Living well Is the best revenge

Intro the public has a long-held fascination with detectives detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to in this podcast series i catch killers with gary jubilan i'll be interviewing a whole range of people you come across as a detective including police bad guys and victims i spent 34 years as a cop for 25 of those years i was catching killers that's what i did for a living i was a homicide detective i'm no longer just interviewing bad guys instead i'm taking the public into the world in which i operated the guests i selected have amazing stories from all sides of the law the interviews are raw and honest just like the world they inhabited no one who steps into the world of crime comes out unchanged join me now while i take you into this world this episode of i catch killers contains conversations that some listeners may find confronting or triggering discretion is advised welcome back to part three of i catch killers we've retired deputy commissioner nick caldos um welcome back nick thanks gary we're going into uncharted territory here this is the first guest on i catch killers that's gone into part three so well i'm going to see if i can get to four it's a possibility i'm looking at some stuff here i want to ask you um and uh i've i'm always the first to put up my hand if i've made a mistake and i've made the mistake i cut your international policing career off too early no no it's just a couple of other things i'll just mention them if you if you could because all of them are just they're seriously fascinating stories and the the amount of detail on that but uh yeah what were the other ones that uh you've done so after i finished the The UN investigation in the in syria and the use of chemical weapons i came home and had my formal retirement dinners and so on uh and then i was offered another and that was in 2000 the end of 2016. okay yeah and then i was offered a job as the director of oversight for the un is sort of big chunks and one one of the chunks is called the united nations relief and works agency which looks after all the palestinian issues so there's five and a half million refugees spread in five locations in lebanon syria jordan gaza the gaza strip and the west excuse me the west bank of israel of jerusalem in fact and there's about 35 40 000 staff budget of two plus billion a year and uh essentially they're under cancers it's a many states spread over five countries right so you have schools hospitals medical care all of that education sometimes higher education and so on five fields yeah um obviously with that amount of activity and that many staff in that many locations um each big area of the un has to have its own oversight office and i was the director of oversight for that that little kingdom but um the things and what what did that involve what the let's find a job divisions or departments within the oversight office investigations which obviously is investigating allegations um audit which means we ordered all the the funds that were being from donors donor countries going into the the the camps and so on um evaluation i now know and i've got a lot more respect and i've got evaluation evaluators are a profession within certainly within the un but elsewhere they essentially come and see whether the money is being spent in an effective way whether it's achieving the objectives whether and so on so this three divisions so far investigations audits and evaluation and then the fourth division which didn't directly answer to me but administratively and otherwise fit it under my my roof and i had an excellent relationship with the chief of of of the department was the ethics division they don't investigate complaints they don't react to complaints well they can do but it's more about looking at systems processes and other things before there's a crisis to make sure that everything that is happening is is going in the right direction and so on so we carried out these activities i spent a fair bit of time in syria in particular again and in the gaza strip which i've never been to before um and as well as obviously jordan and lebanon and and the west bank each of them is uniquely different each of them had its own issues i mean in different countries certainly hot spots too yeah yeah uh jordan is quite um placid there's no conflict or anything there um but jordan is a lovely place we're based in jordan so i lived there for about 18 months nearly two years and and then i came back after that but in in the course of that time i was there i was asked to sit on another thing called the commission for international justice and accountability um which is an international body funded mainly by the european union and the scandinavian countries i think the us are also donors i don't think australia is a donor yet but i think they may be considering it and what was that committee doing so the the i'm on the board of commissioners i'm not one of the investigators so we just have a signing um but they're essentially gathering the briefs of evidence for all the uh atrocities that happened in syria and iraq particularly committed by isis but they also have briefs on people from within the syrian government for instance who have done the wrong thing um the thinking was that eventually if the security council or the u.n gets its act together there almost certainly will have to be an accounting for what the heck happened in syria in particular and to do that you'll have to have the briefs of evidence the witnesses who fled syria disappearing the four four corners of the earth there's documents coming out that are disappearing there's forensic evidence there's all sorts of evidence that is dissipating so the thinking was we must have a body now even a tribunal hasn't been created to gather the evidence for two purposes one is obviously to eventually support prosecutions in whatever judicial forum is created and then the second thing is there are already a number of western countries in particular who have nationals who are fought with isis or otherwise and have returned or sought to return and there's been a number of cases where the commission has handed over full briefs of evidence against those individuals to their government and they've been tried and convicted on that evidence so i mean it's very difficult for instance if an aussie has fought with isis of which there's probably three or four hundred yeah that we know about if they come back battlefield evidence is very difficult to gather it's very difficult to provenance to prove how it was obtained and who had the chain of possession and so on as well as getting any eyewitnesses you simply can't get them out if they're still alive um so i i again i thought it was a very worthy sort of cause and i've been on that for a couple of years now it's headed up by a really brilliant fellow his uh ex-canadian military