by Gary Jubelin
I quickly learn the routine at the Stick-Ups: get our shotguns ready in the squad office, head out and lock somebody up, head to the Willoughby Hotel and drink, then come in the next day and listen carefully as Doodles tells us, ‘OK, this is the target.’ Then the cycle continues.
There are no niceties in the way we go after criminals. Our listening devices record them talking about operations I am part of: ‘That fucking Armed Hold-Up crew, they hit us. Came in with fucking sledgehammers and shotguns. They’re hard cunts.’ I love it. We are hard cunts. We work hard and play hard.
But work and play start to merge into each other. You might be drinking to celebrate an arrest or to meet an informant. On any given afternoon, some toughened, veteran detective will look up from his computer, which are starting to replace typewriters in the Major Crime Squad, and call out: ‘It’s two o’clock, why aren’t we at the pub?’ In answer, other office chairs will be pushed back, desk drawers will open and close as pistols are taken out and put in shoulder holsters, someone will stand and stretch and I’ll look up from whatever running sheet or arrest report I’m working on, and grin, then follow them.
Sometimes, on our way out, I might look back at that unfinished paperwork and worry I am picking up bad habits.
Working with Jim, being a detective was all about sitting down and talking to a suspect. The Stick-Ups seem to prefer coming into the interview room shouting or slamming their hands down on the table. While elsewhere in Australia, the police have been using audio tapes and even video to record interviews for years, in New South Wales this technology was only introduced a year ago, in 1991, and there are no laws saying we have to use it. Instead, the Stick-Ups make the most of recording confessions in their notebooks. One might read: ‘I asked him, “Did you commit this crime?” and he replied, “Yes I did. You’ve caught me.”’
Sometimes, I might hear other cops saying, ‘We should fucking flog him,’ when talking about interviewing a suspect. I try to argue, ‘If he’s me and you flog me, then I’m not going to talk to you for the rest of my life.’ Or take a crook like Badne$$, I say, who during the interviews that follow his arrest seems crazy-smart, impulsive and already as traumatised by his own life as he is used to traumatising others. Unless you’re prepared to kill someone like that, I don’t think a beating’s going to work.
Better to sit down and talk.
Sometimes, after the squad’s gone in firing, I’ll look around after the gunsmoke clears and think, Jesus, that took some balls. At other times, when that same crook is sitting mute inside the interview room and I know he’s not going to sign any confession we put in front of him, I wonder, How will this stand up in court?
I get used to appearing in the witness box and having defence lawyers rip into me:
‘You’re in the Stick-Ups aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you threatened the defendant?’
‘No.’
‘But that’s what you do in the Stick-Ups isn’t it? Your squad has a reputation.’
I stare at him in silence.
‘Roger Rogerson was in the Stick-Ups wasn’t he?’ the barrister continues. ‘He’s seen as a hero?’
It’s true. Roger ‘The Dodger’ was in the Stick-Ups and, for years, was seen as someone to look up to. Even before I joined the cops, he’d become a poster boy for policing, with comfortable, you-can-trust-me features like an old black and white movie star, sharp suits and an instinct for knowing where a newspaper photographer’s camera was pointing. His reputation was as someone who was unafraid to pull the trigger to deliver justice. The morning papers filled their pages with his exploits in the Stick-Ups, describing them as High Noon shootouts in lonely city lanes.
I’d fallen for that storyline, like others. Rogerson had won awards, including in 1980, the year I got together with Debbie, for arresting an armed robber, Gary Purdey. Then he got caught. The Dodger was dismissed from the police in 1986, the year we got married. Soon after, he was sent to court on a drug charge and convicted, though he overturned that verdict on appeal. At this moment in 1992, he’s serving time in prison for a different offence – perverting the course of justice over an attempt to hide $110,000 in a bank account under a false name.
All of this has dragged the Stick-Ups’ reputation downwards, which I hate, because these are men I’ve learned to trust when people start firing their guns at us. In court, when the lawyers ask if Roger is my hero, I give them nothing: ‘Look, I know who Roger Rogerson is. I haven’t worked with him. As for a hero, I don’t think so in light of what’s gone on.’
What I don’t say is, ‘Look, who is doing wrong here? Me, who’s trying to put crooks in prison. Or lawyers like you, who are trying to let criminals walk free?’
There is no easy answer to this question. One time, at the Stick-Ups, we arrest an armed robber who regularly shoots people. He will walk into a bank and shoot someone just to get attention. I’m not convinced we have the evidence to charge him, but when I speak up, the response is, ‘What do you want us to do? Wait until he goes into another bank and shoots somebody else?’
He pleads guilty. To my mind, the Stick-Ups made a judgment call and it paid off. Back at the Willoughby Hotel, after his conviction, I drink my beer and ask myself who’s the better public servant – the Stick-Ups who played hard and stretched the rules this time around but took a bad crook off the streets, or me, Mr Cautious, who might have left him free to kill an innocent person?
Maybe there are no answers, only other questions. It’s easier to do your job than think about it sometimes. It’s easier to order another beer.
