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Speaker 1: For a police officer. The greatest moment of truth. He's

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Speaker 1: very frightening, and that is when you're about to go

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Speaker 1: through a door or a window knowing that a violent

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Speaker 1: offender is on the other side and armed. He gone

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Speaker 1: click click click click, tried to shoot them. He had

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Speaker 1: tried to shoot the raiding party. When asked by detectives,

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Speaker 1: quite horrified detectives if he had tried to fire on police,

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Speaker 1: Collins retorted, I didn't know it was you. I'm Andrew Rule.

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Speaker 1: Is this life and Crimes. We've seen and heard a

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Speaker 1: lot about police raids in recent weeks, obviously because of

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Speaker 1: the raid that went so tragically wrong when police were

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Speaker 1: attempting to arrest Dissy Freeman real name Desmond Philby. We

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Speaker 1: don't need to go through that all again. But of

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Speaker 1: course ten officer has turned up to servant warrant on

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Speaker 1: this man, and half an hour later two of them

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Speaker 1: were dead and one was badly wounded. And as we

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Speaker 1: record this podcast weeks later, does he Freeman is either

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Speaker 1: dead by his own hand or he's still out there somewhere,

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Speaker 1: but he has not been found, which is a pity.

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Speaker 1: But the Freeman case brings to the front of mind

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Speaker 1: that for a police officer, the greatest moment of truth

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Speaker 1: is very frightening, and that is when you're about to

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Speaker 1: go through a door or a window, knowing that a

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Speaker 1: violent offender is on the other side and armed and

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Speaker 1: might well shoot you. In that split second that a

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Speaker 1: police officer go through a door or a window, the

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Speaker 1: greatest advantage is surprise, which is why dawn raids are

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Speaker 1: exactly that they're done shortly before sunrise, when most targets

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Speaker 1: are asleep or groggy. Although I'll point out that clever

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Speaker 1: people like mad Dog Cox, Russell Cox, the escape and

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Speaker 1: bank robber extraordinary. He would go jogging. He was very

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Speaker 1: fit man, and he would go jogging before dawn each day,

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Speaker 1: wearing not many clothes, but always wearing I think a

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Speaker 1: little bumbag with a pistol in it, and it meant

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Speaker 1: that he was out of the house at exactly the

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Speaker 1: time that police raids would be done, working on the

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Speaker 1: theory that if he did it often enough, one day,

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Speaker 1: he would be not lying in bed when the police

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Speaker 1: came through the door. Very disciplined man. The other protection

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Speaker 1: for police is the uniform, which is why when they

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Speaker 1: do these raids, they identify themselves loudly and repeatedly, and

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Speaker 1: they wear vests which are clearly marked police. Now, good crooks,

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Speaker 1: which is what cops call professional crims who act rationally,

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Speaker 1: tend not to make a rest a heap worse by

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Speaker 1: shooting at police, which can have deadly repercussions because of

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Speaker 1: course police will probably shoot back and they probably won't miss.

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Speaker 1: But good crooks are very different from lethal lunatics. And

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Speaker 1: we have the perfect example in one pair of escapees

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Speaker 1: back in the nineties. That was the difference between the

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Speaker 1: notorious escapeer Peter Gibb, who was an arm robber, and

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Speaker 1: his fellow fugitive Archie Butterly. These were the jail mates

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Speaker 1: who headed for the bush after breaking out of the

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Speaker 1: Melbourne Ramand Prison in nineteen ninety three, helped by Peter

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Speaker 1: Gibbs prison officer lover an unfortunate and misguided woman called

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Speaker 1: Heather Parker. Buttly, apart from being Scottish, had an insanely

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Speaker 1: mean streak, he hated police and made the deadly mistake

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Speaker 1: of taking a shot one from a hiding spot when

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Speaker 1: the three futurities were cornered by the sog and dog

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Speaker 1: handlers five days into their Bonnie and two Clydes Escapade.

