SA should rally around the Stevens family after tragedy

Police Commissioner Grant Stevens has led the state during periods of hardship. It’s now our turn to show our support to the Stevens family, writes David Penberthy.

Grants Stevens’ confirmation as the new Police Commissioner in 2015. Pictured here with his family including, (clockwise from front left) Charlie, 9, his wife Emma, Sophie, 19, Dylan, 20, Josh, 18, and Tom, 12. Picture Dean Martin

As a police officer for almost 40 years and commissioner for the past eight, the job has often fallen to Grant Stevens to lead the state through periods of darkness and sorrow.

Today, the people of South Australia return that favour to him.

We say to the commissioner and his family that our hearts break with them at the senselessness and cruelty of it all.

There is no fairness to any of this.

As parents, we cannot begin to imagine what Grant, Emma and their children are going through.

Every South Australian sends the Stevens family their love and their strength.

As the Premier said on Saturday, it is especially unjust that the commissioner’s family has fallen victim to the very type of avoidable behaviour he has devoted his career to preventing.

It is especially unjust that a person whose life has been marked by a commitment to public service – showing such compassionate and humane leadership through Covid-19, floods and fires – can suffer like this.

The son of South Australian Police Commissioner Grant Stevens is on life support after he was struck in a hit-and-run crash at Goolwa Beach on Friday night. Picture: Gary Juleff

This is the man who would routinely cancel summer holidays when Kangaroo Island was ablaze or the River Murray burst its banks, who introduced Covid-19 rules knowing they would prevent his own daughter’s wedding from proceeding, and who showed great strength addressing the media when his close friend, also a police officer, was killed in another senseless road tragedy.

Today, the people of SA try to summon that same level of strength and send it to the Stevens family.

On FIVEaa, we speak to the commissioner every month and we love doing so.

He is quite simply one of the best blokes I have met in my career. He is smart, he is genuinely funny, but he has a steeliness to him, and so much of our conversation this year has been dominated by his fury and dismay at the spiralling road toll, and the utterly pointless loss of life through avoidable accidents.

He was making that very point with trademark force in our studio only four days ago. And he was doing so because he has a love for and dedication to us, the people of SA.

His day started on Friday with the type of hardwired compassion that has defined his leadership, heading straight to the South-East to stand by his men and women after the death of their colleague.

For his day to end the way it did is simply unfathomable.

I wish I did not have to write this piece.