38 minute read
President
P
PRESIDENT
Mark Carroll
For everyone’s sake, return police to the front line
I’ve spent almost my entire adult life in and around policing. Never before have I witnessed the extent of policeofficer shortages that are afflicting SAPOL right now.
Last October, Commissioner Grant Stevens issued a direction for all SAPOL employees to receive COVID-19 vaccinations.
He did not hand down this direction as the state’s police chief.
He issued it under the auspices of the Emergency Management Act — wielding the health powers vested in him as the state’s COVID-19 co-ordinator.
At the time, I wrote to the commissioner, requesting the specific government health advice which underpinned this direction.
I assumed it would be clearly evident, and immediately available on request. This advice, however, has not been forthcoming.
Two of the purposes highlighted in the direction were to: • “Minimise the disruption to (police) services due to the spread of COVID-19 amongst police workers, and • “Minimise the disruption to (police) services due to police workers being furloughed following possible exposure to COVID-19. ” A disturbing reality is that many members have informed me there is no longer enough officers to perform proactive police work and target recidivist offenders.
At one stage last month, with the order in full effect, there were 335 members — all fully vaccinated — in quarantine.
Together with the members who remain stood down — as well as between 200 and 300 members re-directed to COVID-related duties — the situation has sent SAPOL into a full-blown staffing crisis.
Members are scrambling to cover critical front-line shortages.
The total number of absent officers in SAPOL last month exceeded even the additional numbers the association successfully campaigned to recruit several years ago.
Back then we demanded the government recruit 313 extra cops on top of attrition rates, to safeguard the future of our force. Yet, in January we had almost 400 officers — and counting — not working.
On that basis, it’s more than fair to say the direction has not achieved two of its chief purposes.
There are, of course, some very real and practical solutions to this.
Officers stood down owing to the vaccine mandate should be returned to their roles. “Close contacts” with no symptoms should be allowed to return to work.
And, in the final analysis, the rise and availability of rapid antigen tests should only make it easier for SAPOL to do away with these policies.
Officers should be where they need to be — on the front line, dealing with criminals and victims of crime.
A disturbing reality is that many members have informed me there is no longer enough officers to perform proactive police work and target recidivist offenders.
In fact, the information coming to me shows this function has not been performed for some considerable time.
On the police front line, we know there are risks to the community when recidivist offenders are no longer the target of proactive police work.
The public is seeing the effects of this every day, with frequent news reports of violent knife and gun crimes.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve scoured the morning news and read about another knife attack or stabbing in South Australia.
And recidivist offenders with no regard for the law were recently involved in a shoot-out at multiple locations on Adelaide’s suburban streets.
It all brings into question SAPOL’s ability to wield effective control over crime in the current climate.
We need police back on the front line. We don’t need them acting as proxy SA Health workers any longer.
The logical, common-sense solutions I’ve outlined could be implemented immediately to alleviate the shortages.
And they are hardly controversial, by international standards. Countries such as the UK and Denmark have already moved to end all COVID restrictions and policies, including vaccination mandates.
Earlier this year I watched the body-cam footage of Los Angeles police officers pulling an injured pilot from the wreckage of a small plane that crash-landed onto railroad tracks — just seconds before a commuter train smashed into it.
The man’s life was seconds from ending, before these brave officers risked their own lives to save him from his inevitable fate.
It was police work at its finest, a culmination of the years of training involved in law enforcement, combined with sheer courage and selflessness.
These cops weren’t checking to see the vaccination or viral status of the man they saved.
I’m pretty sure the man whose life was spared didn’t care about their vaccination status either.
The sad reality is that, over the last two years, our society has become more fearful. We’ve become more isolated and less empathetic.
It is time to end the fear. A message of common sense will be a winning one. A western-suburbs icon
Patrol Sergeant Mick Butler retired last month after nearly 50 years in the job.
He joined SAPOL as a 17-year-old and retired as a fit 66-year-old. He spent his entire career on the front line.
Members who were lucky enough to work with Mick would know not only of his passion for police work but also his deep care for his colleagues’ welfare.
One of Mick’s most endearing traits was his ability to inspire younger members. He became famous for creating a positive, energetic, and caring work environment.
