Some old dogs have a bit too much bite

TOP cop Ken Lay’s plan to encourage former officers to help young police is great thinking, although some characters might be just a bit too colourful.

20/03/2013 NEWS: Methode Byline Images: Andrew Rule

NEWS ITEM: Retired detectives with dozens of years of experience have confirmed they are ready to return to teach young cops old tricks.

OLD school police are all the rage. First there was a ripper bent cop novel called The Old School. Then there’s the excellent television drama, also titled Old School, in which Bryan Brown and Sam Neill make a case for retired cops and robbers staging a comeback. And there’s New Tricks, a cunning label for old school coppers.

No wonder old school police chief Ken Lay has jumped on the bandwagon. His proposal to bring back old dogs to help out the youngsters is affirmative action for the most reviled minority of our time: white, middle-aged males who mow the lawn dead straight, shine their shoes and their Commodores and like to tie a nice fat Windsor knot.

But Lay’s gatekeepers will have to be careful. For every potential recycled knight in shining Armani — proven good guys like Charlie Bezzina, Mark Wylie, Rowland Legg and Jim Conomy — there are others who might be a headache. Roger Rogerson wasn’t Robinson Crusoe

in the 1980s.

In the interests of helping the chief sort the sheep from the stoats, we offer a few tips stolen from a tell-all manuscript doing the rounds of nervous local publishers.

There is the story of Country, Joe and The Bullfrog. Not the Woodstock band — the three amigos who helped delouse St Kilda in the good old days. After the trio pranged two police-issue cars, their boss refused to give them another.

So they borrowed a huge Pontiac from a car dealer and went cruising after drug dealers in it, all three sitting on the bench seat.

After midnight they found a dealer foolhardy enough to have ignored an earlier warning to leave town after his customers started dying from contaminated heroin. They drove him to the end of the St Kilda pier, made him strip and told him to jump. He mumbled something and refused — until (nickname deleted) fired a shot past his ear with his service revolver. The naked dealer jumped in. Sadly, he couldn’t swim, which was what he had been trying to tell them. This led to an argument.

“You fired the shot,” Joe said to his superior officer. “You jump in.”

“No, I’ve got the senior rank here,” said the sergeant.

They both looked at the quiet cop from the country, who dived in, grabbed the drug dealer (after subduing him with a backhander) and towed him towards the beach.

It was a good effort. His dry, warm mates were waiting as the “rescuer” dragged the half-drowned varmint out of the water — just in time for a midnight rambler walking his dog to come up and demand to know what was happening.

“We’re the police,” growled one, flashing his badge.

“Nothing to see here,” said another.

“Please move right along” said the third.

The drug dealer wisely said nothing.

The dog walker suddenly understood he’d seen a brave rescue by selfless heroes, not some act of police brutality. He insisted on getting their names. Reluctantly, they gave them. In due course, each received a commendation for service beyond the call of duty. History does not record the fate of the drug dealer.

Another story features a detective with a licence to use explosives. It is unclear whether he helped two other rogue cops (and a rogue reporter) blow up the doorway of one Joey Hamilton’s house in Carlton one night, but if his skills were harnessed for good causes they would be invaluable in the modern force.

The explosives expert is fondly remembered for assisting on fishing trips organised with the water police by the major crime squad. Anyone unwise enough to bring rod and bait had them tossed overboard somewhere off Mordialloc. Instead, fun-loving detectives, after too much beer, would ignite sticks of gelignite and throw them in the water in an attempt to stun mullet and other slippery fish species.

This technique (known in outback circles as “Cunnamulla Bait”) has many applications in police work, as shown in recent special operations raids on outlaw motorcycle gang clubhouses. There is strong feeling in law enforcement that crims should not be the only ones to blow up stuff.

Sadly, the powder monkey cop was later jailed for pinching a different sort of powder from

police storage and so might have trouble passing a probity test, although he is still treated as a “war hero” by some former major crime squad members at its infamous “Friday the 13th” lunches, the next of which is this week.

Organisers hope it will be a calmer affair than the one last year, in which a former police boxing champion punched notorious ex-detective Denis “Lard” Tanner for a lapse in manners.

Talking of hard men, a prominent detective who shot an armed robber while off duty outside a supermarket late at night would be a star “retread”, as he has shown the initiative to be armed at all times.

NOT so useful would be the former police boss who once demanded support from “Air Force One” on the police radio network — until an amused operator asked him if he was attempting to contact the President of the United States. Our hero thought he was referring to the police helicopter, call sign “Air 490”. He was better with police 4WDs, which he used to transport sheep from his hobby farm, to the disgust of his men.

Witness protection is a touchy subject, especially for newspaper lawyers. Suffice to say that one former police security specialist was distressed to find his teenage relatives swapping facebook images of what they indiscreetly called a Witsec “safe house”. The fact our man had ordered a massive security fence with razor wire and more spotlights than Stalag Luft III tipped off the kids it wasn’t just another farmhouse.

The same expert had spent weeks studying secret squirrel stuff with Scotland Yard only to leave his camera — full of classified images — on a train seat, where it was promptly stolen. But he has learnt from his mistakes and, if recycled under the Old Dogs Act, could maybe run the office footy tipping comp. Which is more than can be said for the cop caught ripping off his mates by sneaking into the station late at night and inserting “sealed” footy tips … after the results were known.

No one knows if these insider stories will eventually be recycled before the old cops are. But one big saving for the force is that most of the old timers won’t need to be reissued with a police “freddy”.

By a remarkable coincidence, most old school detectives lost their badges just before retirement and then found them again afterwards. Legend has it that even the “freddy” that fell into the Red Sea was found again. With those detective skills on tap, the retro-cop plan can hardly fail.