Sunshine Coast hinterland police: Stories behind officers in charge

These Sunshine Coast hinterland police are often working solo to defend their towns from violence, drugs and chaos. These are their stories of the worst country crimes:

Away from the hustle and bustle of big city life, Sunshine Coast hinterland police are often working solo as they fight to defend their small communities.

Whether it’s search and rescues, armed robberies or drug-fuelled offenders, these officers in charge are the only things that stand in the way of good and bad in regional areas on the Sunshine Coast.

These are the stories of some of our officers in charge across the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

Kenilworth OIC Acting Sergeant Pierre Senekal

Acting Sergeant Pierre Senekal is officer in charge at Kenilworth police station. Picture: Patrick Woods

Kenilworth’s officer in charge, formerly known as Noosa’s Segway Cop, has been a local icon in the Sunshine Coast hinterland area since his posting more than six years ago.

Acting Sergeant Pierre Senekal came to the Sunshine Coast after stints in Maryborough, Tiaro and Noosa, having previously migrated from South Africa after working as a farmer.

Those days on the land living remotely appealed to Sergeant Senekal which is why he jumped at the chance of working in the regional community of Kenilworth, where he has “loved every minute of it”.

“Just being able to be a part of the community with locals and farmers has been great,” Sergeant Senekal said.

“It’s like winning the lottery.”

Even tranquil destinations such as Kenilworth comes with the bizarre crimes that would usually be frequent in a capital city.

One of the more bizarre incidents the South African-born copper has encountered was two years ago when he was called to a crash on New Year’s Day.

He was called by the local pub about a man acting strangely shortly after the reported crash with Sergeant Senekal catching up with him shortly afterwards.

Sergeant Senekal tried to calm down a man who began yelling he would kill the Kenilworth officer, giving him no chance but to draw his taser.

For more than 25 minutes Sergeant Senekal would taser this man up to 12 times but due to the man’s “superhuman powers” he could not be brought down.

Drug tests would later show the man had been on ice.

“That was a scary situation because the man was so heightened from drugs he could’ve really broken me in half and I was out there on my own for a bit before my colleagues arrived,” he said.

Kenilworth’s leading copper has been a local legend for quite some time, and even shot to internet stardom for his stack on a segway on Noosa’s Hastings Street in early 2015.

Cooroy OIC Sergeant Mal Scott

Sergeant Mal Scott leaves Maroochydore Court in 2018.

Cooroy’s officer in charge Mal Scott and his commitment to his community was so strong it led to him being jammed between two cars by two thieves robbing a Mitre 10.

Sergeant Scott had been on the tail of a violent criminal gang who had plagued Cooroy by stealing cars and breaking safes before the New Year’s Day morning in 2017.

About 4am January 1 the Noosa hinterland town’s OIC ran to the Mitre 10 following its alarm going off, to find two men ransacking the shop with sledgehammers.

The armed men made a dash to escape but Sergeant Scott accosted one of them, wrestling a sledgehammer off one.

Before he could react the other offender drove his stolen car into the officer, jamming him between two vehicles before they fled the scene.

Miraculously Sergeant Scott only escaped with soft tissue damage but his heroics for his regional town has cemented his name local history.

It’s this undying passion for his community that has led to the senior copper living in Cooroy as its officer in charge for the past 25 years.

With his career spanning four decades, Sergeant Scott has always gravitated to rural policing after his childhood in Dalby and four year stint in Longreach as a Constable.

After working in Caloundra for a period Sergeant Scott leapt at the chance to be Cooroy’s OIC and in 1997 this became a reality.

“I’ve just loved Cooroy so much, and I’ve raised my family here and it’s been my home,” Sergeant Scott said.

“I never wanted to live anywhere else.”

Being so close to the community can be hard at times however, with Sergeant Scott pointing to a turbulent period of crash fatalities several years ago along the Bruce Hwy.

The notorious stretch of two lane highway from Eumundi up to Federal and Gympie would be frequented by Sergeant Scott every six weeks for a car crash death.

“I’ve had friends killed in traffic crashes and I would be the one telling relatives and friends that their loved ones had been killed in traffic crashes,” he said.

“I’ve seen the way these deaths affect communities which is why traffic enforcement has been close to my heart.”

Through a combination of safety initiatives and the development of the Bruce Hwy, Sergeant Scott said there has been a dramatic decrease in road deaths along that stretch.

Eumundi OIC Sergeant Ryan Hanlon

Sergeant Ryan Hanlon at Eumundi police station. Picture: Patrick Woods.

After only being in the top job as Eumundi’s OIC for three years, Sergeant Ryan Hanlon has helped triple their annual arrest rates each year.

Sergeant Hanlon said this has been due to the fact Eumundi is one of the most “pro-police” towns he has worked in his 23-year career, which includes stints in North and Western Queensland.

Working in a station with three other officers, Eumundi’s top cop has been at the forefront of big jobs not only in his patch but across the Sunshine Coast and Noosa through his negotiation and rescue work.

From as far up as Noosa down to Beerwah Sergeant Hanlon has assisted in search and rescues, with some of them ending in tragedy.

The missing persons case of Marion Wallace on Bribie Island still sticks with Sergeant Hanlon as one woman police could not locate even after an extensive month-long search.

“It’s always comforting to give families closure when we can find their loved ones eventually, but with Marian Wallace that never came,” he said.

“With Ms Wallace she left her nursing home and was never seen again, that was one of the hardest ones things for me, where we couldn’t give her family closure.”

His negotiation skills have also come in handy while in Eumundi where he has travelled across the district for sieges, which have ended peacefully with no need for violence.

Sergeant Hanlon said he is anticipating an even bigger rise in his community’s population with the four massive breweries eager to begin trading in the near future.

Even though the workrate will no doubt increase, he said it will handled by him and his three other officers.

Palmwoods OIC Sergeant Kev Crowley

Palmwoods OIC Sergeant Kevin Crowley.

Busting meth labs and protecting his community go hand-in-hand for Palmwoods’ officer in charge Kevin Crowley after more than a decade in the area.

Sergeant Crowley has spent a third of his career in the Sunshine Coast hinterland after being sworn in as a copper in 1987.

He’s had stints in regional stations such as Charleville, Cunnamulla, Tannum Sands and Ayr before taking the gig at Palmwoods in 2010.

The Palmwoods OIC said he even played footy against the father and uncles of new Brisbane Broncos star and Charleville-born Kurt Capewell, who scored a field goal in the dying minutes of Friday night’s clash with the Rabbitohs.

Sergeant Crowley has often based his police service on the lifestyle he wanted to live with Palmwoods being a great location for his family.

Some of the jobs that have stood out to Sergeant Crowley were five years ago when more than half a dozen drug labs were busted in Chevallum.

“We were closing one investigation after the other where we were pulling these drug labs apart,” he said.

“Police were coming out from Brisbane regularly to help take these apart, and for a general duties policeman that period was something extraordinary just in terms of the work that went into it.”

Most of the labs were being busted in Chevallum according to Sergeant Crowley, with search warrants being executed on a monthly basis.

“Drugs are everywhere these days, it’s hard to escape their influence, but for us to take out so many of them out in a short space of time, we would’ve put a dent in the local supply chain at the time for sure,” he said.

What stays with Sergeant Crowley is the difference he can make in the lives of others when going out to particular jobs.

A chance encounter in Buderim has resonated with the Palmwoods OIC, where he was approached by a woman he had helped on a job.

The woman was with her family and said to them that “this is the policeman that saved my life”.

“For her it was a huge deal, and those are the sorts of things that stick with you working as a policeman,” he said.