When Vince Hurley was in the police, he went to 20 domestics in one night. He once held a 10 year old child in his arms as she died from stab wounds inflicted by her father. Although his detective career ended when he was pushed off a roof by crooks, Vince is now unmasking the dark truth of injustice in Australia: women killed at the hands of men.
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The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five 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, staid, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. Today's guest doctor Vince Hurley, is a friend and former colleague. We first met when he was running the New South Wales Police Detective's training course and I was lecturing on homicide investigation. The thing that struck me about Vince from the start was what a friendly person he was. But what I really admired was how passionate he was about all things policing. He truly believed in what he was doing and passed that enthusiasm onto young detectives we were training. As I got to know Vince better over the years, I realized he not only had the street smarts of a good cop, but he also had the ability to look at things through an academic perspective. Armed with street smarts, academic qualifications and passion makes Vince a person whose opinion counts when talking all things law and order. Vince spent twenty nine years as an operational police officer in the New South Wales Police and retired as a detective superintendent when someone literally threw him off the roof. Sorry Vince. He now, amongst other things, lectures at Macquarie University Department of Security Studies and Criminology, specializing in the contemporary role of the police and policing within criminology theories. Now, if you don't believe me about how passionate this guy is, have her listened to this extract from a recent appearance on the ABC's Q and A show. This is how Vince addresses state and federal politicians on the issue of domestic violence.
How dare you? How dare you go into politics? In an environment like this, when one woman is murdered every four days and all you two can do is immediately talk about politics. That is just disgraceful. Is it any wonder frontline services aren't getting the money that they want.
Okay, Vince Hurley, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Thank you very much. Gary.
Good to see you haven't lost your passion.
That deserved it. Ah, they just deserved it. And it wasn't even a gotcha moment. I just walked straight into it.
It was.
I don't recognize it angry man anymore.
But yeah, I watched it, and I think good on your Vince. Yeah, don't sit on the don't sit on the fence with this one. But there was something that obviously stirred up the anger in you and the frustration and Q and A. For people that don't watch the show, it's usually a controversial topic that they'll have a forum of people discussing it. They were talking about domestic violence and murders there, and you're in the audience and they asked for your opinion, and boy did you give give them your opinion? But what was it about that forum or that topic that set you off? What was it?
So I've been involved in domestic violence. My interest dated in the police actually not long after we first met down on the detective's course. I've been in that area now for about thirty years. But of course, as you would know, in the police, nothing's very well publicized outside of the organization. So I was sitting in the audience, and what happened was I was invited down by the producer. And I've been on it before in twenty and twenty two when they were first floating suggesting about the coercive control laws. And how it goes is that you are asked the producer says to you. Depends how the conversation pans out, depend on whether you actually get asked a question by the host, in this case Patricia Carvellus. So I was sitting in the audience and where they started bickering amongst themselves, the politicians, I sort of turned off and I wasn't listening. And then Patricia Carvella said, now we've got a criminologist in the audience, and I said, bloody hell, that's me. Better switch one, because I just turned off as soon as I started talking arguing. And then she's turned to me and asked me the question and then because of the you know, their minds that polluted with the sewer of politics that they started talking about politics. I just it triggered me. Had they not done that, I probably wouldn't have reacted the way I did. But certainly the way that they you know, all the motherhood statements they said about about politics and being injured women's issues. You know, they say some things are above politics. You would think this would be the murder of women would be one most definitely, but it's not for them.
It wasn't.
They didn't even give it a thought. A lot juveniles in the sandpit arguing about who had the best policy. And I think they failed to understand is we don't care about their politics. We're just worried about the murder of women, you know. And yeah, I was just gobsmacked. And it was just that total absence of consciousness about you know, one woman being murdered in every four days, and I think we're up to about ninety now or thereabouts this year, that you know, we're just but also bidget McKenzie, who was a woman I thought would have rushed to the sister's defense about women being murdered and didn't even batter an eye lid about it. So it was the dismissive perspective.
And that's what you wanted to get the cross that lives. We're talking about people's lives here and people losing their lives. A couple of other comments you've made in the show in that in the discussion that and I'll just read I don't know if I can do it with the passion you did, But I went to twenty domestics in one night when I was in the police, I held a ten year old child in my arms who died from the stabbing from her father. So those are comments that you made during that show too. These are the type of things when you see it, when you see actually what happens, I can see why you get angry at politicians playing a political game. It should be a bipartisan approacess to stop this. And is that the type of thing that was triggering for you?