* * *
Debbie’s pregnant again and, as 1992 comes to an end, I’m more determined than ever to find the balance between home and work I’m seeking. The prospect of a bigger family on a police wage makes it harder to justify why I’ve spent $150 on a Monday night drinking with the Stick-Ups. Debbie doesn’t like it and, when she confronts me, I admit that I don’t like it either.
One job, chasing a pair of brothers who’ve done some bad armed robberies, takes me away from home for four weeks to Coffs Harbour, six hours’ drive north of Sydney. I say goodbye to Debbie while loading my surfboard into the car next to another detective’s golf clubs. We can’t work all the time we’re up there and I’ve got so used to the work-hard, play-hard attitude that I don’t question it. I’m looking forward to the release of getting back into the ocean to go surfing but I can see in Debbie’s face as she and toddler Jake wave me goodbye that this situation isn’t working for her.
In Coffs, we work, we drink, we work, repeat. And it is hardcore drinking. We’re downing shots in nightclubs. After we arrest the brothers, I walk in to interview the older one one morning with another detective who’s been out on the piss until 4am.
My exercise means I don’t bottom out that badly. I drink less because I want to wake up early to go running or do floor exercises, trying to lose myself and my concerns by pushing myself harder. I do handstand press-ups on the motel carpet while the other Stick-Ups watch me through their hangovers. They groan or laugh but it’s good humoured. The deal is you can do what you like as long as you show up at work.
Still, during those weeks in Coffs, it feels as if the threads are coming loose within the squad, and it would be easy to get tangled up completely.
I come home to Debbie and Jake, and feel like a stranger in the house at first. The two worlds, police and family life, seem to move at different speeds. I keep training, soccer, running and kung fu. More and more, I rely on my qigong to slow myself down and bring the two worlds back into alignment, but it gets to the point where I can feel myself tensing up in the evenings at home if I do not get the chance to practise these calming movements daily. It feels self-defeating.
Once again, I get sick and am diagnosed with shingles, an infection where your skin erupts in red, angry blisters, caused when your immune system is too weak to defend you.
I realise joining the Stick-Ups had fel
t like a dream, but now I want to get out of it. It’s meant giving up too much. My family’s suffered and I’ve lost the simple, honest faith in being a good cop I found when working with Jim Williams. I’ve had to ask myself too many questions about police work and, when I tried to answer them, have only come up with more questions.
I know it won’t be easy.
By now, my six-month trial with the squad has dragged on for a couple of months longer but eventually I go to Doodles O’Toole and say, ‘Just to let you know, I’m going back to Hornsby.’
‘What are you fucking saying?’ He looks at me, as if he can’t work out whether I’m joking or if he should be offended. ‘You’re part of the squad now. You don’t leave the fucking Stick-Ups.’
I struggle to explain my reasons, if I even fully understand them. I can’t be part of this and still be everything I want to be outside it. I’ve not been able to find the balance between being a detective and a dad, a husband and a hardarse cop, between drinking till 4am and getting up at 5am each morning to go running.
I also worry that there’s some other undercurrent flowing beneath the surface at the Stick-Ups. Something that can pull you out into the deep water. After only several months with the squad, I am not yet committed. The current hasn’t caught me.
Other cops tell me I’m mad. They say that if I leave, there’ll be no going back to Major Crime. I will have burned my bridges.
I’ve made my choice.
‘I’m going,’ I tell Doodles. He shakes his head.
I transfer back to Hornsby.
Do What Your Mother Tells You
August 1993: eight years in
On Saturday 28 August 1993, my soccer team are playing a grand final, but I cannot enjoy the game, or the celebrations after, knowing Debbie is so close to giving birth. She goes into labour hours later and our daughter, Gemma, is born on 29 August.
We now have a son and a daughter, our family feels complete and the next day I make plans to go out and celebrate with Dad and some mates, just like after Jake’s birth. Mum chastises me, telling me I need to be at home, that Jake is still so little and will need me while his mum is in the hospital.
It’s a moment of realisation. If I now have two children, then I need to put twice as much effort into being a good father.
With Gemma, Jake and Debbie, we are a perfect, self-contained family. I have more time to be with them since transferring back to Hornsby and it feels like we are settled, with a clearer barrier between work and home. Until one job breaks through it.
* * *
Soon after Gemma’s birth, I’m asked to take a look at Nora and Reg Irish (not their real names), a mother and son who’ve been trouble around my suburb of Dural. We’ve had complaints about them moving into rental places, trashing them, refusing to pay any money and that Reg then stands over anyone who tries to challenge them, making violent threats.
Talking to the landlords who have been affected, I can see that they’re shattered: not only have they lost their money, they’re also terrified of talking to me. They worry Reg will find some way to punish them. He’s got a gun, they warn me.
This is suburbia, I think. It’s where my children live. This should not be happening.
We’ve got the evidence to charge them and I find that Reg and Nora are now living in an isolated cove overlooking the water at Woy Woy on the Central Coast. I drive up from Sydney, knock on the door and walk into a small, dark apartment, where Reg is lying spread across the lounge, his pale belly spilling out from underneath his T-shirt.
‘Get up,’ I tell him.
‘Make me.’
‘Look, you’re under arrest, so I can if I have to, but it would be easier if you cooperate.’
