I grew up fearing Queensland cops. Then I hung out with 17 Gold Coast detectives

Joh Bjelke Petersen was charged with perjury and corruption. Qld National Party/AAP

Sir Joh Bjelke Petersen, leader of the conservative Queensland National Party, was the premier of Queensland for 19 years. A stronghold cinched by rigged electoral boundaries and the comforting allure of his wife’s pumpkin scones.

And even writing this feels wrong. Like I’m giving the old, dead prick oxygen.

During Joh’s reign, Queensland’s growth skyrocketed at a clip outdone only by its metastasised corruption; rough riding under the rule of a peanut farmer who spoke like a hokey but was actually cunning, a man who engineered an untouchable brand of cops – The Special Branch – to do his dirty work.

Later, at the lawyer’s penthouse, we crack French champagne and smoke inside and the lawyer tells me Joh was innocent. Didn’t have a clue. Says it was all disgraced ex-police commissioner Terry Lewis and The Special Branch running their own show. Says all this in a rush.

And I say, you’ve got to be kidding me?

When Sally Breen began interviewing Gold Coast detectives, she wondered if she was ‘crossing some sort of punk line’. Supplied

His friend, top cop, is not a movie star cop. At least not a homicide movie star cop. He looks like the kind of guy Hollywood would cast as the dumbass small town sheriff. Bit of an unfortunate face. Body all packed on top of itself. The difference is, he’s not dumbass. He has the kind of eyes I’ll end up seeing on cops a lot. Blank – more camera than human. Mix of training and stuff they’re trying to forget.

He seems good in a way I can’t quite explain.

I annoy top cop by going on about my true crime obsession. As if true crime is a distant thing and not already here in the room. How I like detectives more than writers. He seems pleased by this.

I tell him I’ve been thinking maybe I missed my calling – should have been a detective. Homicide. Maybe undercover. How detecting is just like writing, how all you’re doing is trying to fit the pieces together, figure out the story. And he nods, sort of amused, and lets me go.

Top cop is very still when he listens, a trait I’ll learn is common to a certain type of detective, as if his whole person needs to stay contained to really hear what I’m saying. Hardly anyone else I know listens like this. So when he puts up his hand to stop me, I go quiet, like he’s my dad and I’m five.

Then he sighs and says, “Yeah, but it gets to a point where the stories no longer make any sense. It’s not that you can’t figure the story out, you just can’t square it.” Taking a big, grateful swig of rum. “I took myself outta homicide last time I dealt with a dead baby, I couldn’t get that dead baby out of my head. The day comes when you just lose the stomach for it.”

And he looks away. Into a past that doesn’t contain me.

In a Gold Coast penthouse, a former lawyer for Joh Bjielke Petersen told Sally Breen ‘Joh was innocent.’ Grant Davies/Unsplash

‘Political rot’ and the Fitzgerald Inquiry

Nearly 30 years after the Fitzgerald Inquiry into police corruption in Queensland concluded, Justice Michael Kirby reflected that “political rot is the precursor for systematic failing”. The round-up was testament to that – the list of big hitters charged went all the way to the top: commissioners, superintendents, cabinet ministers.

Sir Joh was charged with perjury and official corruption but his case was thrown out due to a hung jury. The media reported that a player in the infamous “rat pack” of former police officers had conducted run downs on potential jurors for the defence. The jury had been stacked. Locked 10–2 for a guilty verdict when the trial was abandoned.

Disgraced former Queensland police commissioner Terry Lewis. Wikipedia, CC BY

Police Commissioner Sir Terry Lewis took the hardest fall. Convicted of 15 counts of official corruption, stripped of his knighthood, sentenced to 14 years but paroled in less than seven.

The deputy commissioner went down, the assistant deputy commissioner, superintendents, senior sergeants (most unsurprisingly from the licensing branch), six cabinet ministers done for misappropriation of funds and a roll call of accountants, developers and local and interstate businessmen.

Some never did time. Nearly all were out in less than two years. But the legacy wasn’t only about extracting payment. The truth was out there.

‘I forgot you were recording’

Some of the Gold Coast detectives I meet have the sharp cut faces and mannerisms of cops I’ve seen on film and TV: prerequisite short back and sides, white and blue business shirts, navy or black pants, expensive silver watch on the men, hard nut exterior on the women – like you really do not want to mess with them – but there’s always something else, something real intervening.