um phd uh fellow and i'd had some dealings with that commission when i did the chemical weapons investigation and they sought me out after i finished i couldn't do it while i was with you dealing with that type of um atrocities that we're talking Faith in humanity about does it you lose faith in humanity i wouldn't say you lose faith i mean the fact that we're investigating it and we're going to try and hold them to account restores some of your faith but it certainly shakes your faith in in in you know how evil can people get i've seen an awful lot in terms of what are we talking about like we're talking about slavery for instance 14 year old girls being dragged out of their mother's arms and sold in a market to someone who rapes them repeatedly for months at a time you're talking about families being split up not knowing where each of them is going ultimately being sold as slaves you're talking about christians in particular and yazidis any of the minorities who are not sunnis being specifically targeted for their faith being forced at gunpoint or knife point to convert to islam and being forced to marry people they didn't want to marry who are of another faith you could go on possessions being seized the houses people's lives were stolen basically um and this is a type of atrocities that the committee or the investigative commissioner is investigating yeah and um i've recently read one brief about a particular victim group i won't go into the detail it's 350 pages pages and i'll define anyone to read that and not have a tier in their eye yeah yeah and do you are you dealing with that on the basis that you're feeling like you you're trying to make a difference or yeah so the the board of commissioners is and i must really say i'm sort of humbled to be on it there's a lot of ex international judges and lawyers i think i'm the only one who's not a lawyer that's the only one that might be a good thing well they felt it was time for some diversity um but the the thing is we're we're simply oversighting the activities of the commission um we are in some ways contributing to building the relationships with and we act as conduits to to make contacts with western countries in particular to entice people to donate towards that cause and ultimately it is a noble cause it's about holding people who have done terrible things to humanity to account and i have to say it's not just about isis the assad regime for instance has quite a number of transgressions that have been uncovered investigated and briefs of evidence have been gathered um so it really is um both it and operation canova i should say are non-paying positions it's honorary we're all volunteers yeah so if you you know nobody forces you to do it if you want to contribute to that that writing of the wrongs then then you do it it's a bit of work sure but it's it's so worthwhile i'm really proud to have been a part of all those things and i'm really proud of the people i'm working with there's some incredibly committed individuals who have really put their heart and soul into that effort um probably could be doing other things that are more lucrative but they're happy to do this because it's so important it is important that people are standing up like that yeah and doing stuff like that with all the different areas you've seen across across the globe and the areas that you've worked has it changed your view on coming back to Returning to Australia australia new south wales policing it must have changed your views in some regards um i i think anyone really who's been through what i've been through would would have to sort of be flexible with the different things they've thought about yeah it's not set in cement nothing's set in cement i'm probably a little bit there's a lot of things i remember thinking to myself i wish i knew that back then i would have done this differently or i would have done that differently there's a little bit of that as well but but what it has reinforced in my mind is probably two things one is that we are incredibly lucky to be in australia we have you know our problems are nothing compared to some other parts of the world and i feel very blessed that my parents chose to migrate to australia when we came out and the second thing too is that australia i'm a bit biased but i think new south wales detectives in particular have an incredibly good high reputation within the international systems the un systems and otherwise and they're valued people that people talk about let's get some aussies on this because we've achieved over many years there are others that i think i mentioned earlier uh bob reed who ended up being chief of operations investigations in the there are yugoslav in different parts of the u.n who have done some really good work in the international sphere the the thing that has probably not not changed in my mind but crystallized probably a little bit more is um i mean we bring back a different way of looking at things uh we've had experiences that are probably would be impossible to get in sitting in australia i would hope there's some way to contribute of bringing that back and feeding it into australia here to make us do things a little bit better i do a little bit of lecturing at a couple of universities yeah and i'm grateful for that i i hope i give a little bit back um but i don't think there's any systematic way or any framework or processes really to milk those people that come back into the knowledge base of people when they come back from overseas i mean even if you are still in the police and you take a leave of absence as i've done a few times and when you come back i didn't see a great hunger for all you better tell us about it what have you what have you got um in fact it's quite the opposite sometimes you've always got like nobody wants to hear about it it seems to be almost a failing in in policing that we're so insular that no one can you can't cross Cross border policing borders like interstate like it would be very easy for me myself or yourself to work interstate because it's basically the same type of work you understand the legislation but you could cross the borders and it's the same country in the same same country so even when i've worked with scotland yard detectives or that i i think you could bring them over here and uh and brief them up in a week or two and they fully understand our system and vice versa the last british fellow they brought to new south wales didn't work out so well that's probably not a good example we won't mention names otherwise look you actually you raised a really important point gary which is if you look at and i hope i'm a student of policing but if you look at the uk for instance it's impossible to get promoted you know a number of times without moving about they force you to move about to a different police force it's 43 odd in the uk and that that sort of cross-pollination