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Speaker 1: Butterly was found shot in the head with a stolen

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Speaker 1: police pistol, which was found beside him, a death that

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Speaker 1: a coroner later hesitated the label as suicide. But if

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Speaker 1: he didn't shoot himself, and he might have, who did, well,

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Speaker 1: maybe it was GiB who possibly shot his volatile companion

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Speaker 1: to prevent a siege he knew was unsurvivable. He GiB,

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Speaker 1: unlike Butterley, was a good crook, an arm robber who

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Speaker 1: played the percentages. Once, when police raided his bedroom before dawn,

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Speaker 1: pointing guns at him in bed, he stayed absolutely calm.

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Speaker 1: What's going on, boys, he said, deadpan, keeping his hands

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Speaker 1: in plain sight. No sudden movements. Smart crooks with underworld

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Speaker 1: enemies would much rather be raided by disciplined SOG members

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Speaker 1: or even undisciplined detectives, than by rival toe cutters out

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Speaker 1: to torture them for money or drugs. But the possibility

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Speaker 1: that targets can briefly mistake police for underworld enemies means

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Speaker 1: that a few terrifying seconds can be the line between

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Speaker 1: life and death. Prolific hitman Rodney Collins, now we've talked

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Speaker 1: about him a lot was a cruel killer with many enemies.

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Speaker 1: When this Special Operations Group SOG raided him in broad

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Speaker 1: Meadows in the nineteen eighties, they were delayed a few

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Speaker 1: seconds by plastic coating on the windows. That delay could

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Speaker 1: have been fatal. When they got inside, Colins seemed docile,

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Speaker 1: but police detectives this was later found a loaded revolver

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Speaker 1: thrown under a bed. This is you know, later that

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Speaker 1: day or next day or something. Every bullet in this

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Speaker 1: revolver had been dented by a faulty firing pin. Clearly

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Speaker 1: egone click click click click click tried to shoot them.

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Speaker 1: He had tried to shoot the raiding party. When asked

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Speaker 1: by detectives, quite horrified detectives if he had tried to

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Speaker 1: fire on police, Collins retorted, I didn't know it was you.

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Speaker 1: Last year, a man was shot dead by a Donnybrook

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Speaker 1: householder while committing a home invasion. Quote. If they think

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Speaker 1: it's a criminal run through, they'll shoot one policeman told

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Speaker 1: my colleague Mark Butler, and guns are not the only risk.

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Speaker 1: Ice fueled knife wielders are a huge threat to anybody

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Speaker 1: who comes near them. Police who raided an inner City

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Speaker 1: house and Commission apartment several years ago, found the suspect

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Speaker 1: in bed with his hands behind his head. After dragging

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Speaker 1: him out of the blankets, they then found a loaded

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Speaker 1: pistol under his pillow. A few seconds slower and it

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Speaker 1: could have ended very badly. One former officer, a veteran

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Speaker 1: of dozens of high risk grades on armed defenders, recalls

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Speaker 1: hiding only meters from armed robbers as they got out

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Speaker 1: of a vehicle in boiler suits, wearing balaclavers and tucking

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Speaker 1: sawn off firearms under their clothes. Asked about this later,

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Speaker 1: he said two words, nervous energy. That's what it feels like.

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Speaker 1: It's the ultimate pointy end. He went on. You're going

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Speaker 1: in against someone who's got a gun, and there's a

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Speaker 1: good chance they'll have a crackerchain. The problem is that

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Speaker 1: not everyone is a good crook, prepared to drop weapons

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Speaker 1: and go quietly. Some are desperate or unhinged by drugs.

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Speaker 1: Then there are deranged backyard terrorists, like the fugitive pensioner

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Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier, Desmond Christopher Philby alias Desy Freeman, who

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Speaker 1: renamed himself on the downward spiral that allegedly led him

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Speaker 1: to kill the two police. A poor a Punker weeks ago.

