The Squad

by Yoni Bashan

  Mick Ryan had wanted someone sharp and, ideally, experienced with organised crime investigations for the position that had opened up. Applicants were put through a gruelling screening process that began with a longlist of candidates and was whittled down to a shortlist who were brought in for final interviews in Deb Wallace’s office, a meet-and-greet to gauge whether their personality was the right fit for the TAG office. Doing the job wasn’t enough; TAG was a culture – you had to fit into it.

  Crews’s career had only just started. When he walked into his interview he had already been awarded two commendations for his work at Campsie with the local Proactive Crime Team. Some cops will spend an entire career chasing down one commendation and still not get it and yet here was Crews with two of them. It’s not that his commanders at Campsie wanted to lose him; they put his name forward for the job at MEOCS because even they could tell he was destined for something big.

  Ryan was impressed by his CV but told Crews he lacked the experience. He’d done well, but had a way to go. Wallace felt the same; she could see in the way he answered their questions how badly he wanted the position.

  Ryan played hardball and asked for specifics: ‘How many search warrants have you done? What are your lock-up stats? What’s your surveillance experience? How many briefs have you prepared?’

  They asked Crews about his upbringing in the country town of Glen Innes – and Ryan, a man of the bush himself, listened closely to his answers. They asked why he had wanted to join the cops and he told them how he’d gone to university in Lismore, moved to Sydney to look for work in IT, and then shocked everyone with his decision. He’d come from a family of cops: his father had served, so had an aunt and two uncles. His brother, Ben, was also in the Force.

  On paper he impressed. In person he followed through. When Crews walked out of the room, Ryan turned to Wallace and said, ‘I think he’s the exception.’

  Within a fortnight Crews had been tasked to Paul O’Neill’s team in the TAG office and had dived into the work, burning to make an impact. The thought of using tracking devices and listening to telephone intercepts excited him. Every job, every search warrant, every time he snapped on a set of gloves to handle exhibits, he was learning something new.

  McNally got off the phone with the Cairds Avenue resident who’d complained to McNeice about drug dealing in the basement car park. Using that conversation and the intelligence from Roberts’s source, he began filling out the Operational Orders, the standard set of routine questions and box-ticking exercises required for any raid to go ahead. He cut and paste the surveillance photography of the building, completed the safety checks, and ticked yes as to whether bulletproof vests were available for the mission. Then he flicked a page and started filling out the Risk Assessment matrix, the most important part of the paperwork. A series of questions followed: the likelihood of injury from an assault; the likelihood of injury from animals; the offender’s propensity to use violence; and the likelihood of the offender’s access to firearms. McNally ticked ‘low risk’ to each of these questions.

  Mick Ryan would have normally joined in for the raid as the overall commander, but by this time he had gone home for the day. In his mind there was no need to turn up to Bankstown – it was a low-risk search of a basement garage. The target was an elderly Asian man who wasn’t known to carry a gun. As far as search warrants go, it was as straight as a die.

  At 5:05pm, Roberts sent an email to Crews containing a first draft of warrant application 562/10, a document that sought the legal approval of a magistrate to raid garage number 8 of 41–43 Cairds Avenue, Bankstown, and its corresponding apartment in the building upstairs. Crews had never filled out a warrant application form before, so Roberts gave him a head start and completed a few sections, leaving some areas blank. These were questions that went to the need for the raid, its central purpose. Crews took the draft and started typing.

  He wrote: ‘The Asian male drives a white Toyota Camry . . . and on numerous occasions has meetings in his garage with Middle Eastern males. The (Asian) male parks the vehicle at the front of his garage which prevents people walking past from seeing into the rear of the garage.’

  Crews added information from Roberts’s source, how a recent coke deal with Miagi had included the sale of 125 grams of cocaine to a member of the Kalache family. ‘Payment to Miagi was made with three ounces [85 grams] of heroin and cash,’ Crews wrote.

  At 7:37pm he faxed the warrant application to the after-hours magistrate at Parramatta Local Court and by 8pm the paperwork had come back approved. Roberts called everyone taking part in the raid to join him in the Squad’s briefing room.