of ideas and talents is something we ought to look at i know in my time as a deputy commissioner for nearly 10 years and in that 10 years i relieved many times as commissioner and went to the national commissioners forum it is still on the agenda it is still being discussed the unions are against it and i'm not not uniformly but yeah in most of the states that they're not happy with it and they feel that someone from the northern territory should not get the honor of being uh you know a detective in sydney or melbourne or that's that insular type thinking it is it is and look we are all different but yeah i i mean i'm i don't think it's going to happen in my lifetime but i would hope they move towards in the future standardizing a lot of the training perhaps and accreditation processes to be accredited as a detective for instance or a forensic person and you should be able to work in any of the jurisdictions most definitely we put it at the level of uh a tradesman can yeah in a different state i mean you've got to admit i guess we all have to admit if you're a uniform bobby in the outback in the northern territory it is different to being in in uh redfern yes uh or whatever so in all some parts of melbourne or whatever and but you can allow for that and you can you can do things to remediate that yeah um i think the cross-pollination would be really good well the cross-pollination of that person working in northern territory coming down and working in redfern that might be a good thing it's uh i i think it opens uh opens up the thought process and the way that we approach problems and yeah that but we are we've always done it that way gary we don't let people move no that's what they say we've always done it that way yeah yeah well we're but we're both advocates for change with uh that type of comment but that's how we've always done it i've never liked that over um there's another one closer to home that you had some level of involvement in the Christchurch massacre christ church yeah massacre so what's your involvement in that i think it was last year the christchurch attack was in march or april yeah the commissioner of police then he's just retired mike bush wanted an independent review done of the police response to christchurch and he really just wanted someone outside the organization to review what happened so i was a member of a panel of three there was a former solicitor general of new zealand an academic and myself i was the only cop and we simply reviewed uh what happened there how they responded and it's not a public report it was for the commissioner right he was going into a royal commission into what happened and he wanted and i don't think the royal commission was going to look at the police response yeah so he felt that was quite rightly he felt that was a gap and he wanted it addressed i'm sort of neutral i'm not a serving police officer so i can actually say what i want and do what i want and that's what he wanted you wanted someone who's not in a bureaucracy who would not you know dare to say something if it was wrong or whatever um i thought the two guys i did it with were tremendous and i learned a great deal i think through that as well um i i had always thought of the new zealand police uh as being unarmed uh officers that's not quite the case right um i think as i understand it nearly all the front line of first response vehicles have pistols and long arms in the boot they're all trained and accredited to deal with active arm defender and bulletproof vest sorry in the boot as well and when when so they're when something happens they're usually unarmed very community minded and friendly something happened as did in christchurch they simply pull over kid up and you have almost you know five or six tactical teams with heavy weaponry ready to go yeah and that's what happened in christchurch okay i just finished off on that point if i'm a gary the two police officers who arrested the the murderer yeah um i felt and i having looked at it reasonably closely that those guys are dead-set heroes they didn't know what they were up against they didn't know whether the car was full of explosives and was ready to go off they didn't know whether he had explosives on him their actions were completely restrained and at a number of points in time when you go through and you could talk about it for hours um they would have been perfectly justified in shooting him dead they didn't yeah at some risk to themselves yeah um i thought it was i mean i'm sure they'll be recognized in due course if they haven't already been but um i was very very impressed not just by those guys but the general openness and candor of the police men and women over there and how they shared the information for us to be able to do the report yeah and and i think policing we should be progressive we should learn from incidents like that can we improve yeah it always i know when i sit back on the homicide investigation even if we've brought it to conclusion and uh we've solved it how could we done something different on it yeah i think which i think we should that concept of a post-operational assessment is crucial it's the only way you learn lessons is to go back and have a look at that rather than just move on to the next one yeah um but i mean i have to say the commissioner of at that time mike bush is probably one of the most forward-thinking police leaders i've come across yeah i was very impressed with him now that just leads me into and i want to like a lot of things i want to cover and tap Leadership into your uh your knowledge base um given the fact of your experience in policing not just in new south wales but across across the world leadership in policing thoughts very very important um issue and i probably as i started saying it right at the beginning i was i think i'm a sort of really ordinary bloke who found himself in extraordinary places at extraordinary times and i did feel i had a sort of a duty to to reflect on everything i've been through to try and um not i won't call them lessons learnt but to reflect on what's happened and see how how we can i can convey that to others that may be of benefit to them interesting point the u.s military don't use the term lessons learnt much right they call them lessons noted and i asked why and they said because we keep making the same stuff ups so we don't say we've learned anything we just say we've noted the lessons and i thought that's us in policing generally we don't tend to admit that we've you know yeah um i i think there's a lot of scope for people reflecting on their various experiences and trying to feed it back but i don't see a lot of mechanisms for that i don't see a lot of calling for it really a lot of people don't really want to hear from somebody what you know what what happened with them but i i i i think leadership is is really the key issue in this day