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Speaker 1: The fear factory is highest when the offender is not

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Speaker 1: only armed but dangerously unstable, even more so if he

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Speaker 1: has already killed and has little to lose by killing again.

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Speaker 1: Now I use the pronoun heed here because almost invariably

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Speaker 1: the people that do this sort of crazy stuff of

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Speaker 1: blugs males or identify as males. Anyone who says they

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Speaker 1: don't have some trepidation isn't being honest with themselves, says

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Speaker 1: former armed Robbery Squad boss Ray Watson, who has spoken

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Speaker 1: to us in this studio a couple of times. Ray

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Speaker 1: Watson was involved in dozens of raids during the golden

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Speaker 1: age of armed robbery now we're talking about the seventies

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Speaker 1: and eighties. He doesn't get any argument from another form

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Speaker 1: of detective Joe Noonan, who took part in the one

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Speaker 1: hundred plus raids on known underworld haunts after the nineteen

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Speaker 1: eighty eight murders of two young constables in Wall Street,

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Speaker 1: South Era, that, of course, is the Chynan Air murders,

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Speaker 1: are two young police that were shot dead in cold blood.

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Speaker 1: Nonan has forgotten details of most of those raids, but

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Speaker 1: not the death of a fellow police officer in a

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Speaker 1: bungle job he was called to. Early in nineteen eighty seven,

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Speaker 1: Nonan and another detective rushed to the scene of a

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Speaker 1: police shooting in Faulkner to find that a policewoman had

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Speaker 1: shot at an armed man just as her brave colleague

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Speaker 1: jumped into the line of fire to tackle the offender.

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Speaker 1: That brave policeman, Neil Clinch, he's a footballer, good sportsman,

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Speaker 1: thought he could avoid a gunfight by launching himself at

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Speaker 1: the crook and taking him to the ground. Sadly, he

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Speaker 1: didn't signal his intentions to his fellow officer, and she

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Speaker 1: shot at the bad guy just as Neil Clinch launched

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Speaker 1: himself at him, and the police bullets hit the policeman.

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Speaker 1: Clinch was shot in the head and he died of

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Speaker 1: his injuries hours later. That tragic death underlined the high

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Speaker 1: risk of friendly fire in police raids and sieges. The

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Speaker 1: young Joe Noonan turned up that day. He cradled the

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Speaker 1: young Clinch as he slipped away. He said to me later,

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Speaker 1: I looked into his eyes and I'd like to think

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Speaker 1: he could hear me and know that he wasn't alone

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Speaker 1: underneath the hard bitten cop humor. Noonan reckons he was

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Speaker 1: never quite the same after that, but the circumstances of

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Speaker 1: another death when an offender was justifiably shot dead also

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Speaker 1: sticks in his mind. That was when he was kitted

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Speaker 1: up with a ballistic vest and shotgun to be first

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Speaker 1: in on the raid on one of the Wall Street

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Speaker 1: cop killers, and was told to stand down at the

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Speaker 1: last minute. A late decision was made to swing in

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Speaker 1: the Special Operations Group to do the raid, which was

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Speaker 1: on the Wall Street trigger man Jed Houghton. Houghton and

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Speaker 1: his then girlfriend were hiding out in a rented cabin

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Speaker 1: at a Bendigo caravan park. Horton had fitted an iron

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Speaker 1: bar across the glass sliding door to reinforce it, and

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Speaker 1: he was known to have multiple guns. This was a

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Speaker 1: chilling scenario for whoever had to go in first, those

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Speaker 1: very frightening words go in first, right up until the

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Speaker 1: plans changed at the last minute. That person was to

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Speaker 1: be Joe Noonnan. He'd been secondered from the Major Crime

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Speaker 1: Squad to a homicide task force after the Wall Street outrage.

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Speaker 1: Nonan prefers not to dwell on what might have happened

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Speaker 1: if the SAG hadn't finally sent its highly trained, well

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Speaker 1: armed siege specialists whose teamwork was synchronized by relentless drills. Quote.