Mick was an icon of the west. Those of us who worked with or just knew him will miss his invaluable presence on the front line.
The Police Association wishes him a long, fulfilling retirement.
THE OTHER PANDEMIC
Two arrests came in separate cases of alleged domestic murder in Australia just last month. More critical than ever now is that Child and Family Investigation sections retain their most capable investigators.
By Brett Williams
INVESTIGATIONS
It was one of those crimes that disgust the public and call for a highly specialized police response. A despicable act of violent shaking had left a vulnerable two-month-old baby boy with a severe, long-term brain injury.
Paramedics – who understood him to be having seizures and struggling to breathe – had rushed to his aid.
He was soon in a hospital ICU ward on a ventilator and with major internal head injuries, including a brain bleed.
Detective Brevet Sergeant Gaye Kittel took on the subsequent investigation into the attack on the infant. Attached to Southern District Child and Family Investigation Section, and highly expert in her field, she soon had a suspect: the baby’s 14-year-old father.
He denied hurting his child but Kittel went about gathering crucial evidence to prove his guilt and arrested him. She worked with other professionals like forensic paediatricians who established the “mechanism of the injury”.
Also for her to prove was that no one besides the father was in the house where and when baby suffered the shaking.
And, in other evidence-gathering, Kittel listened to prison phone calls her suspect had undertaken. She heard him talk to the baby’s mother, a 16-year-old who was still “really engaged” with the father.
“What we see in a lot of these cases is parents siding with the offending partners instead of being protective of their own children,” Kittel says. “That can be really difficult to understand and work through. ”
Among the phone calls Kittel listened to were moments of casual conversation not even related to the baby. The father, in one exchange, asked the mother not about his brain-damaged little boy but whether she had picked up his Nike boots.
While the young mother remained bizarrely loyal to her child’s abuser, Kittel – who holds a master’s degree in clinical psychology – never gave up trying to engage her.
“She was quite resistant,” Kittel recalls. “But that’s where your skill comes in with trying to be flexible around her relationship with the father. That’s then a point of engagement to try to work out exactly what’s happened. ”
Ultimately, Kittel caught the father out in a phone conversation in which he admitted that he had indeed assaulted his son. She was able to show that he had thrown and bounced the child on a bed but also shaken him violently above his (the father’s) head.
Cops know that atrocities like this one abound. Both the closed and active case files of Child and Family Investigation sections are full of them.
Kittel and her Southern District CFIS colleagues manage multiple cases of relationship-based offences simultaneously.
On their caseloads are investigations into choking and strangulation offences, sexual assaults, child grooming and abuse, stalking, financial abuse, criminal neglect, baby and child deaths. The list goes on up to stabbings, rape, murder and attempted murder.
At the centre of a current Kittel investigation is a toddler left with cracked ribs and a torn pancreas. Allegedly the victim of his stepfather, the 18-month-old wound up in intensive care but has survived.
Kittel also has charge of a domesticviolence case to which she has had to bring her skills as a prescribed interviewer of vulnerable witnesses. Her interview subject was a nine-year-old girl who had allegedly seen her father repeatedly choke her mother and threaten her with a knife.
“The (seated) nine-year-old’s feet didn’t even touch the ground during the interview because she was so small,” Kittel recalls. “It’s those small observations that stay with me. ”
The experience Kittel drew on in those investigations came from an eight-year stint with the Paedophile Task Force and her time (now six-plus years) with Southern District CFIS.
She showed – and continues to show – that she and her equally experienced colleagues know the field of relationship-based offending better than anyone.
And what CFIS detectives and uniformed members see, as they investigate relational abuse and violence, never leaves them.
Senior Constable Paul Adams joined SD CFIS for what he expected to be just a six-month stint back in 2008. Now, 14 years later and still with the section, he has likely investigated more than 1,000 cases of domestic violence.
He speaks of victims he sees in hospital with injuries like shattered jaws and smashed eye sockets, all inflicted by violent partners.
One repeatedly violent offender he recalls – and describes as “a giant of a bloke” – often slapped his petite wife so hard that he ruptured her eardrums.
The wife never reported his ongoing violence until he one day slapped her in the head while she was holding their youngest child.
As the impact of the blow sent her flying across the room, she lost her grip on the child, who also went “flying into tables and chairs”.