and age with the black lives matter movement with everything that's going on around the world with covet 19 and you know god knows in new south wales we had we had the drought then we had the fires then we had some floods then we had covert 19 and now we've got this issue with with the black lives matter movement um leadership is more crucial now than it ever was um i i'd think and you know i'm not sort of going to go on as an expert on anything but i think i've been in a few places and some hot spots where i've had to think about my leadership style and about how people perceive me and whether i'm my style is going to help or hurt and adjust accordingly and i don't think anyone should have a style that they apply across the board i think you have to be flexible and change you need a leader who's inspirational and says follow me in a crisis on a day-to-day basis you need a bit more of a manager someone has to still count the dollars and check the rosters and make sure that diaries are done all that sort of crap has to be done you can't be one or the other but i think there's a few ingredients that i've looked for um in stuff who have worked for me and i've nurtured and encouraged and i would hope i've got some of them and you mentioned when we spoke getting ready for this gary about you know that you wanted me to mention those who have had an inspirational effect on me and been mentors i haven't had probably as many as i would have liked but there's a couple that come to mind i mentioned jeff halliday affectionately known as doc holliday who was just a detective's detective and a policeman's policeman he was unbelievable a couple of other people who have one who passed away recently john anderson who was the chief superintendent and he's our boss in the state drug crime commission he knew the cleaners on our floor by first name he didn't he didn't care who you were he remembered you he talked to you yeah um i remember i did a particularly tough job it was an undercover thing and i kept we finished about 9 00 a.m we'd been going all night it went badly and then it went well and all of that and i wasn't sure if he had been briefed or anything and i walked past him in the corridor and i thought he's not going to stop me and talk to me so he mustn't know he was on his way to brief the judge that was the head of the crime commission yeah but he just tapped me on the shoulder as he went past and he said great job and how much did that mean to you after that you weren't tired all of a sudden it was all worthwhile it was just a little thing like that and his number two was a fellow called adrian ellingham who was also just an absolute legend um but they were people who really cared about this stuff yeah and they epitomized epitomize for me that the qualities that i i hope i've i've learned from others the biggest one is for me moral courage yeah it's about doing and saying what's right even you know it's going to be unpopular even though you know it's going to cause you pain yeah it's not going to help your cause and yet you still do it because it's the right thing to do especially if you're protecting doing it for others not just for you yeah um i think you've got to have empathy if you don't have empathy as a leader and i i despair sometimes used to despair just seeing people who were more worried about you know getting the mission achieved then and they didn't all care enough about what impact it had on people um who worked for them i think you've got a sacred duty to those who work for you those who follow you to lead them in a way and i i always remember um don bradman the famous australian cricketer who when he retired they asked him what's your key message what have you learned in all these years you've led teams and what have you and he said that leaders had a sacred duty to leave the game in our case it's the job leave the game in better shape than when they found it yeah um and the only the best way to do that is to look after the people i i'm familiar with that quote and that is very um it's a very relevant question it turns the tables by saying you are a leader sure you've got all these rights and you can flex your muscles and whatever but you have a sacred obligation to do things you know i think it's really important to have vision and and leaders who are faulted have usually not articulated or not even formulated in some cases what is it you stand for what do you want to achieve why do you want to achieve it what do you want to do you just want the next job along or what are you going to do while you're here with us in this particular job in iraq it used to be brought home to me because there was a big turnover some people couldn't cope and they'd come and go and the iraqis used to say you'd meet a new guy who's just started doing something or other and they say how long are you planning on staying yeah and i thought they just saw us as transitory they thought a source as passing through and and i i think and this is something from my point of view when i'm looking at leadership with yeah police the the thing that worries me is where people i feel like they're just using positions as a stepping stone yeah and they're not and when you leave a command it's what legacy you've left whether you're the constable there or the the commander there yeah it's what legacy your time in that that command and i i think there's a shallowness and some people won't uh won't like me saying it but there's a shallowness in people that are just blindly ambitious and prepared to sacrifice others or what their core values should be as police to uh get uh get promoted but the other thing is the staff are not idiots they know which brings us to the next point gary which is a big favorite of mine i learned this from a fellow called rod harvey who was at one yeah again i i bump in and just to to bring people Rod Harvey into it rod harvey i never worked directly with him but if i see him and occasionally i see him whether it be the funeral or a send-off these days i call him boss yeah and that's he's never been my boss but that's the respect i give someone like rod harvey yeah but he had a saying there's a difference between being in charge and taking charge and i've lived by that because i've worked with so many people who had a lot of rank position title power but they weren't really running the place there were others of much lower rank who were actually the ones who ran the joint so i think there is a huge difference between being in charge and taking charge um i think it's important obviously integrity is the biggest thing and again the troops are not idiots they know with do as i say and do as i do or is it do as i say but don't do what i do yeah we're not allowed to do what i do and i i see that sometimes and it really worries me that people are doing it blatantly sometimes without worrying about the consequences work life