The witch’s hat covering a loose tile on the path up to the Surfers Paradise Criminal Investigation Branch (CIB) that will never be fixed or moved in the whole time I’m trailing up that path will end up being a metaphor for the human flaw in the machine – the difference between the lives these cops are living and the way they’re sold to us. As stories.

On July 20 2022, Senior Constable Kym Slade, 48, died by suicide at Loganholme police station south of Brisbane. One colleague told the media that “the officer had been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety and depression from her time in the force”.

On December 12 2022, Nathaniel, Gareth and Stacey Train shot constables Rachel McCrow, 29, Matthew Arnold, 26 and neighbour Alan Dare, 58, on their property in the Western Downs. Police said the murders were a “religiously motivated terrorist attack” against the police. Nathaniel shot Rachel, and Matthew, from a sniper hole. They’d been on the property for three minutes. In her final moments Rachel repeated, “I love you, I love you, I love you” into her body-worn camera.

On May 29 2011, detective senior constable Damien Leeding was shot in the head at close range with a sawn-off shotgun when responding to an armed robbery call at the Pacific Pines Tavern on the Gold Coast. Damien took three days to die. Sonya Leeding, his widow, is the sixth detective on my list. “I can honestly tell you,” she says, “without the kids, there was no way that I would have kept on living”.

Sally Breen spoke to the widow of detective Damien Leeding, who was shot responding to an armed robbery call at the Pacific Pines Tavern. Dave Hunt/AAP

This is not a podcast. This is not a film. This is real.

The tears in the detective’s eyes aren’t from circling smoke. In fact, there aren’t any smokes at all, and I’ll spend half my time dying for one. I don’t expect them to be wary of me. But they are. We are out of order here. I am interviewing the interviewers.

But I don’t find it unnerving and eventually most of the detectives get comfortable enough to forget why we’re here. Looking up at me nervously and saying, “Oh yeah, I forgot you were recording.”

Sharing slices of carrot cake, they tell me about their lives, and it doesn’t take long for me to shed my history as a Queensland kid. It takes me about five minutes. Not because I’ve grown soft or suddenly naive. I’m not here as an adversary. I’m here as someone prepared to listen.

Sitting at the cafe closest to the Coomera CIB, picnic tables strewn with uniformed officers, badges glinting in the sun, I try to lighten the mood by saying it must be one of the safest on the coast. And the D I’m interviewing just smiles at me tightly. Raises an eyebrow.

I get the feeling he’s figured out I’m not as straight as the title on my business card might suggest. And I’ve never felt so clocked.

‘They damaged policing’

Most Ds occupy space as a forcefield, the power they possess rippling out of them even though they barely move. Hand on the coffee cup. Other hand on the table. Eyes shifting like the Terminator to watch a bikie riding past, a piece of paper blown over my shoulder, every move I make.

When we leave, they always take the closest side to the road, annoyed when I break rank, my independent mode interrupting the forcefield. I learn quick to cross when they cross. To keep step. To allow them to protect me on instinct, like trained horses.

When I interview Detective Senior Sergeant Chad Davis, operations leader of the Surfers Paradise homicide squad, on the rooftop of the Gold Coast CIB, he seems at pains to point out how much times have changed since the Fitzgerald Inquiry. I don’t get the impression he’s winding me up.

The Ds in the Surfers Paradise CIB have been housed in this unmarked non-descript high-rise since the dark times, hidden behind giant panes of reflective deep-blue glass. A contained, impenetrable world. Until you get to the rooftop, a washed-out Miami Vice-style party place with a built-in bar and sunshine bouncing off the white tiles.

And while there’s a sign saying the rooftop is available for bookings, the place looks like it hasn’t seen a good party for some time. Old crime scene tape covers a massive hole in the floor. And Chad and I are staring each other down, all that suss history swirling in the sea breeze.

There is an element of “don’t mention the war” when speaking with detectives about the Fitzgerald Inquiry. Nearly all of them act surprised when I try to draw them on negative reactions to Queensland cops. Either a diversionary tactic, or they’re so caught up in their own world they can’t see the stains. Or don’t care to.

Chad admits the fallout has been bad, but he mentions the 1995–97 New South Wales inquiry first and can’t seem to bring himself to invoke the name of the Queensland equivalent. “The Wood Royal Commission in New South Wales and then the commission up here is still reverberating powerfully. They damaged policing and it was probably policing’s own fault. There were people in policing who damaged the reputation of policing almost irreparably. Across the world. They still do.”

