
Speaker 2: The suburb of Caio. And I've actually.
Speaker 1: Been to his house, sat in his living room with
Speaker 1: his wife and himself and a third person who's involved
Speaker 1: in sort of a pro shooter political lobby group. And
Speaker 1: Phil Walter told me recently that the officers who raided
Speaker 1: his place and many these other places, they took one
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty eight guns that he had in his
Speaker 1: strong room.
Speaker 2: Now, some of these were stock for sale. They were
Speaker 2: his stock that he sold with price.
Speaker 1: Tags on them, and others were not belonging to him
Speaker 1: at all and were not for sale. They belonged to
Speaker 1: private owners who'd put them in for repair or were
Speaker 1: storing them for safe keeping. They also took he says,
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand rounds of ammunition. Now that's a lot
Speaker 1: of ammo, worth a lot of money. But you know,
Speaker 1: he had the stock, and he used to keep it
Speaker 1: and sell it, including he says, some rare and valuable collectibles.
Speaker 1: And he showed me one of these, such as empty
Speaker 1: Turkish Mauser rifle shells that a relative of his wife
Speaker 1: had brought back from fighting at Gallipoli in nineteen fifteen.
Speaker 1: And what these were Mauses, of course, or a German weapon,
Speaker 1: I think, or European weapon. But the Turks actually made
Speaker 1: a version of the Mauser, and they made their own
Speaker 1: ammunition for their version of the Mauser, which they used
Speaker 1: in World War One at Gallipoli. And they were very
Speaker 1: short of brass, and so they were supposed to keep
Speaker 1: all their empty brass, their empty cartridge shells, and send
Speaker 1: them back to the quartermaster, who would then get them
Speaker 1: reloaded and they'd use them again. That fact accounts for
Speaker 1: their scarcity. That they didn't leave them lying around, they
Speaker 1: didn't get dropped on the ground, but a few of
Speaker 1: them got thrown at the Allies, at the Aussies and
Speaker 1: the English and so on, because even in nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: some people saw the advantage of biological warfare, and so
Speaker 1: they would put excrement inside these empty bulletshells and throw them.
Speaker 1: The few fifty meters across to the opposing trenches and
Speaker 1: land them into trench and hope that the germs carried
Speaker 1: in those excremental empty shells, which were not empty of
Speaker 1: course by this stage, would infect the opposing troops with
Speaker 1: dysentery and whatever other diseases that they had. And there
Speaker 1: was a very ham fisted and crew would attempt at
Speaker 1: biological warfare. But it was a real thing. And Phil
Speaker 1: Walter says that his wife's uncle, I think it was
Speaker 1: fighting at Gallipoli. He was interested in guns and so forth.
Speaker 1: He had retrieved some of these shells and washed them
Speaker 1: out in the seashore at Gillipoli and brought them home
Speaker 1: and there were I don't know a dozen of them
Speaker 1: or whatever, and they were taken along with all the
Speaker 1: other ammunition and these one hundred and thirty eight guns.
Speaker 1: And he and his wife are particularly savage about that,
Speaker 1: because he clearly empty shells. They have no danger to anyone,
Speaker 1: but they claim that they are worth a lot of money,
Speaker 1: a lot of money. They're claiming very big money.
Speaker 2: As collectibles, because there are people who loved.
Speaker 1: Collecting World War One and Boar War and Civil war memorabilia.
Speaker 1: So Phil Walter is particularly savage about what happened to him.
Speaker 1: He says, of the one hundred and thirty eight guns seized,
Speaker 1: the police recorded details of only fifty six, implying he
Speaker 1: says that all or most of the rest are unaccounted for.
Speaker 1: He says that now more than ten years later, of
Speaker 1: the one hundred and thirty eight guns seized, he can only.
Speaker 2: Track about fifty of the fifty six that.