Detective Brevet Sergeant Zoe Gooch remembers the repeated stabbing of a woman whose partner of only two months held her captive in 2018. He (the partner) had become violent toward the woman after turning up at her house unannounced but initially quite affable.
With enough force to knock her off her feet, he belted her in the head with an object of some kind and then tied her up with a cord. Bashed and defenceless, she then endured hours of verbal abuse from him until, at one point during the night, he armed himself with some knives.
He stabbed and slashed her legs, wrapped the cord around her neck, walked her around the house and told her she was in his control. As blood poured out of her wounds, the crazed man took her into the bathroom where he told her he intended to kill her.
He also tried but failed to hack one of her fingers off before a wave of guilt seemed to wash over him. In his altered mood, he put the woman into her bed, lay down with her, and said they would die together.
But she had the presence of mind to come up with a ruse to save herself. She convinced her attacker that a worker was due to turn up and would find him. And the tactic worked. He took off and she lay there bleeding as she called the police.
Senior Constable First Class Lauren Solly
After Gooch arrived, she checked out the house and could see “blood everywhere”. And, later, in hospital, she and her partner were to face a seemingly impossible start to their investigation.
The ravaged woman lay in bed with her eyes swollen shut, blood over her face and through her hair, and her legs and arm bandaged.
But Gooch had plenty of experience and specialist skill to apply to the task: she had performed multiple stints with CFIS throughout her 10-year CIB career. She drew on all that to help the woman provide a “very structured account” of the attack.
Gooch stuck with the case which, owing to her investigative expertise, ended with a conviction and 10-year jail sentence for the woman’s attacker.
Senior Constable First Class Lauren Solly, one of the most experienced of all CFIS members, allocates case files to investigators. She took on the role two years ago after she had herself worked as a domestic-violence investigator.
And, like her colleagues, she can speak of many cases which remain firmly with her. One involved a girl under 10 and her father, who was sexually abusing not only her but also other members of his family.
It was up to Solly to get the girl to talk about the abuse her father had inflicted on her. All the painful details were, of course, necessary if a court were ever to convict him.
Solly knew well the art of gathering evidence from children and so undertook the delicate process of taking a statement from the girl.
Clearly feeling at ease with Solly, she revealed that, at night, she used to jam a pen under her bedroom door. Then, whenever her father came to prey on her, the noise he would make forcing the door open would wake her.
“As soon as I took that statement,” Solly says, “all I could think was: ‘Oh, my God. This poor child. I just want to hug you and tell you you’re so brave. ’
“But, as a police officer, I’m balancing that with: ‘This is fricking great evidence!’ ”
Solly briefed the detective investigating the case and insisted that he check the bedroom floor for evidence to corroborate the girl’s statement.
“Sure enough,” she says, “they (detectives) go lock the father up, and on the floor is this dug-out kind of indentation where she’s put the pen.
“He was sunk, and, in my opinion, sunk on that one thing that the child did, and that I managed to get from her as evidence. ”
Senior Sergeant Susan Lock is perhaps the ultimate authority on sexual-assault victims and child protection – at least from a police perspective.
Her work with those victims, and as an investigative interviewer of children, extends back 30-plus years.
Now a manager in Family and Domestic Violence in the Policy and Training Unit, she has the experience of hundreds of investigations on which to draw.
Among them are cases like the one of an eight-year-old girl whom an adult offender sexually assaulted in front of her 10-year-old brother.
The offender, then a family friend, had the okay to drive the children to his property in the family’s ute, ostensibly to see a horse.
Once there, he separated the girl from her brother and tried but failed in his first attempt to sexually assault her.
He tried again later, on the drive back home. Soon after starting out, he pulled over and ordered the brother out of the cabin and into the ute’s tub. The boy, however, would not leave his sister.
So, the offender simply committed his assault on the girl anyway. He forced her into an act of fellatio on him – in front of her brother.
Afterward, as he continued the drive home, he asked the children if they intended to tell their parents what had happened. When they said yes, he asked them to promise to wait until the following morning so he could say goodbye to his son.
“The next morning, as they’re driving to school, the little girl disclosed what had happened,” Lock recalls. “She’d kept her promise of not saying anything.