The strain in Chad’s voice is an echo of when policing in Queensland was all about erasure and bag men. And I can tell he doesn’t really want to talk about it, but at least he’s giving it to me straight. Because Chad, like so many of his contemporaries, is more likely to be heading home this afternoon to take his kids to nippers than he is to be heading to a local to debrief over a thousand whiskeys.

Chad says the persistent perceptions frustrate him. “Because it doesn’t matter what you say, every barbecue you go to or whatever, as soon as you say you’re a police officer, it starts. Everyone’s got an opinion for whatever reason. People have that thought in their head. That you’re a crook. Whatever movie they’ve watched or whatever they’ve been sold. That’s their problem. It’s not worth the fight because I know the truth.”

‘As soon as you say you’re a police officer, it starts. Everyone’s got an opinion.’ Jason O'Brien/AAP

Allegations of corruption and misconduct still swirl around the Queensland police service. Heavy handed beat cops, accusations of sexual abuse and misconduct, missteps from the former commissioner. But there is less evidence of wholesale impropriety. The culture at large has shifted. The warped political conditions that created the perfect storm have changed.

It’s not as easy as it once was for cops to cross a line: cops are being watched just as much as the rest of us. Some of the younger detectives I interview weren’t even born when the Fitzgerald Inquiry concluded. Some senior guys admit they miss the old school culture, but they also say, it’s how it should be – for the kids the newer detectives would never see and the divorces they probably don’t wanna have.

Turning up these days smelling like the XXXX brewery is not a done thing.

Chad hardly moves when I speak to him. In his expensive black glasses and reserved, meticulous air, he comes over more like a high-tech guru or someone who might be cast as the reserved FBI agent in a Hollywood film than a cliched Queensland homicide cop. This fastidiousness, I’ll learn, is what makes him very good at what he does. He might give good poker face, but Chad doesn’t strike me as a liar.

“It frustrates me that we have some people who still do the wrong thing. But I haven’t encountered them. As far as official corruption goes, I can say I’ve never actually seen anyone I’ve worked with do anything of the sort. I just haven’t seen it. Accountability goes up and up by the minute. Trust and the ability to not be connected to it is almost impossible.”

We don’t know the half of it

Another thing I learn real quick about Chad and most of the other detectives I spend time with is that they’re uber protective of their kids. Lots of activities to keep them busy, and always – no unfettered friends.

No sleep overs. Domestic violence and sex abuse weigh heavy not just on resources, but on minds – the old X Files refrain of “trust no one” is the defining mantra. But we’re not talking about alien conspiracies. We’re talking about monsters much closer to home.

The stories they tell me sit under my skin, like lava: kids raped in shopping centre toilets, in their bedrooms, in parks, in schools, in public pools, in their granddad’s tool shed, poor kids lured into the sticky webs of rich old men. The phrase “baby shake” is common parlance.

The rueful looks on their faces reveal just how little any of us know. We don’t know the half of it. And what it feels like to absorb and process this horror on a day-to-day basis doesn’t come out in the detective’s words necessarily. It comes out in the way they occasionally recoil in their seats, pulling away from what they’ve just said as if there’s a hard-core blackness inside there that’s contagious. A blackness I see replicated in their eyes.

In Kill Bill, Quentin Tarantino shot the most gruesome sword fights in black and white to negate the blood spilled. He didn’t want us distracted. In popular culture death, murder, mayhem is powerful, immediate, glamorous even – in real policing the accumulation of fallout is quiet.

In the doco Homicide Los Angeles, retired detective Danny Smith says every cop has got their body count. “That number is different for everyone but at some point, you’ve had your fill, and you’re done.”

Meeting death and badness on a regular basis accumulates in the human system and eventually wants release. Green screens and aesthetic shields aren’t an option. The only filters real detectives use to protect themselves from moral injury rise up in their eyes.

Because how do you talk to a child who has just witnessed her whole family being mauled to death underneath a malfunctioning ride at Dreamworld? How do you check in with a detective who’s dealt with four suicides in one weekend – the hundreds of glittery high-rise towers on the Gold Coast a paradise for tourists or, as one D said to me, just another weapon of mass destruction.

Because you can’t talk about the details of what happens with suicides or child victims in the media, most of what these Ds do every day goes unnoticed.

A vigil after a ride malfunctioned at Dreamworld, killing four people, in 2016. Dan Peled/AAP

Crime shows ‘nearly always’ get it wrong

I thought I knew something about how the reality of crime and fiction went together. How the real Ds and fake Ds might be of a piece. But the further I go down this rabbit hole, the harder it is becoming to acknowledge the competing mythologies in my head with the cops I’m interviewing. When there is no soundtrack or voice over to distract me. When I keep feeling like I’m in a movie and they’re just being themselves.