Speaker 1: Were written down. He said, the rest no one knows
Speaker 1: where the rest are. He's very angry about it. He
Speaker 1: has produced documents which have been used in Firearms Appeals
Speaker 1: Committee in legal proceedings, and he's shown them to us
Speaker 1: which shows that those fifty six firearms, the fifty six
Speaker 1: that were written down by the police, have been released
Speaker 1: released in quote marks to another gun dealer to resell
Speaker 1: to the public. What he's saying is the police came
Speaker 1: in here in twenty thirteen. They took a heap my
Speaker 1: guns and guns belonging to my customers, but I didn't
Speaker 1: own at all here for repair or whatever. They took
Speaker 1: them away to Melbourne and put them in a warehouse,
Speaker 1: and fifty six of them they've given them to another
Speaker 1: gun dealer to sell and the ones that haven't been
Speaker 1: given to another gun dealer to sell. They can't tell
Speaker 1: me where they are or what's happened to them, and
Speaker 1: he's very angry about it. Now, we're not going to
Speaker 1: chase every rabbit down every burrow here, but suffice to
Speaker 1: say that there are examples with sworn statements where shooters
Speaker 1: license shooters who had guns lodged with Phil Walter in
Speaker 1: his strong room. This particular shooter had one brand new
Speaker 1: one there and one in for repair. They have just
Speaker 1: vanished off the face of the earth. No one knows
Speaker 1: what happened to them, except that it's likely they've been
Speaker 1: resold somehow, because they.
Speaker 2: Are both.
Speaker 1: Caliber rifles, which are very much sought after by fox
Speaker 1: shooters and rabbit shooters and sort of vermin shooters, so
Speaker 1: they're very saleable and people want them. And it seems
Speaker 1: highly likely that those weapons have been illegally unsold and
Speaker 1: the legitimate owner has been.
Speaker 2: Deprived of them.
Speaker 1: They have effectively been stolen from him by officers of
Speaker 1: the law. This would seem to be not a good thing. Now.
Speaker 1: In closing, we could go on and on about this,
Speaker 1: but I have to say that every second shooter you
Speaker 1: meet has anecdotal evidence or anecdotal stories of strange transactions
Speaker 1: about surrendered guns, especially handguns, but not only handguns. One
Speaker 1: blog I told me that in the big post Port
Speaker 1: Arthur surrender he saw a very unusual thing. An elephant
Speaker 1: gun had been handed in at a northern suburban police station,
Speaker 1: in fact, it was Preston police station. He says it
Speaker 1: was a highly unusual weapon and that whoever was thought,
Speaker 1: we won't crush this one. It's too good. And the
Speaker 1: guy I know offered a small amount of money for it,
Speaker 1: in one hundred and fifty bucks or whatever, to save
Speaker 1: its life sort of thing. And it didn't go to
Speaker 1: the crusher, But it also did not go to my contact.
Speaker 1: It went to a third person. That someone working at
Speaker 1: that police station at that time sold it to someone
Speaker 1: else for another fifty dollars, and that it went out
Speaker 1: the back door with some other person who wanted to
Speaker 1: collect that elephant gun and put it on the den.
Speaker 2: Wall or whatever.
Speaker 1: Now that is just one example of hundreds, without doubt,
Speaker 1: where the guns handed in by bona fide citizens thinking
Speaker 1: that they are going.
Speaker 2: To be destroyed, I suppose.
Speaker 1: Or at least sold on the open market elsewhere in
Speaker 1: the world. Perhaps were actually dropped in a bag at
Speaker 1: the feet of the hervers accepting it and sold out
Speaker 1: the back door, or given away to friends, or taken
Speaker 1: home by someone working in that place. Another example. And
Speaker 1: I know this to be a fact because I know
Speaker 1: all the people involved, I know them personally. Nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: five respected retired businessman a man called Alan Cresa. He
Speaker 1: asked the local police to visit his house at Painsil
Speaker 1: in Gippsland to pick up some guns that have been
Speaker 1: in his family for decades. He had three handguns, among
Speaker 1: other things, World War one revolver, tiny snubnose thirty two
Speaker 1: caliber revolver that his father used to use when he
Speaker 1: banked money and back in the nineteen thirties, and a
Speaker 1: twenty two caliber Barretta pistol, which is a reletively modern
Speaker 1: weapon and quite sought after. A very light weight, accurate
Speaker 1: and reliable thing that people like to own now. Two
Speaker 1: police officers responded to the call, a male and a female,
Speaker 1: and they came to his house at Paincil. He gave
Speaker 1: them the handguns and he asked for a receipt. He
Speaker 1: was a man of about.
Speaker 2: Eighty years old at this stage.