“So, the mum just turns the car around and brought her straight into the police station, and that’s when I interviewed her. And she was magnificent.
“The detective on the case was magnificent, too. He really supported the family and did a great investigation. He worked in Child and Family and, again, it comes back to experience.
“The offender ended up pleading guilty and got something like eight years. ”
EXPERIENCE
Lock and others speak of experience as critical in the investigation of relational offending. That makes South Australia fortunate to have plenty of experience and perceptive minds among its current CFIS investigators.
While those investigators operate without a hint of hubris, they know how much risk their absence from the field would present.
Their expert advice is to leave investigators in place for unlimited periods. Metropolitan Operations Service management, however, compels CFIS detective sergeants and brevet sergeants to transfer out into other CIB areas within MOS every two years.
“In this job,” Gaye Kittel says, “things can go gravely wrong very quickly if we don’t have the right expertise and understanding.
“We’re dealing with people’s lives. We’re dealing with the potential of putting children back into sexual abuse situations if we don’t have the right skill and expertise. We’re dealing with the potential for offenders to murder their victims.
“We have to pick up on the subtleties of victim behaviour and responses and actually tap into that. We have to understand someone who perhaps isn’t reacting like we think they should, even if it’s hostile towards us.
“We have to understand trauma responses, gather evidence and, at the same time, not retraumatize victims.
Detective Brevet Sergeant Gaye Kittel
Detective Brevet Sergeant Damon Roberts
And there are jobs where our intervention stops children being sexually abused and changes lives. ”
Another onus on investigators is to understand the dynamics of nonphysical coercive control, like the constant monitoring of a victim’s whereabouts. It is a common theme in the offences they investigate and, as Kittel explains, a precursor to violence.
“I can’t imagine a unit like ours running without our core group of experienced people,” she says. “Our investigations of relational domestic crimes are inherently complex, so it’s imperative to have our level of skill, expertise, dedication, interest and knowledge. It reduces risks. ”
Detective Brevet Sergeant Damon Roberts joined Southern District CFIS in April last year and five months later stepped up to relieve as a supervisor. Already he thinks of experience in the section as simply “vital”.
“Because of how long it takes (for new members) to learn the role,” he says. “And I’d say it takes 18 months to two years before you start to feel comfortable within this role. Even for me, with my CIB experience, it was a real steep learning curve. ”
Just one of many critical understandings Roberts had to come to was which, and how, outside agencies collaborate with CFIS.
Among them are the ODPP, Department for Child Protection, Women’s and Children’s Hospital Child Protection Services, the Homelessness Gateway and the Migrant Women's Support Service.
“They all have specific roles and different involvement,” Roberts explains. “And you have to know exactly what they all do.
“So, with CFIS, you just can’t rotate people through on a regular basis. You need people who want to be there. You need people who have experience in working in the section. ”
Senior Sergeant Susan Lock
Detective Brevet Sergeant Rhys Williams served with Northern District CFIS for six months before he joined SD CFIS in December 2020. Even as a less experienced member of the section, he struggles to think of a relational offence he has not investigated or had a hand in investigating.
But he has reaped the benefit of working alongside his seasoned colleagues, like Kittel and Detective Brevet Sergeant Hannah Clarke.
“What I’ve learnt from them, and the skills they’ve imparted to me through their knowledge and experience, has been invaluable,” he says.
“I think the area would struggle without people who have been there for as long as they have. They’re obviously there because they want to do the job and are good at it. To have those people there is invaluable. ”
Susan Lock explains that not all police officers can, or want, to work in the field of relational offending. And she insists that no one should work in a CFIS if it is not his or her preference. She speaks of the need for cops to be “the right fit” for the role.
“(Imagine) you’re not an experienced interviewer and you go to interview a child in the matter of a serious sexual offence,” Lock says. “And because of that (inexperience) the child makes no disclosures.
“That offender won’t then be held to account and will go on to abuse other children, because these people don’t ever have just one victim. They have many. ”
Brevet Sergeant Colette Nunke currently works with Lock in Policy and Training and speaks with the authority of international experience.
As a police officer in the United Kingdom, she worked in child protection and in South Australia has served with Victim Management Section.
She considers that in her field, police deal with “the most vulnerable victims and witnesses in society” – children and young people.