balance i think it's important again if you're doing it those who follow you will do it if you're in there or midnight every night they're going to do it as well you're no good to anyone if you fall over and it is important to make sure that all your loved ones at home know that you're they're number one and and i i'd argue and you know i've been through the odd marriage if you don't look after home then all is lost yeah you really and and those around you should care enough to say to you you know what needs to be said to get you back on track and a lot of people are reluctant to do that but i've done that sometimes where you see someone heading off in the wrong direction you know what the what the end it's going to look like um you try and bring them back and say no you've got to get back to you know to what matters really which is and you Empathy mentioned the word empathy and empathy a lot of people and the more people i sit down with people i respect and that the word empathy comes out a lot when talking policing and i don't think uh the public or a lot of people consider empathy part of policing i think it's crucial it has to be it has to be yeah but um the other thing coupled with that is self-awareness yeah i mean if you we've all worked with people who are completely on consequent particular boss you and i had who really had no capacity for self-awareness yeah and he didn't even know that he had no capacity for self-awareness that's totally when i suggested i wanted to run a culture survey to see whether people were happy or not he just said this is all rubbish we're not doing it yeah it took me 12 months to let me to do it but yeah and it was incredibly informative yeah you know just um to find out what people were thinking um and i you know there's a saying in terms of i think leaders have to be strategic but there's a saying that you should never waste a good crisis and when things go wrong there are always things to learn about what went right what went wrong so we don't make the same mistakes again and we improve on good innovations that may have worked well for us or whatever coupled with that i think leaders have an absolute obligation to do two things they must look at the bigger picture it's their responsibility the troops who work for you are in a little enclosure you're the one that's in a helicopter who can see the next closure the next city the next country whatever it is yeah you've got an obligation to look and the reason i went to canada and had to have a look at what they were doing there because i was watching what they were doing i was looking at the results that they were getting yeah and i thought why can't we do that with the undercover exactly all of that um so i and the second thing is leaders have to look at the longer term yeah i think you've got to we we i look at terrorism for instance we have a in government here a three or five year business planning cycle but you're up against an enemy who thinks in terms of millennia um we have to look at what you know and again getting back to leaving the command or the job that you're in in better shape than when you found it um i had a particular argument with an assistant commissioner i had nine assistant commissioners in the end uh for in the field operations i asked him about a problem in a forum with a number of people and he said i don't care about that i'm going to be retired and i thought we had words after that so you should i just thought if you're not i mean it's you know the difference between being in charge and taking charge yeah he clearly wasn't taking charge and he didn't particularly care about it um i think the other key ingredient i look for in readers and i think i've learned over the years is communication you've talked about it around about why gary negotiation is just another form of communication but on a daily basis if you're not out there hearing listening and then giving them back something about what you're thinking why you're doing what you're doing what's going to happen in the future people just want information they're hungry to know what lies ahead for them what their bosses are thinking why they're doing what they're doing all of those things are not hard it's not rocket science um you could summarize it i had one staff officer that summarized it for me it's about treating people the way you would like to be treated and i used to reserve the right if i was when someone started working for me i'd say that's all i ask of you yeah but if i don't see that you're going to know about it yeah yeah and i i think that's fair and Policing today people know where they stand um policing today for the younger police and i know you and i talked about and i talked about it with a lot of uh ex-police and how tough a gig is for police these days a young young person joining joining the cops yeah i see it because of the scrutiny they're under it's a different world with the world that we got to learn our policing and if we made a mistake the sergeant gave you a kick up the ass and said don't do it again and and you move on and you learn here um in policing today they seem to get hung out to dry young police and so much pressure so much scrutiny what's your thoughts in that right i think it's indisputable that the responsibility the accountability that's imposed on police um these days has exponentially grown since you and i joined yeah um there's no doubt about it they have to know so many things they have to consider so many more things um take an example of um you know facing an angry man and we were always saying you haven't been a cop until you've faced an angry man yeah you have so many more things to think about now you've got your taser your capsicum spray your gun yeah your fists yeah and if you make the wrong decision someone was going to spend two years examining it with qcs and then they'll decide they'll decide that what you did in a split second was wrong yeah um and i i in many ways i just think it's unfair yeah um and i don't know whether we're having trouble recruiting or not at the moment i suspect not simply because the glamour around policing is is still there yeah despite all the the issues um but they are definitely far more accountable now than than was the case 20 30 40 years ago now and it's a harder harder job and like we mentioned or you mentioned the black lives matters uh marches and the Pandemic the potential animosity between the public and police and and what they got to do in the policing there the pandemic that we're going through at the moment yeah we've been used and what what's your thoughts on that that makes it all more difficult what the public i decided yeah i do worry about that a lot um what what concerns me is and i'm not singling out any jurisdiction it's across the board but police have been called on to police legislation and regulations in relation to covet 19 which can only