Speaker 1: They made vague excuses and promised to mail him the receipt. No, no,
Speaker 1: we haven't got our pen, and we haven't got our book,
Speaker 1: or it's in the car, or it's in the boot,
Speaker 1: or you know, we'll mail it to you when we
Speaker 1: get back.
Speaker 2: To the office. They didn't.
Speaker 1: When a younger adult relative of Allan Cresa visited shortly afterwards,
Speaker 1: he said, decrease of where's that, Bretta. I was very
Speaker 1: keen to get that because I've now got my pistol
Speaker 1: license and I could take it over or buy it
Speaker 1: from me whatever. You could give it to me and
Speaker 1: I can use it at the pistol club to shoot targets.
Speaker 1: And the old man said, oh, oh you want it, okay,
Speaker 1: no problem. You go to that police station which is
Speaker 1: not far from here, and you asked them, you explain
Speaker 1: the situation, identify yourself, identify me. He's my driver's license.
Speaker 1: Whatever you want, you'll be able to get it. The
Speaker 1: younger relative, a young man who was a merchant seaman
Speaker 1: at the time later became a ship's captain, quite a
Speaker 1: respectable sort of fellow, and he had a legitimate pistol
Speaker 1: license to target shirt. He goes to this police station
Speaker 1: to retrieve the surrendered pistol, which has only been there
Speaker 1: for a few days. He's never forgotten what happened. When
Speaker 1: he got there.
Speaker 2: He was told bare faced lies. He was told that he.
Speaker 1: Was imagining three surrendered pistols. He was told that they
Speaker 1: didn't exist, and that if he couldn't produce a receipt
Speaker 1: for them that proved that they didn't exist. They told
Speaker 1: him he was making it up or he was hallucinating.
Speaker 1: Now he was very angry about this because he wasn't
Speaker 1: making it up and he wasn't illucinating. He insisted on
Speaker 1: seeing the senior officer in charge. The officer came out,
Speaker 1: Now this is I think an inspector, and he had,
Speaker 1: you know, the pips on the shoulder, and he backed
Speaker 1: up his staff's attitude, in fact, his staff's bald faced lies.
Speaker 1: And he flatly denied that Alan Creas's pistols had been
Speaker 1: handed in or that they existed. And when our would
Speaker 1: be pistol shooters said he'd take it to police internal affairs.
Speaker 1: The inspector turned nasty. He got very threatening and.
Speaker 2: He said, let's see how that goes.
Speaker 1: For you, sonny, And he was very snarling and he
Speaker 1: stared down the fairly agitated young man who left. He
Speaker 1: was suddenly nervous about possible repercussions if he persisted, and
Speaker 1: he he did not report it to internal affairs because
Speaker 1: he thought, I don't need the agro and clearly, while
Speaker 1: I'm up here in a skips land away from everywhere else,
Speaker 1: who knows what could happen. I'll just let it go now.
Speaker 1: That young fellow in the mid nineties as it was,
Speaker 1: went on to become a sea captain, and then he
Speaker 1: ran his own very big sea pilot business, and then
Speaker 1: he did very well, and he bought a property at
Speaker 1: Mansfield and became a farmer, and then he became the
Speaker 1: mayor of the Shire of Mansfield. So he is quite
Speaker 1: a solid citizen today. He's still a sporting shooter. But
Speaker 1: it still rankles very much what happened to him at
Speaker 1: a country police station in nineteen ninety five where he
Speaker 1: was told lies by police who colluded with each other
Speaker 1: to steal three surrendered handguns. And think about it, those
Speaker 1: three handguns are out there somewhere. It depends where did
Speaker 1: they find their way back onto the black market? Were
Speaker 1: they sold for cash to crooks in a pub or
Speaker 1: to an alleged collector who on sooldom to crooks in
Speaker 1: a pub. Are those weapons now sitting in a glove box,
Speaker 1: or in the inside pocket or a holster of someone
Speaker 1: who could use them against a laura abiding citizen or
Speaker 1: even against the police. Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes
Speaker 1: is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true crime Australia.
Speaker 1: Our producer is Johnny Burton. For my columns, features and more,
Speaker 1: go to Heraldsun dot com dot au forward slash andrew
Speaker 1: rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to news podcasts
Speaker 1: sold at news dot com dot au. That is all
Speaker 1: one word news podcasts sold And if you want further
Speaker 1: information about this episode, links are in the description.