Putting the brakes on hoons

Editorial and photography: Jesse Wray-McCann

A car with a loud V8 engine rumbles by and a group of men all turn to check it out.

But these are not your usual blokes who cannot help but rubberneck whenever a hotted-up car rolls down the street, these are police officers who specialise in cracking down on hoon driving.

These are members of the incredibly successful Taskforce Achilles, responsible for hundreds of hoons being charged and cars impounded.

As they watch the car drive along, A/Sgt Adam Mizzi reads out the numberplate.

“Hmm, I reckon that’s the car I spoke to on Boundary Road on Tuesday night,” A/Sgt Mizzi says.

He and his colleagues remember a numberplate – and even stickers and small dents – the way the average person remembers a face.

It’s a moment that’s indicative of the specialised skills the Taskforce Achilles members have honed as they relentlessly clamp down on Melbourne and Victoria’s hoon driving scene.

Achilles began in July 2021 as an operation, but its remarkable success in holding hoon drivers to account has resulted in it being extended now as an ongoing taskforce.

Acting Senior Sergeant Simon Borg, who heads up the northern and western suburbs part of the taskforce, said their mission to stop the prolific and dangerous hoon events was a challenging one.

At its peak in the North West Metro Region, there were about 35 hoon events per month, sometimes attracting huge crowds of about 150 cars and up to 400 spectators.

Sgt Andy Oakley and A/Sen Sgt Simon Borg speak to a car owner over the state of his vehicle.

Photo: Jesse Wray-McCann

But after more than 18 months of the Taskforce Achilles crackdown, there is now an average of barely one small event per month.

A/Sen Sgt Borg said police and the community were not only fed up with the sheer size and frequency of the events, but the danger they posed.

“Because of the numbers at these high-risk driving (HRD) events, the mob mentality kicked in and they were very brazen,” A/Sen Sgt Borg said.

“They would openly attack police vehicles and would message amongst themselves to tell each other to block the cops.”

Often when police would break up an event, the hoons and spectators would immediately set up in another location and it was the travelling between events that posed the greatest danger to the public.

“When you've got everyday people doing the legal 100km/h on the freeway and you've got some lunatic barrelling past you at 200km/h, it can be incredibly scary,” A/Sen Sgt Borg said.

“On one occasion, there was a car that had left an HRD event and was driving at speed and quite erratically.

“A police unit that didn’t know about the HRD event attempted to intercept it but the vehicle accelerated, ran a red light and t-boned another vehicle, seriously injuring the driver of that other vehicle and the passenger of the offending vehicle, who was thrown out of the car and ended up with critical injuries.

“It was a direct result of leaving an HRD event to get to another one quickly and it was quite simply a miracle that nobody was killed.”

Just disrupting hoon meets was only so effective, so Taskforce Achilles adopted a robust investigative approach to hunt down offending drivers after the fact.

“I think some of them were shocked when we came knocking on their door, because they thought they had to be caught on the night to be charged,” A/Sen Sgt Borg said.

“These are not just traffic offences – they are high-level, dangerous behaviours that fall into the realm of criminality and need to be treated accordingly.”

Many Taskforce Achilles officers have a background as mechanics and are experts at spotting unsafe cars.

Photo: Jesse Wray-McCann

Achilles officers use a raft of secret, intelligence-led strategies to identify and track down offenders, but the photos and videos from the hoons’ own public social media accounts make it easy for police.

“These guys are just peacocks and want to show off their feathers, which is very helpful for us,” A/Sen Sgt Borg said.

“If they stop using social media, then they no longer have any motivation to do it.”

Another effective measure has been to involve the drivers’ parents.

Acting Inspector Darren Kenos said it is not uncommon for the cars detected at HRD meets to be registered to the parents of the hoon driver or spectator.

“One of the biggest non-enforcement deterrents we have is the parents becoming aware of what their kids getting are up to at night,” A/Insp Kenos said.

“I would love to be a fly on the wall in some of those conversations between parent and kid, because we often don’t see them at HRD events again.”

It’s not just the drivers that police take off the roads but their cars, too.

Hoon driving takes its toll on their cars, which A/Insp Kenos says often aren’t looked after in the first place.

Inspecting cars and issuing defect notices is a big part of the work Taskforce Achilles does and they’re very effective at it, with many of the team’s officers being former mechanics.

“As much as they try to pull the wool over our eyes to avoid a defect notice, they can’t slip too much past our officers,” A/Insp Kenos said.

And the eagle eye of Achilles members extends beyond conspicuous cars, according to A/Sen Sgt Borg.

“We once identified an offender from a blurry video because we were already familiar with the way he walked,” he said.

Taking dangerous drivers and their cars off the road is a priority for Taskforce Achillies.

Photo: Jesse Wray-McCann

The near-inescapable presence of Achilles has led to many hoon drivers on their social media accounts using less-thancomplimentary hashtags involving A/Sen Sgt Borg and A/Sgt Mizzi.

The assumption among many now is that their social media is always monitored, so #Mizziiswatching is one of the more recent hashtags being used.

The officers don’t mind because the notoriety works in their favour, both in terms of deterrence and in catching offenders.

“The feedback we’ve received from the communities affected by HRD events has been hugely positive and it spurs us on to keep them safe,” A/Sen Sgt Borg said.

However, perhaps not everyone appreciates the crackdown.

“Some of these guys would go through a set of tyres every two days, so I’m sure there are a few tyre places wondering why they’ve had such a downturn in business,” he said.