Mick Fuller: The coalface cop that rose to the top
As a rookie detective, Mick Fuller ran the social fund for the elite Task Force Bax, known as the “Untouchables”
NSW
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He once stood accused of serving up the cheapest coffee in the force but the state’s new Police Commissioner has learnt his lesson since then.
As a rookie detective, Mick Fuller ran the social fund for the elite Task Force Bax, known as the “Untouchables”, which was set up in the late 1990s to tackle the drugs scene in Kings Cross.
Surrounded by some of the city’s best coffee shops but not a coffee drinker, he thought he was doing his colleagues a favour by buying the cheapest coffee he could find to save money. It led to him being nicknamed after the brand: Pablo.
Now he drinks coffee himself, Fuller has established his credentials in other frontline areas of policing as well, which led to his appointment on Thursday to one of the toughest jobs in the state.
He moves into the hot seat on Monday when, from trying to save a few bucks on the coffee run, he will be in charge of a $3.4 billion budget and almost 21,000 employees.
He has already signalled a new direction for the force with plans to target lone-wolf extremist attacks and share police expertise by having fewer semi-permanent task forces such as Operation Talon, which targets drive-by shootings.
His appointment has been welcomed by senior police frustrated by the stagnation at the top since retired commissioner Andrew Scipione extended his term at the request of former Premier Mike Baird when it got too difficult for the government to come up with a replacement while two of the three deputy commissioners were at war with each other.
“I’m happy it’s been settled,” one senior officer said yesterday.
“We just want to move on because we are sick of being in a drift. We want to see decisions being made about the future.”
While Scipione was said to have been more of a backroom operator, Fuller has a solid background as a coalface cop — including having once arrested the King of the Cross, notorious nightclub owner John Ibrahim.
It was September 1997 when Ibrahim’s older brother Sam Ibrahim was on remand in Long Bay Jail for drug-dealing. The key witness against him, a former Kings Cross coffee shop owner, was also in jail but in protection and his de facto wife claimed that when she visited him, Ibrahim accompanied by three Nomads bikies passed on a threat that her husband would be killed if he gave evidence.
Fuller charged Ibrahim with threatening a witness and acting with intent to pervert the course of justice and committed to stand trial. Ibrahim denied the incident, as did the three bikies.
The de facto wife took her daughter to New Zealand and refused to give evidence. The charges were dismissed.
In October 1997, a month after Ibrahim’s arrest, Task Force Bax was spectacularly disbanded after a dawn raid hailed as a blow against corrupt detectives. Fourteen were arrested. But it turned into a major embarrassment for the force’s internal affairs with only one conviction and a massive $10 million compensation payout to nine of the officers.
Meanwhile, Bax’s enviable record stood at 80 crooks arrested in 18 months, including 20 for offences that carried life sentences.
Fuller was not among those arrested or who sued.
As well as Bax, Fuller also worked on another of the city’s biggest and at times most controversial drug taskforces in the mid-’90s, Task Force Oak. Working out of Cabramatta, it investigated kidnappings, drug-dealing and extortion in the Asian community when the heroin was dealt openly in the streets and shootings were an everyday occurrence.
During the Lindt cafe siege he was the only senior officer prepared to negotiate with the gunman Man Monis for the release of hostages.
The then-assistant commissioner Mick Fuller was the first officer in charge of the Police Operations Centre at the start of the 2014 siege and was willing to let Monis talk to the ABC in return for the release “one by one” of about half the hostages.
But unknown to him the deal was never put to Monis because the head negotiator, known only as “Graeme”, overruled his boss because he felt it was against the government’s policy of not making concessions to terrorists, according to evidence given to the inquest last year.
Minutes after giving “Graeme” the instructions, the siege was declared a terrorist incident and taken over by the counter-terrorism squad and protocols that go with a terrorist incident.
Before he was dubbed “Pablo”, the father-of-four who joined the force in 1987 aged 19, starting at Kogarah, was known as “Mickey Blue Eyes”.
A boy who grew up in the Shire, he remains a St George supporter.
In a tribal police force he was part of the clique known as the “Bra Boys”, so-named because the group of senior police trained at Maroubra.
Fuller was promoted to superintendent in 2004 and to assistant commissioner in 2010. He has been in charge of major events including the City to Surf, the APEC Summit, World Youth Day, Sydney New Year’s Eve, the Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras and Australia Day.
He is commander for Operation Hammerhead, formed in response to the National Terrorism Alert to co-ordinate the strategic deployment of highly visible resources at key locations across the Sydney area.
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