Force for good Craig Campbell carries scars of a dark day

This is a hard day for Craig Campbell, who 10 years ago saved two Muslims from a drunken mob | SPECIAL REPORT

This is going to be a difficult day for Craig Campbell.

Exactly 10 years ago, a photograph of Mr Campbell flashed around the country.

He was the policeman who, at the height of the riots in the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla, confronted a mob of 30 or so youths in a train who were attacking two Muslim men.

Using his baton, he forced the mob to back away from the youths, allowing them to escape the drunken violence.

To some he was a hero: his colleagues nominated him for a bravery award and one of the two men who was being attacked later thanked him for saving his life.

In the video below, John Lyons visits Cronulla 10 years after the riots to see what, if anything, has changed.

But one member of the hierarchy in the NSW Police Force decided that by swinging his baton, he had used “excessive force”.

The new Mayor of Sutherland Shire, Carmelo Pesce, backs Mr Campbell’s actions.

“He had a split-second to think about what he would do and he had to protect himself and his community,” he said.

The stress of it all has been too much for Mr Campbell — today his life is largely broken.

A build-up of pressure, he says, brought on post-traumatic stress disorder.

He also believed that condition contributed to the breakdown of his 30-year marriage — “my mood swings were too unpredictable” — and made it impossible for him to work.

Today, at 56, he lives in a caravan outside his elderly parents’ home on the NSW South Coast.

He’s had five stints in psychiatric wards and finds it difficult to hold down a job. “I can’t work any more, I’m too stuffed from PTSD.”

He feels let down by the management of the NSW Police Force, who he believes failed in their duty of care to him.

However, his former police colleagues have stuck with him.

For saving the two men that day he won a bravery award. However, after the allegation of excessive force by one officer, the department decided not to give him the award. On hearing that, his colleagues made a replica of the award and presented it to him after his retirement.

“If I hadn’t swung that baton, those two young men could have died or suffered more serious injuries,” he said.

“I had a gun and didn’t use it — the idea of excessive force is ­ridiculous.”

Locals in Cronulla are used to tensions each summer as thousands of visitors from around Sydney visit — it is the only city beach that has a train line ending 200m from the beach — but 10 years ago there was a nasty edge.

In the lead-up to the riots, Mr Campbell said, young Muslim men came to the beach and branded women in bikinis “whores and sluts”.

He said these youths were “a small minority of a small ­minority”.

Mr Campbell remembered driving along the beach on the morning of December 11, 2005, and seeing a young woman drinking alcohol. “I turned to my team and said, ‘I’ve got a feeling this is going to turn to shit before lunchtime’,” he said.

How was he planning to spend this 10th anniversary of the riots?

“I’ll just lock myself inside my home,” he said.

MrCampbell saves two Muslim men from a mob on a train in 2005. Picture: Craig Greenhill