  They were nine men in total, and each man was assigned a role: McNally was on exhibits; Constable Scott Brown and Senior Constable Paul Baglin, partners who worked well together, would search Miagi’s apartment. Everyone else was on the basement team: Senior Constable Josh Lavender was on surveillance; the arrest would be done by Senior Constable Tom Howes and Acting Sergeant Fletcher Gentles, a team leader in the Uniform division; Crews was the case officer; and Senior Constable Chris Gerogiannis, another officer in uniform, would do the filming. Having uniform officers involved in the raid was important because most of the entry team were wearing plain clothes and, at first glance, didn’t look like cops. Crews was wearing cargo shorts, Roberts a bone-coloured jumper. The idea was to use a mix of cops to keep the element of surprise – send in nine officers in blue shirts and hats and a lookout would see them coming from a mile away. But sending in both allowed for a partial sneak attack.

  Before they all headed to their cars, Roberts asked who was ‘vesting up’. He always asked that question. Ever since the 2007 incident with Joshua Johns, the Comanchero bikie, Roberts and Howes always wore vests. Low-risk job, high-risk job, it didn’t matter; they never left the office without a vest. That night, vests were optional. Most officers taking part in the raid felt they weren’t necessary because of the routine, low-risk nature of the warrant. Only a couple of officers reached for them.

  Within half an hour, they pulled up in a convoy outside Bankstown Police Station, a seven-minute walk from Cairds Avenue. Roberts stepped through the glass doors and spoke with the shift supervisor working that night. It was a matter of professional courtesy and policy to inform local officers about any raids taking place in their patch. It was also mandatory for an independent officer – someone outside the MEOCS team – to join the raid and make sure everything about it was kosher, an anti-corruption measure. Hussein Mousselamani, an officer working at the station that night, was tasked to the job. He’d worked with Roberts before. Flicking through the paperwork, making sure it had all been legally signed, he turned to Roberts and said, ‘Start talking to me, Dave.’

  Roberts began reeling off the details, telling Mousselamani that they were looking for drugs and cash in the garage, that Miagi’s wife and kids lived in the building upstairs, and that they’d be let into the building by a resident – a ‘friendly’ – who’d complained about drug activity.

  Mousselamani could have rolled his eyes at how routine it all sounded. It was 8:39pm and the warrant was scheduled to kick off in twenty minutes. Roberts picked up the station’s phone and called his informant one last time. He wanted to know whether any cash or drugs had arrived. Lavender and Brown were doing surveillance of the apartment, driving past in their unmarked car.

  The source told Roberts that Miagi was in the garage with one of his buyers, a man known as ‘Hawkie’. None of the cocaine had arrived yet.

  What about you? Roberts asked. Where are you?

  The source said they were still in the building but had walked away to call in the cocaine for delivery to Hawkie.

  How much money is down there? Roberts asked.

  ‘Over fifty thousand,’ the informant said.

  What about guns? Roberts asked.

  No guns.

  A few minutes later, the convoy moved out from the police station and drove north along Meredith Street u
ntil it reached a roundabout on the corner of Carmen Street. McNally parked his car and started walking, heading down Carmen Street towards the unit block on the corner with Cairds Avenue, about 150 metres away. Everyone else stayed in their cars, including Roberts, who was on a phone call with McNally; he remained on the line with him as he approached the building.

  Waiting for McNally at one of the two entrances was the resident who’d made the complaint to Bankstown Police. McNally wedged his foot in the door and took directions to Miagi’s garage downstairs.

  ‘The first garage on the left as you’re coming from the roller door, the last one on the right if you were to go out through the roller door,’ they said.

  Roberts was still on the phone. The time was 8.58pm.

  ‘I’m in,’ McNally said. ‘We’re right to go.’

  The three unmarked police cars started moving left from Meredith Street into Carmen Street and stopped a few metres short of the unit block on the corner of Cairds Avenue. Roberts stepped out of his car holding a battering ram and walked towards McNally at the entrance. Through the glass door he could see a set of stairs on his right leading down to the basement and another set of stairs above it leading up towards apartments. Roberts called the rest of his team over the radio. ‘Form up at the entrance,’ he told them.