diminish and hurt the relationship that police have built with the communities we are now seen as in the police are now seen not shouldn't say we anymore but it's 40 years that's a hard habit it is it's 40 years next year for me um but the police are now seen as you know bullies almost because they're enforcing what is logical and and rational rules and so on but it i i worry about the relationship that police have worked on i know for the last 20 odd years building really good bridges with all the various communities and then they have to go in and enforce the covered 19 rules which are resented by many and you know they know the images that you see of the the lady with a child on bondi beach and yeah Community Relations being approached by police and that yeah yeah they might have been doing their job i'm not even judging on that but it gets that division between the cops yeah i mean that whole issue of community relations is i think today is more important than ever um you look at new south wales sydney australia very culturally diverse um we did a lot while i was there i had responsibility for multicultural issues and diversity and what have you and we did a great deal in terms of attempting to recruit from minorities into the police and i think if you reflect the community you serve a bit more closely and it'll never be ideal but if you can attract more people from the arabic community the hindu community the jewish community the asian community whatever it is but that's that diversity and it gives you an internal capacity for understanding and empathizing that you may not have with people who are from different backgrounds what it also does is hopefully informs the decision making at command level from people within the organization who say to you hang on a minute that's not going to work you might want to think about this or that yeah a quick example i gave some advice to a federal minister who's no longer there he held a meeting with the muslim leaders uh he would drag them all to canberra put on a beautiful lunch for them it was ramadan they were all fasting anyway all i'm getting at is there's probably a couple of really important points about the community policing thing um one is i think you have to build those relationships at a time when there's no crisis you can't go to the people in the middle of a crisis and say look i haven't bothered to get to know you trust me and as i mentioned earlier it's like a bank account you deposit goodwill that's a good that is a good way of looking at it it is but and which which means that you must make the effort when there's no crisis so what i did some time ago with the help of the cultural diversity team and operational programs within the police and they do a tremendous job vastly underrated um is they came up with a program where each of the commands within the police the stations and so on had to report on a monthly basis about their engagement activities with the communities and i could i can smell bs yeah some guys weren't leaving the station and so i i did i spoke to so and so how long did you talk to me for what was it about yeah half the time i actually knew who they spoke to and who they didn't but the thing is if you forced them so we were measuring how much engagement activity there was meaningful activity people like i've got a men's signal him out peter lennon out at fairfield he used to hold annual fares he used to hold recruiting booths at the election time where people all the people in fairfield would go to vote yeah and he's there with with pamphlets and police and you had a great idea it was it was fantastic absolutely fantastic but you've got to make an effort you've got to think about these things as a commander and and make a move and and if you did you were supported fully so it was about measuring the amount of activity that was going on in engaging engagement between the police and the communities and if there wasn't enough going on then some intervention had to happen yeah to say you're not doing enough do you need a hand um do you know you know do you want arabic speaking multicultural liaison officers do you want chinese liaison officers uh in in the city for instance or whatever it was um but you know if if you make that effort if you build those bridges and you have that trust when the poo hits a fan you pick up the phone they know you they trust you there's a friendship there and they will listen to you it's interesting what you said about Hot Park Riots not uh creating those the or mending that gap uh during time of crisis because that is that comes across as you just turned up here just to solve this and now we're here for you then the crisis goes and you never see them again you ever see them again so if i may have we got time just yeah we've got a quick example this is this this is a podcast so i can keep talking the poor listeners i hope everyone's still awake we'll probably put them to sleep but anyway i'm interested um the hot park riots yes um so there's a film uh released in america which i don't think anyone actually saw but it was allegedly insulted the prophet muhammad right so there were some extreme elements in in the muslim community here a small minority but they organized a demonstration to say they're not happy about it they tried to march on a saturday morning they tried to march on the usm consulate in uh martin place couldn't get in the building uh so they moved to mark to hype park yeah and then it became a bit of a riot there was a very small minority that smashed police cars and yeah attacked cops and all that sort of thing but you what was your role i was the commander of field operations so i had all the stations okay and the ride squad yeah okay so it was my baby yeah i knew it was yeah i was in charge so i we looked at it overnight all the intelligence was coming back that they're gonna escalate the demonstrations the next day so we held a press conference i i spoke to the mufti the grand mufti of australia the leader of the sunni muslims and we got a very very preeminent incredible leader from the shayat communities kamal muslimani so we had a shayar and a sunni leader as well as a number of community youth leaders in both faiths and we held a statement and we held a press conference i did it in uniform with my assistant commissioner alan clark was with me at the time he had the riot squad but he also had the multicultural engagement teams under his command so he was perfect yeah what we did is we invited and this is a whole other discussion people can have there are communities and i'll pick on the arabic community because i am one of them there are people who don't read don't get their main source of news from channel 7 or the city morning herald or the australian or fox news they get it from arabic language media either locally produced or more often foreign produced that shapes their thinking and