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Speaker 1: It took the SAG a few seconds to get through

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Speaker 1: the door, but it would have taken me a lot longer,

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Speaker 1: Noonan says, musing on the likely outcome if the SG

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Speaker 1: hadn't flown to Bendigo that day. Obviously, what he's thinking

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Speaker 1: is the guy Jed Hawten, who was inside, he'd already shot,

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Speaker 1: if not one, then two police dead. He was desperate,

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Speaker 1: he was mad and bad, and he had multiple guns,

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Speaker 1: so if one didn't work, another one would. He had several.

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Speaker 1: I think those und like half a dozen guns found

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Speaker 1: in the cabin afterwards. There is an obvious parallel between

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Speaker 1: that scene and what happened at Poora Punka, when veteran

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Speaker 1: detective Neil Thompson opened a window in a stationary bus

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Speaker 1: occupied by Freeman, only to be felled with a shotgun

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Speaker 1: blast at point blank range a second before his fellow officer,

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Speaker 1: Vadim de vaut Hottart was also shot dead. Sudden death

189
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Speaker 1: or catastrophic injury is the faint but ever present possibility

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Speaker 1: hanging over ordinary police were looking on the road every

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Speaker 1: time officers approached a door or even a car, there's

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Speaker 1: that chance that they won't come home safely. That lingering

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Speaker 1: sense of threat began, many say, when a man every

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Speaker 1: bit as crazed as Freeman started shooting Victorian police back

195
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Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty five. I clearly remember this. That, of course,

196
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Speaker 1: was Pavel Maranov, the Bulgarian army deserter, a loner who

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Speaker 1: had taught himself to be a deadly pistol shot. He

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Speaker 1: was much like another human Hyaena Bandali Debs, who also

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Speaker 1: honed his pistol shooting and robberies right up until shooting

200
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Speaker 1: policeman Gary Silk and Rod Miller in nineteen ninety eight.

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Speaker 1: Maranov was dubbed Mad Max. He shot and wounded several

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Speaker 1: police and was on the run for eight months before

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Speaker 1: being shot dead by two detectives using the same deadly

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Speaker 1: SG buckshot as Freeman allegedly used last month. Maranov managed

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Speaker 1: to wound both detectives in the split second before he

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Speaker 1: was killed. It was Maranov's carnage in nineteen eighty five

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Speaker 1: that rattle police and popularized the muttered but well known

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Speaker 1: motto better to be judged by twelve than carried by six.

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Speaker 1: The subsequent rash of police shootings of offenders eventually led

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Speaker 1: to a backlash, with a less confrontational approach eventually being

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Speaker 1: imposed on the troops by police command. But along with

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Speaker 1: that new doctrine of cordon and contain that means to

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Speaker 1: wait out potential shooters in seizures rather than mount gun battles.

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Speaker 1: With the rise and rise of the SOG, otherwise known

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Speaker 1: as the Soggies or the Sons of God, the SOG,

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Speaker 1: founded in the nineteen seventies through the foresight of the

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Speaker 1: very Kenny Chief Commissioner Mick Miller, matured by the nineteen

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Speaker 1: nineties from its gung home military origins into a specialist

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Speaker 1: service that operated with surgical efficiency. SOG members trained much

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Speaker 1: like the Armed Forces, elit sas and commando units. But

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Speaker 1: whereas commandos trained to kill enemies efficiently far from public site,

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Speaker 1: the Soggies must do something equally difficult. They have to

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Speaker 1: resolve deadly situations in the places we live without harming

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Speaker 1: anyone except when absolutely necessary. The SOG has become so

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Speaker 1: good at its dangerous work that general street police are

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Speaker 1: now arguably more at risk on the job than SOG members. Are. Statistically,

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Speaker 1: the ordinary copper driving around on the boat in a

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Speaker 1: busy suburb probably got more chance of being hurt than

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Speaker 1: the Sog guys. Because the Soog guys are very good

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Speaker 1: at hurting other people and not being hurt themselves. They

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Speaker 1: go prepared take a coroner's court and an internal inquisition

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Speaker 1: by police command to gauge what went wrong at poor

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Speaker 1: a Punker on the last Tuesday of winter. But one

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Speaker 1: principle might have been drafted in blood at Desi Freeman's lair.