  The plan was to raid the garage, make the arrests and then search Miagi’s apartment upstairs where, simultaneously, Baglin and Brown would have already knocked on the door, called out anyone inside and secured the premises. Roberts and Mousselamani had agreed on this plan at Bankstown Police Station – Mousselamani had told Roberts that, as an independent officer, he couldn’t be watching two separate raids taking place at the same time.

  With Crews and the rest of the team behind them, Roberts and McNally made their way down the cream-tiled stairs and then along a narrow corridor towards a door at its far end. Upstairs, heading in the wrong direction, were the remaining officers assigned to guard Miagi’s apartment.

  Roberts stepped through the door and into the basement. Facing him was garage number 7, its tilt door covered in wire mesh. To the right were more tilt doors just like it, each one numbered for its corresponding apartment. The car park was shaped like the letter ‘T’, rotated in an anti-clockwise direction. It was well lit but cavernous, an underground space of concrete walls.

  McNally gave directions. He knew the layout and could see a Toyota Camry sedan matching the description of Miagi’s car. It was parked perpendicular to three garages, blocking them from opening. Directly opposite the Camry was an open tilt door – garage number 1. A light was switched on inside, the only one with any activity in the basement. It wasn’t the same garage described by the ‘friendly’ in the building – they had indicated Miagi used number 8 – but given that his car was just metres away, and that he was known to use multiple garages for his drug dealing, it seemed an obvious place to go looking for him. Roberts and Crews moved towards it with the entry team behind them. They walked casually, their guns holstered. Roberts held the battering ram in one hand. Crews walked with a notebook under his arm. The time was just after 9:01pm.

  As they got closer, Roberts let the balloon up: ‘Police! Don’t move!’

  Crews walked slightly ahead of Roberts and was the first to sight Miagi. He had burst out of the garage in a combat stance, crouched and low. He was screaming in a language no one could understand. Crews saw a pistol in his hands.

  ‘Gun! He has a gun!’ Crews called out.

  He dropped his notebook, pulled his Glock and rushed ahead to the Camry, closing the distance with the gunman and putting himself in the line of fire, an eight o’clock angle. Barely four metres separated them.

  A gunshot rang out. Roberts saw a flash. He rushed to the right towards more garage doors and dropped the battering ram.

  Three more shots followed, booming and heavier in sound, a different calibre of bullet. The rest of the team had fallen back for cover. Someone shouted, ‘Fucking get back!’ The gunman was pointing his weapon quickly, aiming it in in all directions.

  Roberts didn’t know who was firing anymore. As his battering ram hit the ground he unlatched his Glock, turned to find cover and let off a single shot at the gunman as he raced back to where the rest of his team had taken cover. Heads were spinning. It was still 9:01pm – less than seven seconds had passed since they had walked into the garage. When Roberts looked back, Crews was on the ground.

  In another part of Sydney a police radio operator was fielding dozens of calls from squad cars working the southwestern suburbs that night. The calls were typical of the humdrum routine of police work: a caged truck required at Greenacre, officers required for a house that got egged in Punchbowl.

  Just before 9:02pm a new voice emerged over the airwaves. It was Mousselamani, the independent officer from Bankstown Police Station, his voice approaching panic: ‘Bankstown one three, urgent, urgent, shots fired in Cairds Avenue, Bankstown, shots fired, shots fired.’

  The operator was caught off guard. ‘Copy 13, situation when you get the chance.’ In the background officers were shouting for an ambulance and tactical units.

  ‘We need SPG here ASAP. ASAP. SPG,’ he shouted.

  Inside the car park, Tom Howes kept his gun trained in the direction of the open garage, ready to shoot if anyone stepped outside of it. Miagi was nowhere to be seen. A no man’s land of concrete floor stretched from the covering wall where the officers were standing to the Toyota Camry – where Crews lay on the ground. Untrained in man-down scenarios, anyone who tried to get near him risked getting shot in the process. They were in a siege situation, a stalemate. As they waited for backup to arrive, all they could do was shout across the car park for Miagi to throw out his weapon.