their view of the world so at that press conference we decided to hold a press conference and call on them to stop obviously coupled with a number of calls and what have you in the lead up to the press conference to convince community leaders to come out to support us um so we invited al jazeera al-arabiya sbs arabic all of these were invited and we did the first half of the press conference in arabic iron the shakes and then the second half was in english for channel 7 and the australian and whatever else and what i i you know i'm so proud of both of them yeah the the very preeminent religious leaders who came out very strongly and said not in our name it has to stop commemorating went further and said these people should be arrested they're not they're not that's speaking powerful powerful statement and you know what it stopped yeah i mean i understand um there was some lash backlash after that saying how dare you do it we're not how dare you but you know why did you do something with the police and they were in full uniform and and you're talking against the community they weren't talking against their communities they were helping their communities and trying to keep them on the right path and i think that's probably one of the keys to counter radicalization is for people to see religious leaders and community leaders interacting with police without they're not in a conflict situation there's no crisis and yet we're cooperating we're friends and we're talking i mean people learn from watching what others are doing it's not just being told and and i i thought that was one of the probably happiest moments i had in the cops we were able to we we didn't just meet these people that day yeah we knew them they had some trust in us um we'd set up the community contact unit and all that engagement stuff was in place there was an element of rapport um you know communication trust yep and and then off we went from there yeah look i i think there's so many lessons to be learned from that and uh with your ethnic background did you experience you you would have felt racism growing up that would have been whether it's overt or subtle there would have been confronted with racism yeah that shaped you who a little bit part of it is probably the bullying thing where you experience things and you say well i don't want it to happen anybody else yeah um and part of it you just i guess philosophically very early in my career and in my life really i decided look i'm not going to fix this problem what i need to do is to be resilient which i forgot to mention is probably one of the key ingredients for a good leader if you're going to fall over everyone around you is going to fall over if you're staunch everyone around you is going to be staunch and and they take strength from you so i made a very conscious decision very early in life and in my career one i'm not going to change just to please someone's perception of what ethnic people should be i'm not going to be over australian to keep everyone happy i am me and i'm going to be what i am and two it's not going to get to me and i'm not going to fall over just because i'm called names and there were some very senior police when i was not say senior who said and did terrible things um and it's probably not all that long ago you store it up you right the wrongs by you know the best revenge as they say is living well success and you climb the ranks and then once you're in a position to do something about all of that then you do your best yeah um whether it's fixing up the the welfare issues for undercovers or helping um recruit from communities and supporting those communities so that they feel not afraid of the police a lot of people bring with them baggage from where they've come from yeah and i think police get that now um they don't automatically as we might feel safe because they see a uniform right in fact it's the opposite they feel threatened um you know and i mentioned earlier that's what worries me about the whole code of 19 thing um where now police are sort of ducking sorry people are ducking the police and perhaps not telling them the truth and all of that and and seeing the police there with the army and yeah it's yeah i mean i look at this is a once in a lifetime dreadful experience and i think the police have done by and large have done an amazing job um we're helping deal with this problem we all hope and pray it passes soon but in the meantime you know i'm happy about one thing the whole black lives matter here and i would argue in australia it had to be but it definitely is different from what is happening in the us yeah the cultural history the the history in in the u.s is vastly different to australia Restraint i think there's been and i'm obviously got an interest and a degree of involvement in the black lives matters and i think there's been a degree of restraint on both sides now i turned up to the big march in sydney and i turned up as an ex-police officer and i was always going to turn up because of the work i've done with uh indigenous affinity yeah there was no ifs or but i was turning up but i have grave concerns going there i thought how is this going to play out and i i thought okay if the police i know the thought process from policing how it would shut up you could just see the headlines now gary yeah jubal and arrested don't don't worry that that might help my thought was on my mind i can't take another charge at this stage nick thank you very much but what i credit where credits do and uh like there was restraint within the protesters and there there was certain elements as as they're always in a large gathering and that's not judging anyone but everyone was there was a restraint but what i noticed watching the police and the police were lined up and the the right place and all that and i know from being a police officer sometimes you can put out an attitude like as in you cross this line you're gonna yeah pay for it type thing but everyone's demeanor the police demeanor it wasn't confrontational and i think that was a difference that really defused things it wasn't confrontational i thought it was uh thought it was handled uh handled well yeah on on that particular incident but i felt sorry for both sides and i felt an affinity for both sides and i was worried if it escalated where it where it could have uh gone to but uh i think you're right the restraint was certainly shown by all sides yeah yeah um i i you know it's another thing i just i hope sort of passes um there's you know there's always room for reform nobody could say everything's perfect both here and then in the us in the us you know again i feel that their problems are unique there's a history over there coupled with the gun culture that we simply don't have here yeah yeah um it's different we're not perfect by any means and we've certainly got issues and we could always improve oh