“So,” she says, “it needs to be the right person who’s engaging with them right from the start of the process. That’s why (investigating relational offences) is so specialized.
“You’re looking for somebody who can engage with children, chat with people, be interpersonal, and recognize traumatic behaviour. ”
While CFIS members speak of the demand for experience, they also insist that no investigator would succeed without specific character traits.
Kittel explains that if CFIS investigators were not naturally empathetic, compassionate, patient, understanding and non-judgemental they would never connect with victims.
“That’s because you’re dealing with such intense grief in families,” she says. “And it’s such a fine line to cross between compassion and empathy on one hand and open-mindedness and suspicion on the other.
“They don’t really go hand in hand, but they need to for a detective in this role. And there’s just so much skill involved in being one as well as the other. ”
Williams, too, speaks of the importance of those character traits which best enable investigators to connect with victims.
“You need to build a relationship,” he explains. “You can’t just come up to someone and say: ‘Hey, I heard something happened to you when you were younger. Tell me about how this person violated you. ’
“It doesn’t work that way. You need to give something of yourself. I can’t just be Detective Williams. I have to be Rhys as well.
“I have to be a support for them, too, because I’m the one who knows the process. I’m the one who knows what’s going to happen and I need to prepare them for that. ”
PRESSURE
Senior Constable Paul Adams
While the media have their slow news days and firefighters have shifts without any flames to extinguish, CFIS investigators know nothing of slowdowns.
They speak of a continuously heavy workload which has around 20 active files allocated to each investigator at a time.
Paul Adams has many times noticed how the “sheer volume of work” sparks a reaction from unsuspecting newcomers to the section.
“The first thing they say to you,” he says, “once they get into some of the stuff, is: ‘My God, I never knew there was so much to do. It just keeps coming.’ ”
Damon Roberts, who calls the workload “huge”, explains how the section receives up to 30 notifications a day from the Child Abuse Report Line.
“About 130 intakes a month is not unusual,” he says. “They come to you as the supervisor and you’ve got to allocate them out. And these have to be actioned within 24 hours. ”
Roberts also explains that, in many cases, investigators have to “decipher” volumes of complex medical notes, analyse accounting spreadsheets, and scour government and non-government documents.
Indeed, Roberts contends that “an investigator’s role is numerous professions cloaked as one”.
And to hear a CFIS investigator describe his or her typical workday is to understand that it is frenetic. Kittel, for example, might start out with an interview of a child sexual-assault victim and, immediately after, respond to and deal with a domesticviolence strangling and rape.
“Then,” she says, “I might come back from that and get a fresh job coming in from our daily influx of mandatory notifications from the Department for Child Protection. There’s a constant flow of those every day.
“Then I might come back from those jobs and there’s a phone call from a distressed mother who’s just found out that her child’s been sexually abused. And then, on top of that, you’ve got lawyers’ requests. ”
Just recently, Kittel saw two of her colleagues caught up in precisely the scenario she describes. First, they responded to a teen suicide. Then, after returning to the CFIS office, they had to respond to and investigate an alleged domestic-violence rape.
In that case, they arrested a suspect and had to work overtime. And both investigators already had substantial caseloads.
“We’re racing from one job to the next and to the next,” Kittel says. “There’s so many directions that we’re pulled into virtually every minute of the day.
“So, there’s a lot of demand and a lot of pressure. The toughest aspect of the job for me is the huge volume of work. ”
And, of course, victims suffer through their crises not just in office hours but 24 hours per day. So, for reassurance, they sometimes reach out to an investigator in his or her downtime.
Detective Brevet Sergeant Rhys Williams
Says Williams: “I get after-hours calls from victims who say: ‘What’s going on? How are things going?’ Sometimes they just want someone to talk to for five or 10 minutes.
“I don’t think you can be entirely removed from giving a part of yourself to each investigation. And, at the moment, I’m dealing with 21.
“It can be quite draining, but we’re really invested in what we do. We want the best for victims who we try to help, but it takes a lot (to get that). ”
Some cite burnout as justification for the two-year tenure which applies to CFIS members. The idea is that, in such emotion-charged environments with such horrific crimes, particularly against children, no investigator can sustain his or her role for longer periods.