  ‘Put the gun down! We’re the police! We just want to help our mate!’

  Howes ran upstairs to get ballistic vests. Mousselamani followed, speaking into his radio along the way. The operator wanted more details. Barely two minutes had passed. ‘We have an officer down,’ he said. ‘We have a number of offenders involved in this incident in the garage.’ The operator said an ambulance was on its way but a tactical team was forty minutes out. Crews won’t make it that long, Mousselamani thought.

  Outside, police cars were already converging on the scene. A makeshift command post had been formed on the corner of Meredith and Carmen streets. Mousselamani ran over with tears streaming down his face. Officers were stepping out of arriving cars, unsure where to go and what was happening. He told them William Crews had been shot.

  ‘We have to go and get him, he’s by himself,’ Mousselamani said.

  ‘What do you mean he’s by himself?’ an officer asked.

  ‘He’s just lying down there, we need to go!’

  A short debate ensued. Someone said the tactical teams were en route. Another officer said it was too dangerous to enter. Sergeant Jeff Harkness, an officer from the Bass Hill Region Enforcement Squad, strapped on a vest and said, ‘If I was down there, I would want you to come and get me’. He raced towards the entrance with Robert Hogan, a supervisor from Campsie. Hogan had virtually jumped over the counter at Campsie Police Station when he heard Mousselamani’s Signal One broadcast.

  In the car park, behind the covering wall, the sound of ripping Velcro could be heard as officers strapped vests to their bodies. Shock crept up on everyone; their worst-case scenario was unfolding around them. Some were woefully unprepared. One officer said: ‘Man, I don’t even have my fucking gun.’

  Dave Roberts tried to explain the situation to Mick Ryan in a phone call. He walked away from his team as he spoke. ‘Mick, Mick, Mick, he was right next to Crewsy firing shots, mate,’ he said, trying to answer Ryan’s questions. ‘I don’t know what happened, mate. We can’t get to him. The bloke won’t come out and he won’t release the firearm.’

  By 9:10pm there were almost two dozen officers moving around the covered area of the car park and more were arriving. An ambulance crew was on standby outside waitin
g for clearance to enter. A Dog Squad officer arrived with his police dog, Abel, and peered out at the garage down the end of the car park. Everyone was trying to figure out a way to end the siege. Ideas were thrown out. Someone asked David Wynne, the Dog Squad officer, what would happen if the dog was let off his leash. Wynne said the dog might attack Crews, thinking he was the offender. But there was also another problem. ‘The dog would get shot,’ he said.

  Suddenly, a noise came from another section of the basement. Someone saw a firearm.

  ‘There’s a gun! Drop the gun and come out!’ an officer called.

  The weapon belonged to Terence Robinson, a leading senior constable from Campsie Police. He had shown up at the entrance to the Cairds Avenue complex, walked past a set of stairs guarded by officers and taken a second unguarded set to the basement. At the bottom was a doorway into the car park with a clear view of the silver Toyota Camry and Crews’s body on the ground. With his gun drawn, Robinson stepped inside and into a blind spot behind the covering wall where the rest of the officers couldn’t see him. Within a few steps his gun and body became partly visible.

  At the sound of the shouting to put down his weapon, Robinson called out, identifying himself as a police officer. His colleagues asked him to prove it.

  ‘I’m going to put my left arm out,’ he said, extending his jacket sleeve until his police patch was visible past his own covering wall to those on the other side of the car park. Two officers rushed over to meet him, discovering the second entrance. They had no idea the doorway existed. Robinson looked ahead to the open garage and, using hand signals, motioned to the officers to cover him as he moved around the side of the Camry. With his gun pointed at the garage, he inched along behind the car and cleared a line of sight. When he was finally looking into the open garage all he could see were boxes and furniture. There was a laundry hanger and a set of drawers. Miagi was nowhere to be seen. At some point, they figured, he must have escaped via the second entrance.