Wayne Gatt: Void of losing four colleagues can never be filled
There is a palpable sense of helplessness among Victoria’s police force, borne out of the realisation that nothing we can do now will restore this extraordinary loss, writes Wayne Gatt.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
The messrooms and corridors are silent. The words, laughter and camaraderie that make them the heartbeat of the policing experience have been suppressed by the tragic reality that our family is four short.
There is a palpable sense of helplessness among our members, borne out of the realisation that nothing we can do now will restore this extraordinary loss.
As police we help, we turn up, we fix, we make things better. When we can’t, particularly for our own, words don’t seem adequate, so silence prevails.
That the lives of these four dedicated police officers were taken during such a routine aspect of policing, resonates with all police. Every member will have returned to a messroom with their colleagues after intercepting a vehicle in this manner, sometimes 20-30 times in a shift.
These four members did not. That’s incredibly hard to reconcile, and it’s impossible for our members to ignore as they arrive for their next shift and prepare to undertake the same task that cost their colleagues their lives.
The members we have lost represent all police.
Individually and collectively they have left a deep void that can never be filled. For their families, their friends and their colleagues.
In policing, you always expect to run into a colleague again. The bonds you form are strong, because they’re underpinned by the realisation that at some point that person has or will have your back. It’s a reliance and trust that only emergency services workers know.
This tragedy has reached into every police station in Victoria.
Some members will know the four officers personally, some graduated with them, shared a shift or a job or socialised with them, but every member could have been them on Wednesday evening.
What these officers were doing in their final moments goes to the core of policing, to the oath they took to keep the peace and prevent offences. That duty took them to the Eastern Freeway on Wednesday evening.
Had they not intervened when and where they did, another driver, a family or a pedestrian could have been seriously injured or killed.
Police don’t get to pick and choose where their duty will take them. Sadly, that’s dictated by those they are seeking to protect the community from.
Some jobs are high risk, some are seemingly lower, yet by virtue of the nature of the job all police do, every job carries the inherent danger that it could be your last.
That’s a burden every one of our members knowingly shoulders, but one that rests heaviest on their families, who can do little but hope that their loved one returns home safely at the end of their shift.
The people who take such pride in knowing their son, daughter, husband, wife, sister or brother has made a career and life choice to put others before themselves, are the same ones with so much to lose when that choice has such final and devastating consequences.
In lieu of the silence befalling the force, we hope the voice of the community, so rich in its gratitude and respect for the sacrifice their loved ones have made, will provide some comfort to the families when little else can.
We are Blue.
We will not forget them.
Wayne Gatt is secretary of The Police Association Victoria.