But investigators, with their front-line experience and expertise, reject that notion out of hand. The clear consensus among them is that, if burnout occurs, it results not from the work but rather the workload.
Susan Lock is among those who do not buy into the idea that tenure is best for investigators.
“There’s research to dispute it,” she says, “by Professor Martine Powell. She’s done papers on it, and it’s not (the work). It’s probably more the workload.
“So, you could move members within the branch so they’re still in that line of work, just to give them a break.
“But it’s probably more detrimental to move somebody, who’s an expert and passionate, out of that role. ”
Kittel insists that one way to ease the pressure on CFIS members is simply to create time-out periods for them in the workplace.
“Just to take a little bit of time to just slow down,” she says, “even for a few minutes. Just to talk to a colleague about the job you’ve just come back from is enormously important.
“Not being able to have that space or gap in amongst all our jobs is an issue that can create burnout in the long run. ”
As much as CFIS members might try to forget about work on days off, it can and does easily creep into their thoughts. It is not so much the visions of bashed, hospitalized women or confused, fear-struck children that they find on their minds.
Rather, it is an inventory of all the responsibilities they have to their investigations and associated victims.
“I think a lot about whether I’ve managed everything and done all I possibly can for people, to keep them safe,” Kittel says.
“If there’s a domestic-abuse murder on the TV news, I often think about my cases. Statistics show that, on average, there’s one domestic murder in Australia every week. So, I watch the news and hope that none of my cases are going to end up as the next murder on TV. ”
Gooch thinks similarly, particularly when she has to deal with a hot job.
“If you’re home,” she says, “you’re thinking: ‘Have I done everything? Is everything in line? Is that person safe? Have I forgotten something?’
“It’s definitely a process to make sure you don’t do it because you could go home and think about it all night. ”
Even as he spoke to the Police Journal, Williams was thinking about the shift he was to work that afternoon (September 28).
“I’m thinking of the statements I have to take today, the investigations I’ve got, which people I should call and catch up with today,” he said.
“I’m always thinking of the things that I need to do. That’s okay for me: it’s something that I can manage and deal with. I am able to switch off, but it’s always there. ”
COMMITMENT
Of the Southern District CFIS members who spoke to the Police Journal, each joined the section by choice – and is content there.
Outsiders might wonder how that can be, given the endless trauma, emotion and sheer evil investigators have to confront and, of course, the workload.
The idea of a position in CFIS holds little, if any, appeal to most cops, as Zoe Gooch and others know.
Says Gooch: “You hear people say, and I’ve had people say to me: ‘I couldn’t do that work. I never want to do that work. Couldn’t cope. ’
“We want to be there and we find it can be difficult. I couldn’t imagine someone who didn’t want to be there (in terms of) how difficult they’d find it. I’d feel for that person. ”
To Damon Roberts, CFIS does have appeal, despite what he has seen: women so severely bashed that they cannot see out of their bloodshot eyes owing to strangulation. He has also seen bruised, battered children who wrongly thought that they deserved their injuries.
The father of two concedes that he finds it “challenging” to deal with offenders who think nothing of “bashing their partners and children”.
“It’s genuinely heartbreaking,” he says, “(but) I love the work. I love dealing with these victims and being able to help them.
“The people who work in CFIS are so dedicated to their job and love what they do. ”
Lauren Solly also found it tough to deal with upset child victims of domestic and sexual abuse.
She had seen plenty of gore and dead bodies as cops do early in their police careers. But, for her, nothing compared with “the rawness” of children who had to relive their horror for her to document.
It was sometimes hard for her to contain her emotion but she was in the environment in which she had always wanted to work – and “make a difference”.
“I could be that person talking to the mother or the children or the dad and trying to get people on side to make better choices,” she says.
“I don’t think there’s a better role that you can deal with in the police department than help people from that perspective. ”
Gooch, a mother of two, sees child victims as unable to be a voice for themselves. So, simply acting for children has been the motivation for her to commit herself to CFIS.
Like her colleagues, she finds aspects of the job stressful. Striving to get disclosures from children in the interview process is one she highlights.
But the stresses of the job in no way diminish her commitment.
“I’m passionate about the work,” she says. “I’ve been in sections where it was harder for me to arrive every day and do the work than it is (at CFIS).