‘Make me,’ he repeats.
Nora tells her son to do what I’m asking.
‘Why don’t you do what your mother tells you?’ I ask, taking a step closer. I want to offend him. He’s a bully and I want him to know what it feels like being stood over.
He scowls and climbs to his feet. I charge him over the unpaid rental payments and the damage to the properties. At court, he is convicted but let off without a prison term.
Afterwards, I don’t think much about it, until I get a call from the North Region Major Crime Squad. Reg has been handing out my home address and phone number in pubs around Dural. He knows where my parents live. He calls them, saying he wants to speak to me. He turns up at the home of Debbie’s parents, who have also moved to Dural and live next to our house. According to what he’s saying in the pubs, he’s found out where Jake goes to preschool.
He wants me to know he can get at my family. I’m furious.
My boss, John, tells me to let it go, and says Major Crime will handle it but a marked police car will be parked outside my home from now on as a precaution.
That means I have to tell Debbie, who must be afraid but says she trusts me to do the best for the family. It eats at me, I know I can protect them at home, but during the day, when I’m at work, she is in the house, alone with the children. We talk about moving the kids back into our room at night. I start getting off the bus a few stops early and walking, to check if anyone is coming after me.
Then Reg turns up at Hornsby Police Station.
‘You are not to go out there,’ John tells me firmly. ‘I’ll go and speak to him. You stay where you are.’
He heads outside, but there’s no way I’m staying in the detectives’ office. I burst out of the front door onto the road outside.
‘Hey, fat fuck, you come near my family and you’ll regret it.’
‘Are you threatening me?’ Reg asks, sneering.
‘No, I’m promising you. You come near my family and it will be the last thing you do.’
Maybe he thinks that I will be unable to touch him because I am a police officer, but I don’t feel any inhibition. I feel that old anger deep inside me and am prepared to let it loose.
Reg hesitates, and I can see that he is frightened. John puts himself between us and starts to walk him away. I stare after them, not moving.
When Reg is gone, I tell John I’m sorry.
‘Mate, I would have done the same thing,’ he says. ‘I just don’t want him making a complaint against you, that’s all.’
‘Let him. I’m more than happy to justify why I said that to him.’
I mean it: I will not play by the rules if my family is threatened. Reg gives us no more trouble.
When word gets back to the Stick-Ups what has happened, they tell me not to worry and that they will fix him. I interpret that as saying Reg is fucked; that they will find something to charge him with. And, frankly, I don’t care.
* * *
Somehow, this crisis helps bring Debbie and me closer. It makes me see that, while I’ve been off playing cowboys in the police, she has become vulnerable. I learn a new respect for how she handled the pressure. It also means Debbie has seen something of the world I walk into when I leave the family home and go to work. Hopefully, she also saw that I’ll do whatever is required to protect her and the children.
We feel like a good team, though work can still take me away at all hours, with little warning, meaning the full weight of bringing up our children always falls on her.
The kids know none of this, however. They’re growing up and every moment we are together as a family we are happy. It’s a happiness forged in hardship, maybe, and tested by having a fat, standover man turning up outside her parents’ house but all this has hammered out the bond between us, making it stronger. It feels like, whatever test comes next, I can be both a good cop and a husband.
Don’t Hurt Him
Late 1993: eight years in
A call is put through to me in the Hornsby detectives’ office. A woman’s voice, nervous and uncertain.
‘I’m calling because I know your family.’
‘How can I help you?’ I ask.
She says her name is Sharon (not her real name). ‘I’ve got this information. I wasn’t su
re whether to pass it on, but I feel I have to.’ A relative has told her I’m a cop. That I am someone she can trust.
‘What information?’ I ask.
‘I need you to promise me that you’ll handle it delicately.’
‘I need to know more about it before making any promises.’
‘It’s about my brother.’
‘OK –’
‘I think he’s done an armed robbery.’
That gets my attention. Eight years into the job, over the past few months I’ve been getting flogged: break-and-enters, frauds, assaults, as if every job that came into the Hornsby detectives’ office I seemed to end up doing. Most of these are straightforward, volume crimes, the constant whip of work that keeps me running without feeling I am moving forward. But I want to get off the treadmill.
‘You’re doing the right thing, passing this information on,’ I tell her. ‘Let me know the details.’
She says her brother’s name is Isaac (not his real name). She’s seen his photo in a wanted ad or something in the papers. He’s a good man, she says, but he’s been through some bad times and got into drugs.
Both she and I are now committed.
There is enough in what she’s told me to make me want to meet her. Heading out of the office, I ask a young, plain clothes constable if he’d like to come along.
He nods, saying ‘Great.’ He’s smart and keen, fresh out of uniform. Just like I was a few years ago.
We meet Sharon at her home and sit together in her living room, where she and I make small talk about our families at first before I ask her to talk about her brother.
She gives me details of the robbery, in a building society on Sydney’s northern beaches. Isaac walked in during the day, when the place was full of people. He hid his face – most armed robbers used a bandanna or a stocking – and got away with the money. Fortunately, no one was hurt. Sharon doesn’t know if Isaac has a gun. He might have.