For detectives, the process between the real deal and the make believe isn’t all that symbiotic. When I ask Chad about celluloid detective heroes, he just laughs, preferring to watch Married at First Sight with his partner instead.

“Crime shows feel like work,” he says. “And nearly always they get it wrong. The only thing that comes close to the absurdity of what we are dealing with is Brooklyn 99.” Even then, he talks about it like it’s happening in a parallel universe and he’s unsure why I’m asking. The truth, for a detective, is not just stranger and harder to hold than any fiction: it is the end goal. And that’s the difference.

Unlike some writers and students I know who can sit around for hours discussing the ins and outs of every scene in season one of The Wire, or armchair critics who’ll throw around terms like “gritty” and “true to life” and “close to the bone” – in the end they’ve got no idea.

And it’s not just because most have never been face to face with a real bad ass or ever gotten blood on their hands – it’s because pop culture layers a soft-focus buffer over reality. A form of self-protection we participate in unknowingly.

Even when a show is as powerful and real-life aligned as The Wire (which grew from creator David Simon’s embedding in the Baltimore Police Department, with former homicide detective Ed Burns as writer and advisor), the viewer is always at a sense of remove, adjacent to the truth. The best offerings in pop culture bring us close. The worst perpetuate fantasy.

Even with a real-life aligned show like The Wire, the viewer is always at a sense of remove.

Suddenly, we’re not wounded children or sad victims of circumstance or run-of-the-mill Joes – we’re gangsters cruising palm tree lined streets, avengers flying through post-apocalyptic skies, where the shootout doesn’t trigger a memory but makes us feel like kings. The rich perfume of spectacle and stylisation washes over us. We think we understand, but what we never really get (and what is not often presented to us) is that the strongest adversary a D might face is the system he or she works in.

For the detectives I’m spending time with, the screen is make-believe. You may as well be playing dress-ups. But there are parallels. Because I’m looking for them.

There’s the wiry homicide detective who looks like a young Clint Eastwood when he calls crims “grubs” and says, “Sally, let’s go hunting”. The six-foot-four wall of muscle who inhales three pastries walking along Surfers Boulevard, like he’s popping grapes. He’s a bit too hot for his own good, like Bruce Willis in Sin City.

There’s the Gold Coast Barbie who looks like she walked in the wrong door until she laughs, referring to her husband as a “know-it-all fucking know nothing motherfucker” – and she’s suddenly a pent-up white girl version of Danny Glover.

The earnest skinny ginger D with the piercing blue eyes that don’t stray anywhere when he’s talking to me, not even for a second. I get to feeling a bit too seen, until I realise he’s the kinder, less cheesy version of Horatio (the dark sunglasses wearing detective sage in CSI Miami) in the actual situation.

Every real-life detective I speak to isn’t interested in who they might be echoing. And in a way, that’s right. Because when it comes to how things really go down, there’s never an easy resolution like there is in the last chapter of an Agatha Christie or in the reassuring double-hit refrain of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit ringing out on late-night TV.

There is no Luther, the rogue D running his own show his hard maverick line reverberating all the way back to the 1940s – to a cool Sam Spade in his trilby and trench, putting his cigarettes out on the doomed fate of quintessential femme fatale Miss Wonderley. But we keep coming back to these stories and eating them up, for the promise they offer – because the actual human soup is what it is.

Because how do you catch, book, prosecute, let alone fathom a woman who’d slowly poison and eventually kill her own kids for the sympathy money? How do you honour and fight for the family of the Gold Coast cheerleader who landed on her back sideways from a high-rise and her much-older partner with a history of domestic violence who said she jumped? How do you get inside the head of a young man who murdered his mother – and spook him enough to say “I gotta remember where I hid the body” to his dog on a wire?

No one yells cut at the end of these scenes. They echo out into the nothingness of real lives, taken forever. And no one’s watching but the detectives.

This essay is an edited extract from Sally Breen’s third book in development, The Cop Shop: Detectives Real and Imagined.

If this article has raised issues for you, or if you’re concerned about someone you know, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Authors: Sally Breen, Associate Professor in Creative Writing, Griffith University

Read more https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-i-grew-up-fearing-queensland-cops-then-i-hung-out-with-17-gold-coast-detectives-272179

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