Catching the Rest of them

What's do police really spend their time doing?

If Hollywood is to be believed, most of a police officer’s time is spent in three main activities:

1. Gunfights

2. Vehicle pursuits

3. Trying to track down a criminal mastermind who has committed a heinous crime and they have covered their tracks far too well to be caught and it takes the best detective on the planet to find them utilising all the CSI, computer forensics, surveillance, and SWAT resources available to them. Only then the detective (who plays outside the rules and that’s how they get results) will spot a piece of crucial evidence that nobody else on the planet has seen and they will wrap it up in a neat little bow.

So, let’s see how real-world experience stacks up. I had ten years as a police officer, with most of my time as a detective. I never engaged in a gunfight, although I did remove my weapon from its holster maybe five times with an intention to use it but never fired it at a suspect. I should say, however, that because I worked in rural areas, I did sometimes use it to euthanize injured animals, but never once did a cow or kangaroo return fire.

I can recall two vehicle pursuits over my law enforcement career, neither lasted very long. One was a pursuit of a motorbike, that turned into a foot pursuit of a motorbike. I was working with a great mate at the time, and for years after if we were at a bar or a party, he would tell the story about a time I ran down a motorbike on foot. In the interests of full disclosure, the motorcyclist in question rode into a sandy riverbed and got stuck in the sand. But when you’re young and trying to impress the ladies, never let the full truth get in the way of a legendary story.

So that brings us to the last one, the great hunt for master criminals. There were some matters that required a lot of work, over years and decades. There were the cases that needed improvements in modern science to deliver results and there were those that have never been solved. Every cop has at least one that springs to mind where there just wasn’t enough to charge someone, or you just never have enough evidence. Quite often, burglaries, minor assaults, and other stealing offences will go unsolved, but the pressure of closing more serious cases means that eventually, they end up being unassigned and only ever re-activated if new evidence comes to light. I have closed rape and stealing matters years later when the backlog of DNA testing started delivering results.

So, what about the rest of the time? Well, I’m not going to lie, paperwork is a real pain in the butt, and it does occupy an awful lot of your time. Usually, it’s paperwork for the rest of the criminals, the ones that aren’t geniuses, the ones that you catch in the act or that do stupid things to let themselves get caught. So let us, for a moment, stop and reflect on the other great unsung heroes, those criminals that mean police have a reason to attend the watchhouse or the courthouse or the jail.

The juvenile delinquent who wants to clear their conscience

A great way to solve a heap of matters in a short space of time was to get a juvenile to come in, close to becoming an adult, and clear up a bunch of outstanding matters. Since they know they will likely get the same sentence for one or 100, they would do a drive-around for days “Broke into that place, stole a bike from over there, scored an X-Box from there…” Detectives would literally fight each other to get those matters because they were easy pinches, little chance that they would plead not guilty, so less paperwork and court time, but your statistics for the month would be out of sight.

I did some of these burglary tours where we couldn’t find a record of a break and enter at that house, so you’d go see the homeowner or proprietor of the business. They would either say “Hey, my pushbike is missing, but I never ride it, so I didn’t realise” or “Eh, don’t worry about it”. Either way, you usually had more than enough charges that you didn’t need to add on anymore. There was also a sense of satisfaction to being able to say that you’d close a whole heap of active files.

Sometimes it was a badge of honour to own up to as many offences as possible. I had one occasion where a juvenile pointed out a few addresses where they said that they had stolen from, only for me to say those jobs had already been solved by another person claiming responsibility. The sheer audacity that someone would claim their handiwork was considered a major breach of the code that binds young thieves, more than any other transgression.

Always give accurate information to the ambulance

I was in one of my first detective roles when one night I was despatched to a male with a stab wound. The ambulance was on the way but wasn’t prepared to enter the house because they feared that the assailant was still present. Upon arrival we found a male bleeding from what seemed to be a stab wound in his left abdomen, he had lost a lot of blood and had been drinking prior to the incident so he wasn’t making too much sense. We recovered a knife that was in a pool of blood in the kitchen. The only other person there was the housemate of the victim. He had blood on him and was generally being a pain as we tried to remove the victim from the house. He kept saying to the man on the stretcher “remember the old school tie”, which is a polite substitute for “keep your mouth shut”.

When we questioned the housemate about what happened, he gave us a story about his friend getting drunk and stabbing himself. The story didn’t make sense and we certainly didn’t believe him but there still wasn’t enough to tie this guy to the crime. The victim would be in surgery and unavailable for at least a day, even then maybe he wouldn’t want to get his buddy in trouble. Towards the end of the shift, the ambulance officers came by the station and we were talking about the incident, when we mentioned that we would need the statement from the victim, they both looked at each other, then said “Didn’t anyone tell you about the call?”

As with most emergency phone calls, they are recorded, we got in touch with the communications room supervisor and in no time, we had a recording of the phone call for the ambulance. The voice on the phone was clearly our suspect, and he gave his name when asked. The rest of the conversation went a little something like this:

Operator: What’s your emergency?

