Former top cop Deb Wallace recalls the night a police raid ended in tragedy
“I shot him Deb, didn’t I?” It was a day that shattered the NSW police force and to this day it is etched in the mind of former top cop Deborah Wallace.
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Deborah Wallace’s stellar policing career has been one of many highs, but the lowest point stays with her to this day.
It was September 2010, and Constable William “Bill” Crews had been fatally shot during a dramatic arrest in a Bankstown basement.
Wallace, then head of the Middle Eastern Organised Crime Squad, was dealing with a “double whammy” — the death of one of her own officers and the high possibility he was shot in friendly fire.
In a new book by Daily Telegraph crime editor Mark Morri, A Women of Force, Ms Wallace, who retired from the NSW Police force last year, reflects on her incredible 36 year career locking up gangsters and bikies, and life as one of the most highly respected female leaders in the thin blue line.
The book goes behind-the-scenes of the Crews’ shooting, one of the most tragic events in the history of the police force.
Ms Wallace, 60, recalls the gut wrenching moment she had to tell Detective Sergeant Dave Roberts that it was his bullet that struck Crews. She was standing in the kitchen of Mr Roberts’ home making a cup of tea. It was less than 48 hours after the shooting.
Roberts, a towering, formidable police officer who led the Target Action Group, asked Wallace if it was him who had killed Crews.
“I just said ‘yes, Dave it was your bullet that killed Dave,” Ms Wallace recalled.
Overwhelmed, this “mountain of a man” crumbled and ended up on the kitchen floor in the foetal position.
“I never want to see anything like it again,” Ms Wallace said.
“The noise coming from him was pain, like an animal.”
A WOMAN OF FORCE BOOK EXTRACT
September 8, 2010. The date is etched in Deb’s mind, a day she still replays in her head now and then. Her voice is calm as she runs through the lead-up, as if giving evidence in a court case.
‘I shot him, Deb, didn’t I? I shot him,’ asked a bleary-eyed David Roberts.
She looked at this big strong man, who she knew as an exemplary, brave police officer and quietly nodded.
‘Yes Dave, it was your bullet that killed Bill,’ she told him.
He fell back against the wall and crumpled to the floor.
It was the most difficult news Deborah Wallace had ever had to give to someone in her 30-odd years as a police officer.
The target action group, or TAG, as it was known, was the short, sharp unit of MEOCS that responded to ‘live’ situations that need to be acted on immediately. Very rarely did cops make it straight into TAG – they were usually eased into the unit via uniform jobs.
One of those who applied was Detective Constable Anthony William ‘Bill’ Crews, a 26-year-old who was only three years into the job.
But every so often a resume stood out. These were called ‘Specials’ – the candidates who were invited in for an interview because, on paper, they looked good enough to jump a few rungs. Bill Crews was one of those.
In August 2010 Bill Crews was transferred to his dream job.
He started as an observer so he could get a feel for the work TAG did.
Three weeks later he was dead.
On 8 September 2010 Sergeant Dave ‘Robbo’ Roberts had just spoken to an informant, who said that a major drug deal was going down later that night. Robbo was an acting sergeant at the time, and had a huge career ahead of him.
They’d received information that there was an Asian male dealing drugs, notably cocaine, from a garage at a unit on Cairds Ave, Bankstown. Ten years later, the address remains etched in Deb’s mind.
DEB WALLACE BOOK EXTRACT
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It was a sizeable amount – they were told there would be 6 ounces, and probably $40,000 cash involved.
Their intel said that Miagi a drug dealer was also a broker, a go-between for crime groups – in this case, a Middle Eastern family who were in the market for heroin and cocaine. The informant, who was a source of Dave Roberts’s, said Miagi was of Chinese descent in his mid to late fifties. He seemed like a family man, someone who might be doing pirated DVDs in his garage at worst.
Deb and her crew had every reason to believe that information. When Bill Crews was told of the job he recognised the address as a unit block where a serving cop from Campsie lived.
When Crews rang him, the cop said he was surprised the guy was the subject of a drug investigation, saying he had seen little evidence of it.
THIS ONE WAS DIFFERENT
DEB, and especially Mick Ryan (her number two) and the team, did a lot of work that day. They rarely executed search warrants at night – most warrants were executed around dawn, because of the likelihood that they would catch their targets by surprise, hopefully still in bed.
But this was different. The information received suggested that the money and the drugs would only be at the location for a short period of time. They had until about 9pm.
Deb ticked off the positives: no record of violence attached to the car or the unit. And more importantly, they had a ‘live’ informant in play.
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He was with the target, getting the information as the target did and relaying that information to the police. Roberts constantly asked, ‘Have you ever seen this man with a gun?’
‘No, it’s Mr Miagi, he’s Asian, he’s not into guns. He’s just a middle-aged guy brokering a deal,’ they were told.
The information coming in live was that the drugs were already there but the deal wasn’t done yet. By 9pm, when the other group arrived, it would be.
Deb can’t remember how many calls she and Ryan exchanged, or how many times Robbo spoke to the informant, but she knows it was a ‘shitload’. They were confident it was a safe and worthwhile operation.
Detective Sergeant Dave Roberts was in charge of the raid. Bill Crews, showing the initiative that had drawn Deb and Ryan to him, asked if he could be the officer in charge under Roberts. They okayed the enthusiastic Crews to run it. Deb was confident.
Dave Roberts had eighteen years on the job, and Crews was well schooled, and experienced in doing search warrants from his days at Campsie. Between them they would have executed hundreds of similar search warrants.
The plan was to go in when Mr Miagi was there on his own. The hope was to get the drugs off the street, get Mr Miagi in a jam and perhaps turn him into an informant.
There were nine going in on the ground that night, one group to secure the unit where Miagi lived, and Roberts, Crews and another officer going to the garage. There would also be two uniform officers, one with a video. This was to ensure the integrity of the arrest, and also to make it blatantly clear that they were police officers. The plain-clothes guys would have their lanyards with ID swinging from their necks.
Everything was going fine. They were doing an eight o’clock briefing at the MEOCS office. Deb was at home and so was Mick, who was on the phone constantly.
Deb will never forgive herself for this, but she’d had a lot of meetings that day, and as a result her Nokia 8310 went dead. The battery died at around six o’clock, by which time everything was in order.
Deb put the phone on charge near her bed and went to sleep, not realising that the phone would not automatically go on while it was charging – it had to be switched back on. Of all nights for it to happen. Deb drifted off, thinking, If anything goes wrong Mick will ring.
AS BAD AS IT GETS
THE phone never rang, but at about 9.30pm there was a knock on her door.
Still in her nightgown and ever cautious, Deb asked, ‘Who is it?’
‘Deb, it’s Hughesy,’ her highway patrol commander called out. Deb and Sergeant Brian Hughes were tight. Straightaway she wondered what was going on to bring him knocking on her door at that hour.
‘Just open the door, Deb,’ Hughes said. ‘It’s bad, Debbie, you gotta come. It’s Crewsey.’
Deb opened the door immediately. ‘How bad?’ she said.
‘As bad as it gets,’ he replied. There was no need to elaborate.
He’s dead, she thought. But until she knew for sure, she had to have hope.