“I’ve been back and forth between CFIS and other sections, so I’ve known when I’ve needed a change and I’ve made that decision myself.
“I don’t feel that, with the experience I have, I need someone making that decision for me. I’m an adult; and I want to be doing this work long-term, so I think I can make that decision. ”
Kittel highlights the international view of relational offending: that it is a worldwide crisis, a silent pandemic.
She acknowledges the role of other agencies’ responders but considers police capable of having the most impact.
Ultimately, she regards it as simply a privilege to “care for people on the worst day of their lives”.
“I’m really at my best when I’m in that sort of role,” she explains. “And, at the end of the day, we’re keeping children safe, so I find it intensely satisfying. ”
“I’ve been back and forth between CFIS and other sections, so I’ve known when I’ve needed a change and I’ve made that decision myself. “I don’t feel that, with the experience I have, I need someone making that decision for me. I’m an adult; and I want to be doing this work long-term, so I think I can make that decision.”
TRAINING
Brevet Sergeant Colette Nunke
Susan Lock speaks of the job of a CFIS investigator as a “specialist role” which demands specialized training. She now uses her vast experience for that purpose: to develop and provide high-quality training for child-abuse investigators.
“Children do make good witnesses, providing adults ask good questions,” she says. “That requires ongoing training and regular practice in the skills.
“It’s no good if you’ve done a training course two years ago and are then expected to interview a child. If you’re not regularly using your skill you’ll lose it, and research shows that. ”
Colette Nunke, who works with Lock, emphasizes the importance of training the right people to qualify as prescribed interviewers.
“We want to train people who want to progress (in this specialist field) and use that skill on a regular basis,” she says.
“The key to it (success in the field) is sufficient training and retaining investigators with those skills and experience. ”
Of the courses Lock and her colleagues have developed, one is based on the interagency code of practice and teaches how to investigate allegations of child abuse.
It runs for three days and focuses on working with external agencies to provide a holistic response to child protection.
“If you want to go on to become a prescribed interviewer,” Lock says, “you can then apply for a planned intensive five-day course.
“It will only be for a small number of participants and there’s lots of theory but also lots of practice.
“After that, it’s about regular refresher training and also getting these prescribed interviewers to submit their interviews and we’ll assess them.
“It’s really about turning the role of interviewing vulnerable witnesses into a specialist role. ” PJ
Since taking part in their interviews for this story: • Detective Brevet Sergeant Rhys Williams has left Southern District CFIS and returned to SD CIB. • Detective Brevet Sergeant Zoe Gooch has been furloughed and is therefore not currently working with Southern
District CFIS.
Never to give up music
By Brett Williams
rumpeter Paul West had one specific thought in mind as he played the haunting Last Post at Police Remembrance Day ceremonies: “Don’t screw it up. ”
Flautist David Burvill-Holmes thought similarly as he played an improvised piece at the funeral of Assistant Commissioner Kevin Harvey: “I’ve got to do this (perfectly). ”
But neither musician ever faltered in those intensely emotional environments which were part of his distinguished service as a police band member.
West aimed not just to play but to be “part of the moment” when it came to the Last Post. And he figured he had played flawlessly if, on Remembrance Day, tears flowed from older observers in the front row.
That was the kind of emotion Burvill-Holmes sparked as he played his improvised funeral piece in G minor.
“As I started playing,” he says, “the whole (Harvey) family virtually started sobbing loudly. It became a moment where I was very focused on what I was doing and I felt the gravity of the situation. ”
These were some of the moments the two reflected on as they prepared to retire late last year, after a combined 70 years’ service. December 31 was their last day as members of the Band of the SA Police and the Police Association.
And likely the strongest memory West has taken into retirement is the day he played at Centennial Park for the burial of Senior Constable Bob Sobczak. The Holden Hill motorcycle officer had died on duty in a highway collision in 2002.
“I was the bugler,” West says. “The whole band was there playing but I had to go to the graveside and do my part. All the traffic guys were right behind me, crying their eyes out. ”
TLeft: Constable David Burvill-Holmes West, who also plays the French horn, joined SAPOL in 1984 and completed the first month of a and Senior Constable 1C Paul West 12-month course. It was the same month in which the band turned 100. West had graduated from the SA College of Advanced Education with a Bachelor of Arts degree (music) and intended to join an orchestra. And, for that reason, he knocked back an offer to join the police band in 1977. After college, he played in the Navy Reserve Band one night a week while his day job was in sales with Telecom Australia. One important connection he made in the navy band was Doug Drysdale, the then future director of music for the SA police band. Drysdale told him of jobs on offer with the police band and West applied for one. He scored an audition and “eventually got in”.
