It was also the year a 17-year-old Smithton boy by the name of Darren Hine signed up to the Tasmania Police academy, with hopes of emulating the sergeant who had scooped him off a road just two years prior.

Since then, his career has encompassed nearly every major event in Tasmanian history – from being on the front lines of the Port Arthur massacre response, overseeing the police prosecution of Sue Neill-Fraser, and being the top cop managing the Hillcrest Primary School tragedy.

Climbing through the ranks over a 42-year career, Commissioner Hine has spent 14 years as Tasmania Police’s leader.

But in a little over a week, it will all come to an end, his retirement looming just days after he reaches his 60th birthday.

CALLED TO THE FORCE

When Commissioner Hine was just 15, he found himself lying on the road, impaled on a handrail, after a near-fatal bicycle crash.

A sergeant by the name of Jock McJannet put his police hat under his head and waited by his side until paramedics arrived – an act of kindness and comfort during a life-threatening emergency that has never left Hine.

“He was definitely an influence on me,” Commissioner Hine said, in his final interview with the Mercury ahead of his retirement.

“I stayed in contact with Jock all those years and he only recently passed away.”

So strong was their bond in fact, that Commissioner Hine was invited to join his hero’s family to scatter his and his wife’s ashes – which they did just outside Hobart’s police academy at Rokeby.

Commissioner Hine’s passion for ending domestic violence was one of the reasons he was driven to become a police officer.

“One of the things that I remember as a young teenager was living next door to someone in Burnie and there used to be shouting and screaming, and the female was a victim of family violence,” he said.

“The police would turn up, treat it as an annoying complaint, tell them to be quiet and go again. And I always thought, what’s that lady going through?”

Commissioner Hine said Tasmania was “definitely” better off in terms of domestic violence since he began his cadetship – with far more reporting and far less secrecy.

“We are talking about it, we’ve brought it out into the sun.”

AN EVOLVING FORCE

When Commissioner Hine started as a cadet, the culture in police ranks was vastly different.

“When I first started, I remember driving around with police officers smoking in the cars and thinking ‘wow this is horrible’,” he said. “And if you went to a serious matter, a dramatic incident, you had to internalise it. You couldn’t talk about it. So culturally, we’ve changed dramatically.

“There’s now no stigma about coming forward and putting a hand up and saying ‘I need help’.”

Commissioner Hine has taken the lead in that space – advocating for mental health within the force and also taking a leading role in LGBTQIA++ space.

He has also seen a dramatic drop in crime rates during his tenure.

In 1997-98, total offences peaked at just over 64,000 before dropping consistently during the 2000s.

In 2012-13, total offences dropped to 23,662 – and the numbers currently sit in the mid-25,000s.

Commissioner Hine said he lived with no regrets, “because you can’t change the past”.

However, he said unsolved cold cases were always difficult, given the hardship on families. He said although Tasmania’s cold case unit was shut down in 2011 amid budget cuts arising out of the Global Financial Crisis, the force had not lost its power to properly investigate unsolved mysteries.

“While they remain unsolved, they’re always open, and it would be great for the families to be able to close the cases for them and bring someone to account,” he said.

PASSING ON THE TORCH

Commissioner Hine stepped in to the top job in 2010, taking over from Jack Johnston, who stood down after just nine months in the role amid allegations he disclosed a secret police investigation to then-premier Paul Lennon.

Mr Johnston resigned with a $700,000 payout, with the charge against him permanently stayed and allegations of corruption found to be baseless.

Commissioner Hine will be handing on the torch to current deputy Donna Adams – who will be Tasmania Police’s 15th Commissioner, but our first female in the role.

“My main advice to Donna is to enjoy the journey. It’s a great job, it’s so rewarding. I know she’ll absolutely do an amazing job and she’ll take this organisation to further improvement,” he said.

After the day of his retirement, October 10, Commissioner Hine’s life will be looking very different.

“There’s not a list of what I need to do at home, there’s a database,” he said.

“I also want to do some travelling. My youngest son and a friend, we want to do Everest Base Camp next year, my wife and son want to live in the UK for a few months. There’s lots of things I want to do.”

The endless loop of tragedies, conspiracies and flak

The top job in the police force has rarely been easy.

Having worked in law enforcement for four decades, entirely in Tasmania, Commissioner Hine has been close to nearly every major chaos and tragedy that has hit the state since the 1980s.

“There’s one story, which I don’t tell very often, but I remember dealing with a teenager who was stealing motor vehicles. I remember saying ‘if you keep doing this, you could end up killing someone or yourself. Unfortunately that’s what happened,” he said.

Over his years in the force, he’s been involved in everything from the Covid pandemic, to the 2013 Dunalley bushfire and last year’s Hillcrest tragedy.

Commissioner Hine was one of the officers on the scene in 1996 when a lone gunman opened fire at Port Arthur.

He’s also been at the helm throughout the scandal of Launceston paedophile nurse, James Geoffrey Griffin, and the entire Sue Neill-Fraser murder case.

But it’s been some of the everyday tragedies - telling a man his wife had died in a car crash, with his devastated children asking where their mother was - that have left some of the deepest marks.

“It’s always in the back of your mind,” he said.

Routinely, Tasmania Police has been criticised for its investigations, become the target of conspiracy theories, or slammed for its perceived failures.

More recently, the force came under fire for a covert surveillance device that was left running at a Risdon Prison meeting room for two months, and for telephone bugging conducted under invalid warrants.

Commissioner Hine said police had already made “several improvements” regarding its surveillance processes, and would make more once an independent review was undertaken by former Solicitor-General Michael O’Farrell SC.

He’s also publicly apologised for the instances in which Tasmania Police failed to act on notifications about Griffin, the now infamous Launceston General Hospital nurse and prolific paedophile, losing opportunities to stop the predator in his tracks.

However, Commission Hine said it could be “demoralising” when subjected to unfair criticism, such as the conspiracy theories that had sprung up about Port Arthur.

“We know there’s various websites supporting the conspiracy theory,” he said.

“I was down there, I was part of the response. I also feel for the other police officers involved in some of these conspiracy theories. I know they’re professional, I know they’ve done the job really well, but it is demoralising to some of those people and the community that have either lost someone or had to deal with Port Arthur.”

Commissioner Hine has also weighed in to the ongoing debate around Sue Neill-Fraser’s murder conviction, previously saying only “selective arguments” were used by her supporters.

He said he was “really proud” of the police investigators that worked on the case.