Deadline: How much will Flinders St tackle cost cops

A cop walks up behind a man and slams him into the Flinders Street Station tiles — it’s the tackle that could end up costing taxpayers a fortune.

Andrew Rule and Mark Buttler with the latest crime buzz.

HOW MUCH WILL HEADSLAM COP COST TAXPAYERS

Of course, we could not comment on whether the acting sergeant of police who slammed a man into the tile floor of Flinders Street Station last September is guilty of a savage assault or not.

A court will eventually decide on guilt or innocence. Meanwhile, the police force’s lawyers seem to have read the tea leaves in civil proceedings brought by the man.

A police informer has told Deadline they opened the bidding with a $300,000 offer to compensate the injured man — compared with the usual $50,000 usually touted at the start of a negotiated damages settlement.

Starting so high would suggest that the force wants to settle the headslam horror as quickly and quietly as possible. But it hasn’t settled, and probably won’t until it costs the taxpayer seven figures.

As in above $1m, which would trump any murder reward in the land.

That sort of money could be spent screening and training police recruits to weed out cops who walk up behind a relatively-harmless citizen, grab him unawares, and throw him sideways onto a surface comprising tiles, concrete and steel.

Context, of course, is everything. If it turns out that the injured party was holding an antitank gun, it will alter ideas of what a “proportionate response” might be.

But if it turns out the acting sergeant was merely acting up to show off to the police women with him, it won’t look so great when he has his day in court.

Any of several million people who’ve watched the video clip of the incident can decide which one it was.

There appears to be no sign of an antitank gun.

REBRANDING A CHILD KILLER

The late Robert Arthur Selby Lowe lived too long by at least 50 years.

If he had managed to cancel himself when he was a teenage delinquent instead of deliberately running over a policeman, he would never have been bundled off to New Zealand, then Australia, by his embarrassed family — a posh lot who claimed the Queen’s one-time chaplain as such a close relative that he became little Robert’s godfather in the 1940s.

Trouble was, this eminent churchman Ronald Selby Wright was a lifetime paedophile, a sort of aristocratic Jimmy Savile.

Robert Arthur Selby Lowe was a liar and lifetime paedophile.

This might make some people wonder if he abused Lowe, who turned into a serial child molester in Melbourne long before he abducted and murdered poor little Sheree Beasley in 1991.

The murder conviction against Lowe is about as safe as convictions get. He was nominated to police by his own psychotherapist, Margaret Hobbs, who grew increasingly horrified at Lowe’s gloating revelations about Sheree Beasley’s death.

Not only was the evidence against him overwhelming, but he corroborated it in sickening detail by telling a cellmate who was taping him.

In fact, there was never another possible scenario: no other suspects could be linked to Sheree Beasley’s death.

But Lowe’s wealthy older brothers Graeme and Rick were keen to clear the family name.

It was clear to those who met the extremely rich Graeme, a meat-industry tycoon in New Zealand, that he knew that Robert was a lying, lifetime deviant.

Lowe abducted and murdered Sheree Beasley.

But that didn’t stop his businessman brother Rick from commissioning a Kiwi academic to pick over the case to write a book throwing doubt on Lowe’s conviction.

That academic is one Ursula Instone and she has sailed on with the project, despite the death of both her subject Robert Lowe and her patron Rick Lowe late last year.

No mainstream publisher would touch the result with a barge pole, which is why “Justice” Revisited: the Wrongful Convictions of Robert Lowe” is available from Amazon, who aren’t overly choosy.

We have just one question for Ursula: did the Lowes pay her to write and publish the book?

We look forward to her reply.

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COPS FIND G-SPOT HIDDEN BEHIND DESK

A sensitive document currently doing the rounds of Victoria Police has found its way to Deadline and it isn’t happy reading.

Under the headline Nicknames for Co-workers, it lists the titles applied to annoying colleagues and their bad habits.

From “the sensor light” to “the bushranger”, the list seems to have covered just about every kind of police workplace pest.

But, let’s face it, anyone who has ever held down a job has been stuck with some or all of these characters. They are:

G-spot: you can never find him.

Wicketkeeper: puts on gloves and stands back.

Sensor light: only works when someone walks past.

Blister: appears when the hard work is done.

Bushranger: holds everyone up.

Harvey Norman: three years, no interest.

Two-stroke: hard to get started and always smokes.

Lantern: not very bright and has to be carried.

Grenade: waiting for him to pull the pin.

Morphine: slow-moving dope.

Showbag: full of shit.

Seaweed: floats around all day and stinks.

Deck chair: folds under pressure.

Penguin: always on the ice.

WAR, WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

Toby Mitchell is not exactly a name synonymous with conflict resolution.

He’s been shot twice and involved in many and varied instances of fisticuffs around Melbourne over the years.

But when war broke out in Ukraine, the Mongol strongman hit Instagram with a strong statement about the folly of war.

web blurred Mongols bikie post

“We are a family. F**k war,” he wrote above Mongol Russia and Ukraine chapter logos.

It’s hard to argue with the sentiment, though neighbours of the gang’s Port Melbourne clubhouse probably need not fear an imminent outbreak of peacenik Peter, Paul and Mary tunes in Bertie St.

Of course, the Mongols made their own march into Russia some years ago.

Comanchero members in that country patched over to the Mongols in what was viewed as a significant win in the bikie world.

MOTION LOTION MAN CRACKS ON

Being sunsmart is an admirable quality but there are always people who take health warnings too far.

Like the suspect who a while back was driving around Melbourne putting the factor 15 exactly where the sun don’t shine.

Thankfully, he’s currently in a place where harmful solar rays are no huge issue.

Law & Order detectives Lennie Briscoe and Ed Green.

WHAT WOULD LENNIE BRISCOE THINK?

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by players who should know how to put their phones on silent.

Alas, they don’t always and that’s why the Law and Order theme music came blasting out of a phone during last week’s press conference over the tense search for a little boy missing after his family’s car was stolen at Keysborough.

WANNA BUY A USED DUNNY?

Every so often, you wonder how thieves will dispose of something they’ve stolen.

Such as last week, when police from Kununurra in outback West Australia appealed for public help to find a “large toilet block” taken from outside town.