definitely definitely yeah yeah but but it's different it is different and the response has to be different yeah yeah I dont miss others oh well it's it's confronting times for uh for policing do you miss it um that's a good question i miss elements of it i don't miss others um i said when i left and it's not my saying he gets upset because he thinks i'm claiming it but peter dean who's an old friend of ours a legendary assistant commissioner he's the one that coined it i think and then i've stolen it but um he said when i left i said i'm not going to miss the circus but i'm going to miss the clowns and i think that's very true that's a good you miss the people you miss the fun the camaraderie i you know i still see some guys not nowhere near as many obviously and i don't go to functions and you know unless it's someone that's very close to me i think it's best when you retire not to keep coming back to things yeah um you know wanting to be recognized and all that it's not it's not me and i know it's not you yeah but um but you know for someone that really meant a lot to me and they really wanted me to be at something i would probably go yeah um but the the bottom line is you you you know there's elements of bureaucracy and having to answer for every cent and for every action and traveling for instance which i've done a lot of with all these commissions and things i'm on i used to have to beg permission you have to get ministerial approval you have to put it in four weeks in advance you may or may not be approved to go yeah you don't know until the last minute and all that sort of stuff um i i you know i don't miss any of that at all um well i'd you know we've had a brief discussion off here about this but i think there's some issues at the moment with policing not only the accountability level that's been imposed on them but i think across the western world certainly in australia i think the lines are blurring between um you know the separation of powers where a lot of politicians feel it's okay to intervene in operational matters not just in policing but in other areas as well and i would hate to see the westminster system die because i think it is it is what ought to happen um we have that autonomy the independent office of constable has to be restored to the status it had before and i don't know how you do that is a couple of things that probably could be done differently um in the uk for instance they appointed those commissioners who sit on top of the chief constables they're voted in but they're getting as low as 11 16 voting turnout right and they're electing constables who take over and come in and tell the chief constables what to do right uh london that's been excused but everywhere else in the uk they're not scotland either but they're um you know there's some issues there i think with that separation of powers and i think one of the things that ought to happen is the appointment of the commissioner should be something that's not going to help get held and the renewal of the contracts the uk experience has taught us that can't be left to politicians alone yeah um it politicizes the organization and that's what we want to keep away from the jake used to be that not not i'm not talking about anywhere specific in australia but um you know there's really two tests that apply to being promoted to senior positions will this person disagree with me and will this person disagree with me and um you know i'm probably bugging on both counts so yeah yeah well look i i think i've been fascinated by your stories we Conclusion could do this all over again and i bet you say that to all the boys not not all of them not all of them no it's uh we pick hand picks i guess but um no nick your policing career it's something you should be proud of and uh yeah one thing i i not one thing i'll say a lot of things about you some good some bad but uh you're probably the most popular leader in the new south wales police now i don't want you to comment on this because it'll embarrass you but uh i went to you send off and just the way people reacted and uh for the rank and file you were the leader that they all looked up to and that and uh there was a lot of people that disa were disappointed that you weren't the commissioner and it's a a lot of people think it's um to the detriment of the new south wales police again i'm not asking you the comment because it's embarrassing for you but the contribution you've made to not just the new south wales police but the the community in which we pleased and little innovative things like the meeting that you had to um quell uh the unrest in the in the communities that type of thing is lasting and you set an example so yeah thanks very much for coming on thanks man you've been very patient actually gary i don't think i've ever talked this much ever i still see you as my boss i'm struggling thanks very much thanks for having me it's been quite enjoyable actually and i i have to say i'll just make this point yeah i'm probably more proud of you than you'll ever be and me that's all i'd say oh that's very nice of a nice way to finish thanks nick thanks cheers i hope you got as much out of my chat with nick as i did i found the work that he did overseas fascinating chatting with someone like nick reminds me that there's a big world out there and life is a journey it's good to see the skills nick's developed as a police officer in new south wales held him in good standing in law enforcement across the globe i also found it interesting how criminal investigations and policing even in different environments is still basically the same i'd also like to point out despite all nick's success and achievements he remains very humble individual the conversation in the podcast flowed easily but there was a lot of encouragement behind the scenes for me to get to nick to talk about his career on a personal note the support nick has provided me personally and professionally after my falling out with the new south wales police and my criminal charges has been very important nick was my boss 15 years ago there was no benefit in him publicly supporting me in fact in the circumstances it could be argued it was to his detriment he reached out to me and supported me because he used to be my boss and trusted me maybe that's what leadership is about backing your troops i would suggest aaron lies the answer as to why nick was such a popular leader in new south wales police leadership in any organisation is difficult in the pressure world of policing failures are often magnified thank you [Music] this podcast series is brought to you by true crime australia visit eyecatchkillers.com.iu for additional materials such as articles on what you heard videos and galleries you can search for the eye catch killers with gary dublin official group on facebook and join in with discussion see you for the next episode of the podcast you