Ex-sergeant Danny Mikati speaks out for first time about brutal reality of job
In less than a month, ex-cop Danny Mikati — who had a reputation as the Muslim’s community cop — has amassed a cult following sharing about life in the force.
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He spent nearly 20 years in the police force having attended some of the nation’s most horrific crimes.
Now former Sergeant Danny Mikati is amassing a cult following on TikTok by sharing “ex-cop tales” on the brutal reality of what life on the force was really like.
Mr Mikati was called to three murders in his first 10 days on the job, was on duty during the fatal Lindt Cafe siege, and was threatened by ISIS terrorists despite being Muslim himself.
“Cops don’t have the time to fully process what they see until they leave the job. For me it’s not the scene that sticks with you, it’s the human attachment to it,” Mr Mikati said.
“I’ve seen horrific things, but seeing things like a mother holding onto the child who died suddenly … that stays with you.
“It’s clean and there’s no blood, but there’s the heartache and that’s tangible.”
With the encouragement of family and friends, including social media star David Gulasi, Mr Mikati decided to take his experience on the job and share it on TikTok in the hopes of “awareness and education”.
“I hope I can become a voice for those who used to, and still work, behind the scenes in the police,” he said.
His unfiltered and direct videos — filmed in a selfie style in his work office — have already proven to be a hit.
His first video – which has been viewed more than 500,000 times – details him witnessing a murder in his first week on the job, where a man was stabbed more than 76 times.
“As I arrived I could still see a man hunched over the victim and stabbing him and there was blood everywhere and students screaming,” he recalled.
“I remember trying to block all the wounds and then the man asked me if he was going to die.
“Within a few minutes I felt his body start to give up and it was the first time somebody died in my arms.”
In another video Mr Mikati recalls attending a fatal hit and run while off-duty before the female victim died in his arms; it has received more than 10,000 likes.
But not all of Mr Mikati’s time in the police involved bloodshed.
In one clip — viewed by nearly 40,000 people — he shares an incident that involved a 13 year old who stole a car using an ice-cream paddle pop stick to impress a girl.
In another post, he goes into details about a search warrant gone wrong where he came to protect himself from a dog, only to realise he was pointing an empty gun — much to the amusement of his colleagues.
He also doesn’t shy away from answering some of the tougher questions his viewers ask, including the mental toll of the job and the worst part of policing which was delivering the death message to families.
Gang wars, the infamous Skaf rapes and the Cronulla Riots in Sydney were just some of the cases he would deal with in his career.
In 2006, Mr Mikati was awarded the Commissioner’s Medal of Courage for stopping a father who set himself on fire in a bid to blow up his home and kill his family.
When Mr Mikati burst into the house after smelling kerosene, the man ignited two lighters which sent a fireball into the roof.
“I then began dislocating his fingers to stop him from reigniting and then we grabbed his hands but they were slipping because his skin was melting,” he said.
“Eventually the man was taken to hospital and I never knew what happened to him.”
But the biggest mark left on Mr Mikati — especially after becoming a parent — was his eight years spent on a team dedicated to dealing with domestic violence cases before he made the switch.
Eventually, the father of three would join several task forces and was involved in counter terrorism work, which saw him threatened directly by Islamic State.
His last major case was the Lindt cafe siege in 2014, which to this day he cannot talk in detail about.
After leaving the NSW Police Force in 2017, Mr Mikati started his own private investigations firm Precision Integrity Services, along with former detective Anthony Macklin.
He’s also a director of Ausrelief — an Australian humanitarian aid agency currently assisting with the earthquake response in Turkey.
Mr Mikati said his team is made up of some of the country’s best detectives, and the force is seeing experienced sergeants and detectives fleeing in record numbers.
“A storm is brewing in the police. I‘ve never had so much attention to our website by detectives who aren’t the kind that the state can afford to lose,” he said.
“I remember when I drove out of the station and looking at my rearview mirror and seeing the police sign and thinking I’m never coming back.
“And I never did.”
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Originally published as Ex-sergeant Danny Mikati speaks out for first time about brutal reality of job
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