Strange case of guns and rozzers

TIMING is everything. When the gun thieves hit the property just outside a big Surf Coast town, they got it right, writes Andrew Rule.

When gun thieves hit a Surf Coast town property, they knew exactly where to go.

TIMING is everything. When the gun thieves hit the property just outside a big Surf Coast town, they got it right. It could have been between midnight and dawn, when the household was asleep. Or they might have watched the place, driving past like tourists, waiting for the owners to go out.

Either way, they knew exactly where to go — and what they were after. They opened the side door into the mostly unused garage then stepped over three cases of valuable wine to reach the steel gun safe fixed to the wall. The safe had an over-size, hardened padlock fitted through two lugs — one welded to the door and the other to the rim of the safe. The thieves must have brought heavy-duty bolt cutters, given they left no metal filings of the sort that might be left by a portable side grinder. They took all five guns — and the broken lock, a sign of someone well schooled in leaving no clues.

“They probably threw the padlock into the dam on the way out,” suggests the owner, who can’t help wonder about the timing of the theft. Here’s why. Her family have lived on their hobby farm just outside town for more than 25 years. It is not a big working property like those deep in the countryside further from Geelong, where firearms are the norm; thieves could go to a dozen farmlets in this almost suburban pony club belt without finding a gun safe. Which is why the family wonder what triggered the highly specific theft by a seemingly well-informed intruder.

What intrigues them is that the theft happened soon after police came to inspect the gun safe — the one and only routine inspection they have had to ensure guns and ammunition were kept separately under lock and key. The more the owner and her airline pilot husband think about the “coincidence” of the theft following the inspection, the less they think it was one. Anecdotal evidence that thieves are targeting farms close to urban areas — stealing guns, chainsaws and motorbikes — does not convince them theirs was just another random raid.

Nothing else was taken or disturbed — not even the Grange Hermitage wine stored near the safe, worth far more than the guns.

If the thieves had been tipped off by someone with inside knowledge — police, gun dealers or a public servant — it wouldn’t be the first time. The problem of police and public servants being compromised by criminal elements is as old as policing.

Ken Lay had a headache with officers who seemed to be stooges for outlaw bikie gangs.

Graham Ashton’s predecessor, Ken Lay, had a well-publicised headache with officers who seemed to be stooges for outlaw motorcycle gangs — and with others tied up with racketeers, a hangover from when the wildly generous Tony Mokbel and the late Lewis Moran had nearly as many pet police as jockeys “on side”. In Lay’s time, a policeman was caught allegedly leaking to the Hells Angels. In fact, the rogue officer lived with a biker’s daughter, literally sleeping with the enemy.

It was a classic set-up. If there is one thing organised crooks love doing, it is getting a hold on useful people — from politicians who solicit donations, to police who trade information, to prison officers who carry contraband, to public servants working in interesting areas like passport control, motor car registration — and, of course, the firearms registry. Names, addresses and the whereabouts of certain cars — and firearms — are like money in the bank for crooks. And tip-offs about police raids are gold.

It is four years since senior police were warned of shady connections in the Goulburn Valley area. At least eight search warrants served in and around the valley’s towns drew blanks when police raided properties linked to the area’s dominant bikie gang, the Outlaws. When Mr Plod came knocking, there was no one home — and no guns, drugs or illicit cash either. Funny about that.

At the same time, a local business owner complained that a rented house next to his was regularly used to “cook” methamphetamine. Four years later, he says, nothing has changed: the “cooks” come and go — as if they have other safe houses to use to stay ahead of a glacial police response. His complaints go nowhere. In fact, he says he has been warned privately by a sympathetic officer that it might be safer to avoid trouble with the sort of ruthless people who traffic drugs.

It goes without saying the vast majority of Victoria’s police are not corrupt. But maybe too many are apathetic — or feel hamstrung by the work practices imposed by a growing bureaucracy and fears of officers being terrorist targets.

The force has not grown as swiftly as the “ice” epidemic and the crime wave generated on both ends of the drug economy: turf wars between drug dealers and street crime among addicts who run amok under the influence of the drug in order to buy more of it. That so many well-known people are in the drug’s grip is the tip of the “ice” berg.

Everyone knows that a Brownlow medallist and premiership player, Ben Cousins, is so far gone he has been jailed and that his family and friends fear for his life.

Everyone knows one of his former teammates, Ben Sharp, has been jailed for an armed robbery prompted by drug debts and that another teammate almost died of an overdose on a football trip. And on it goes. The NRL Test players caught in Canberra with drugs last week are just the latest in a list of the almost famous among thousands of addicts and dealers that clog courts, tie up police and make the streets less safe, arguably, than any time since the razor gang era of the 1920s.

RISING demand for police means they rarely respond to everyday emergency calls with the sort of speed that inspires public confidence. Ask almost anyone who has called triple 0 lately and the result is predictably negative.

At a schoolboy football match near Caulfield last Sunday morning, a Herald Sun journalist — who is no shrinking violet — was alarmed to see a large and obviously drug-affected man stalking among spectators, raving in a threatening way. He called Caulfield police and endured an overlong cross-examination about his identity before he could convey that children were in potential danger. Almost an hour later, after the game finished, a car arrived, with two female officers who, on being told they might need “an extra car”, were more interested in acting offended (“Oh, you mean you want men!”) than in handling the situation.

When, seconds later, they saw the size, strength and menace of the offender when he attacked their police car, they might well have been relieved that back-up arrived. While the first two officers fiddled nervously with their capsicum spray, says the journalist, an off-duty policeman in the crowd couldn’t take it any more: he forced the offender on to the ground and pinned his arms ready to handcuff him. He should get a commendation but probably won’t.

It ended without innocent people being hurt — but no thanks to the official police response. Through it all, the reporter says, he had visions of what happened at another children’s sports event three years ago to a boy called Luke Batty.

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