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Burvill-Holmes – who plays the flute, saxophone, bass drum and bell lyre – joined SAPOL in July 1988 and played with the band on his first day. It was a school performance and, for BurvillHolmes, came with a first-day mishap.
“I didn’t have the uniform and I was introduced as the new guy and I fell off the stage,” he says. “I don’t know why I fell but I knocked a stand over and (sheet) music went everywhere.
“My colleague next to me made light of it. He said: ‘As I was saying, this young man has just started so the fact that he fell off the stage, we accept that.’ ”
Burvill-Holmes completed the first month of recruit training with 10 other specialist recruits, mostly musicians, attached to Course 24.
He had undertaken four years’ full-time study at the Elder Conservatorium of Music and graduated with honours (Bachelor of Music).
“From there,” he says, “I went on to teach at a couple of schools. I had 83 students and was just doing that from one term to the next. ”
Then came a phone call from a police band member Burvill-Holmes had known at the conservatorium. His news was that the police band’s flautist was leaving. His suggestion was that, if Burvill-Holmes was interested, he should audition.
“And I did,” he says, “and managed to score the job. ”
Burvill-Holmes’ peers consider him a standout player of the bass drum. But he had never once thumped the instrument until he agreed to fill in for the band’s regular bass drummer, who had taken ill.
After the performance, Drum Major Sergeant Ken Ekin wanted to know if his fill-in drummer liked the experience. Burvill-Holmes replied: “Well, I’ve only hit it (the drum) about 61 times but, so far, I’m enjoying it. ”
From that fill-in performance, he became and remained the full-time bass drummer of the Band of the SA Police. And West explains how the band members gave Burvill-Holmes the made-up title of Pan Pacific bass drumming champion.
“It’s his timing and he’s just rock-solid, loud and crisp,” West says. “When we did massed bands at tattoos, they’d say: ‘The SAPOL bass drummer, everyone listen to him. He’s driving.’ That’s quite an honour and quite an important role when you’re keeping 300 musicians in time. ”
Burvill-Holmes also joined one of the band’s several ensembles. For around 20 years, he played tenor sax in the big band.
Both he and West played in all eight performances the band took part in abroad. They included the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, the Royal Tournament, the Bremen Tattoo (Germany), the Basel Tattoo (Switzerland) and the Queen’s 90th birthday celebration.
“When our band was the centre band, I took control of tempos for the whole thing,” BurvillHolmes recalls. “So, there’s been great moments, enhanced by people, particularly colleagues, coming up to me at the end, saying how proud they felt. ”
West, too, was frequently in demand for his musical skills. The AFP made a request of him in 2007, after the death of Assistant Commissioner Audrey Fagan. It needed a bugler to play at her funeral.
The AFP flew West to Canberra where, at the service, he played Requiescant. And, for the following five Police Remembrance Day ceremonies at the National Police Memorial in Canberra, he also played Requiescant.
West considers that, when he and Burvill-Holmes each got to serve his 30-plus years, the band was in its heyday.
“We’ve been blessed,” he says. “We’ve had good bosses, good performances, and good experiences over the years. ”
And both 60-year-olds feel equally fortunate to have belonged to the Police Association.
“It’s just that feeling that you’re attached to a huge group that’s willing to go in to bat for you,” Burvill-Holmes says. “It’s a very worthwhile (organization) and it never occurred to me not to be in it. ”
In retirement, West and Burvill-Holmes – fathers of four and three respectively – intend to travel. Neither, however, has any intention to give up his music.
West, who is getting married in October, will “still play trumpet somewhere” and might yet join the Tea Tree Gully Redbacks concert and marching band.
Says Burvill-Holmes: “Just practising is something I like to do. I just feel better about the day if I’ve spent an hour playing a saxophone, a flute or a piano. I’m not going to stop playing until I take my last breath. ” PJ