Suspect: I need an ambulance; my mate is bleeding everywhere.

Operator: Ok, where is he bleeding from?

Suspect: From where I stuck the knife in him.

There are moments in life where you’re not sure you heard what you heard, so if you can you rewind the recording. We listened to that recording four or five times. Finally, we played it for the suspect, he acquiesced, made full admissions, and ended up doing a couple of years for stabbing his mate over who would get the last beer.

Walk next time

A known drug dealer is found dead at his house out of town. This usually presents you with a list of 50-100 suspects. It can be people that he has ripped off, people that want to rip him off or the father, mother, sister, brother, boyfriend, or girlfriend of an addict that has had enough of them selling to this person. It is a never-ending list of suspects, particularly if you’re as unpopular as Kyle was.

When I first came to town, I met Kyle on my second day. He was mid to late '40s, overweight, and rude. I’d been asked to help another detective with a warrant at his house, and halfway through he protested to us seizing $20,000 as proceeds of crime. I got into a fight with him while trying to restrain him. The words of the Johnny Cash song ‘Boy Named Sue’ come to mind “I tell you I fought tougher men, but I really can’t remember when. He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile”. Finally, cuffed and bleeding he had added a few more charges to his already extensive rap sheet.

But this November morning, after someone had come around to see their good mate Kyle to catch up and not to buy drugs from him (I would have asked them to pinkie swear on that but really didn’t want to touch them). He was lying in the hallway shirtless and with at least two holes in his chest, from what I was sure was a shotgun. There were obvious signs of a struggle and shoe prints in the blood, if we found someone in the next 24 hours, we might have a shot at solving this.

Adding to the issue was that Kyle’s place is a good 3 miles out of town. There aren’t a lot of houses nearby, but we started to canvas the neighbours. A couple had reported hearing a few gunshots in the night and had thought it was someone out hunting. Everyone was used to cars coming and going from Kyle’s place, so nothing really stood out to anyone.

We were back at the station by the time the afternoon uniformed crew started. After reading the day sheets, one of the young blokes came up to report something. They had been out on a job past Kyle’s house at about 10:30 and were heading back to the station to finish up when they saw someone riding a bicycle on that road back into town. They thought it was strange because it is a bit of a ride from town, but the bike had lights on, and the rider was wearing a helmet and had a backpack. They recognised him as a local junkie nicknamed Spit Murphy. They didn’t have any reason to stop and talk to Spit since he was wearing a helmet and had lights on his bike, so they let him ride on. It wasn’t the most solid lead, but it was something and the only thing that tied someone to being near Kyle’s house last night.

We went round to Spit’s house, it was as you would expect for a junkie’s house, the screen door was hanging off its hinges, and there was junk everywhere in the front yard. There was a 1990’s Toyota Camry in the driveway, even though it looked like it ran, the build-up of leaves and dirt underneath said it hadn’t been driven in a while. When we got to the front door, I saw the shoes, Adidas with a muddy stain on them that looked like dried blood. After a few knocks, Spit appeared looking like death warmed up. As I raised my badge to tell him why I was here, he darted towards the back door. I meandered in knowing the two uniformed officers were waiting to greet him, and then I heard the “Alright, alright, you’ve got me”.

A quick scan of the room showed some used syringes, that I was confident had not been used to treat diabetes. Just like I didn’t need to reassure myself that the residue in the clip seal bags on the table was from insulin. Walking into Spit’s bedroom and you were hit with that unmistakeable odour of sweat and general filth that seems to come with drug addicts. Not surprisingly, his wardrobe was not being used for its intended purpose, and clothes were piled on the floor. On the top of this clothing pile was grey t-shirt also stained with what appeared to be blood. The backpack in the corner of the room housed a shotgun, sawn down as is the fashion for all wannabe gangsters.

Spit was taken back to the station, and in even though I knew we had him, I arranged for scenes of crime officers to attend and start cataloguing evidence. He came into the interview room looking like a man on the way to the gallows. He knew we had him, so he didn’t waste our time and went through everything. Spit had exhausted his line of credit with Kyle but needed a hit, he went there with the intention of stealing from Kyle, but he knew that the big man would put up a fight. Kyle also knew that if he didn’t kill him, Kyle would come after him so he decided he would go there to rob and kill Kyle. He shot him once in the struggle and then once more to make sure he was dead. Murder arrests don’t come with much neater bows on them.

But something occurred to me, towards the end of the interview so I asked Spit why he had ridden his pushbike out there and hadn’t driven the Toyota Camry that was in the driveway. I was expecting to hear that it was broken down and necessity meant riding his bike, I still can not believe this response. Spit recounted how two months ago he had faced court on a drink driving charge, his licence had been disqualified for 8 months. During the sentencing the magistrate had made it clear that if Spit was found driving while his licence was suspended, he would go to jail. Spit told me he wasn’t stupid, there was no way he was going to risk getting caught driving disqualified and going to jail.

Last time I heard; Spit is still in jail. Fortunately, he has still never been convicted of disqualified driving.