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Speaker 1: If a troublesome citizen with known anti authority views he's

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Speaker 1: wanted for firearms offenses, he should be picked up in

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Speaker 1: a neutral public area, perhaps a time and place when

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Speaker 1: he's clearly unarmed. If approached on his home ground, it

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Speaker 1: should be done, perhaps by the proven professionals in the SOG.

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Speaker 1: Of course, hindsight is twenty twenty. We all know that,

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Speaker 1: and it's very easy to sip back and criticize or

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Speaker 1: comment on things later, and that's not always helpful. But

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Speaker 1: a couple of things might be said by some critics.

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Speaker 1: They might say that a loose and effectively leadless bunch

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Speaker 1: of ten random police gathered to arrest a troublesome target

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Speaker 1: is not quite one thing or the other. It's an

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Speaker 1: imitation of force rather than the real thing. Life and

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Speaker 1: Crimes consulted George Hately, who was an early member of

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Speaker 1: the SOG and then interestingly a key instructor in honing

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Speaker 1: the group's skills, and he sees it a bit that

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Speaker 1: way too. Hately hasn't been in the police force for

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Speaker 1: some years now, but he's still heavily linked to security

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Speaker 1: work in the sense that he supplies and demonstrates themselves

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Speaker 1: the sort of gear that is used by security forces

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Speaker 1: and police forces around the world. He's certainly an expert.

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Speaker 1: Hately recalls how full of adrenaline he was before his

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Speaker 1: first SOG raid back in nineteen eighty six. He said,

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Speaker 1: I couldn't even listen or concentrate in the briefing. But

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Speaker 1: by the end of his eight years in the SOG,

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Speaker 1: he'd become so relaxed before raids that had almost bored him.

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Speaker 1: Was difference. In eight years, He'd done so many and

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Speaker 1: they got so good at it that it was just

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Speaker 1: like going to the corner shop. He stresses the need

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Speaker 1: for reconnaissance and for training until life preserving reactions become

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Speaker 1: automatic under pressure. Now this is the sort of training

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Speaker 1: and effort that ordinary coppers on the beat haven't got

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Speaker 1: time to do. To be brutally fair, one of Hatley's contemporaries,

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Speaker 1: a detective who later studied psychology, learned about raids by

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Speaker 1: doing them and watching others do them. He says, two

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Speaker 1: rules of human behavior apply. One is that action nearly

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Speaker 1: always beats reaction. The other is that in the face

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Speaker 1: of extreme danger, humans opt for fight or flight or

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Speaker 1: freeze at porpunkha't. He says. The offender's action in the

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Speaker 1: face of perceived threat was to fight and then the

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Speaker 1: run away fight followed by flight. As for the please

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Speaker 1: face with the massive shock of seeing two of their

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Speaker 1: colleagues shot dead and another wounded, the remaining seven correctly

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Speaker 1: obeyed standing orders to stand down until backup arrived. As

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Speaker 1: one of user pointed out later, the shooter got a

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Speaker 1: three hour start, but that was because of the rules.

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Speaker 1: They had to stand down for that amount of time

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Speaker 1: and wait for the SAG to arrive, and that's what happened.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald

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Speaker 1: Sun production for true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton.

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Speaker 1: For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au, Forward Slash Andrew Rule one word. For

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Speaker 1: advertising inquiries, go to news Podcasts sold at news dot

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Speaker 1: com dot au. That is All One word news podcast's

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Speaker 1: song and if you want further information about this episode,

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Speaker 1: links are in the description.