Yeah, absolutely, because you would know from our time in the police where you were taken back to a specific time or issue, and that ten year old child A held in my arms. It was a Sunday morning. We just happened to be driving past a black by name of Mick down at Werrington. What I was attached to Penrith detectives just happen to be driving down the street and we've got to call that a possible homicide had taken place and we're just lucky to be there up and the dad had stabbed the child about well multiple times, and rather than wait for the ambulance, I picked up the child and went out to the front yard and she took a last breadth lath breadth when I with her. But it was that very visceral, very vivid moment that takes you back to the reality of what it is, because you know, I think those people politicians, they swung around Parliament House and they're removed from the main parliament in Australia, which is the Parliament of the street, they lose contact with what the reality is. I'm not saying they're all bad at all, but I think that they lose touch with, you know, what it's like for the average person in the street. And yep, understand that they may never have that experience that you and I've had dealing with victims and seeing multiple traumas, but that doesn't mean that they should not have less compassion for the general population.
And especially when they're in the position of power too. The power comes responsibility and they should embrace that and understand what they're dealing with. So, look, it got a reaction. We're going to deep dive in and break that whole situation down further. But last time we met was only only a week or so ago, when I bumped into the sixtieth anniversary for Rainbow Lodge. Yeah, it's not the type of place. It's a Rainbow Lodge do outstanding work, and it's not the type of place you expect to see two x police officers because it's helping people who have been released from jail and get their life back in order and do some fantastic work. And it was great to see a police officer there. But what an impressive group of people look.
To have the Deputy Commissioner of Corrections there. That's the state member for Housing I think it is, and I can't remember if the local member was there, but as you mentioned earlier, it was bipartisan. You know, we're there for the cause for you know, trying to do something about these violent men who come out of custody or sentences or prison to try and help them back into society to reduce domestic violence and hopefully hold them up as some type of leader within their community. But yeah, it is, And you rightly say, you know, twenty thirty years ago, I would never have envigied myself going to an organization like that, having been in the police. And I think as you get older, you know, your views and perspectives change.
Well, I know since I've left the police, so I look at fighting crime in a different way. In Plolee, it was sort of a narrow focus. The crime happens, you enforce the law, You put people in custody. You don't really consider what happens to them when they're in custody, and you wait for the next next case to come along. But people like Claude Robertson at Rainbow Lodge and hundreds of people that we could mention that, I'm sure you've crossed paths with how much difference they make in fighting crime. You can't. And I know it's a saying that I've heard you say often. You can't fix a problem through arrest. Yeah, there's other ways of fighting crime, isn't it.
Yeah? Absolutely, And I said that as I said Q and A, you know the problem you just can't you arrest your way out of it? And Claude and like the thousands of NGOs around Australia, all in this area trying to do the right thing, largely with lack of government support. Now there and they're doing the job that government should be taking at least a good portion of responsibility and funding them for this particular role. But to go to Rainbow Lodge and I'd never heard of it until twelve months ago. To go there and have been a number of times like yourself, and to sit and listen to the people who are coming through the system or have been in the system sometimes for decades, it is Yeah, it's almost counterintuitive. You go, wow, you know there is life beyond Mount Dat, Saint Mary's, Blacktown and Penrith. When I was out there, and if I was out there then and I had come across any of those individuals, you and I particularly just arrest them.
Yeah, that's right, just a rest them, you realize, And like, how how powerful was the young bloke that spoke the last one, Like you've got politicians, you've got the retired judges speaking, and then this fellow that had been through the through the system and he talked about what Rainbow Lodge did to him and give him a sense of purpose and direction in life. And it was inspiring.
It was And I'm actually I won't mention his name, but I'm going to get him come and talk to my students next year. I was blown away. So even if it's just one person, that makes a difference. The impact that he will have on his peers, and you know, his life story is something that we will never understand or experience, and he will be a fantastic father, just like Claude, for the next generation. And it is really it is inspiring. Yeah, absolutely, yeah.
I think with all that's happened, I consider myself fortunate to see that side of fighting fighting crime from a different perspective, about the gun without the handcuffs, and yeah, they make such a difference. Now, tell us about before we get into the academic Vince Early, and I've got to say, doctor Vince Early, it's choking on the words.
But never believe everything you've read Gary before.
You decided to become smart. You're a cop, Why do you join the cops? Look?
Actually I got a credit Mum and Dad for that. They thought it suited my personality.
Knows what suits your personality.
Clearly there wasn't enough mental help supporting those early nineteen eighties.
Meta give him to the police.
Yeah, that's right, that's right. Plenty of mad people in there, as we know, as I say, a double D, not just mad mad. So they thought it suited my personality variety of the day, and I never gave much thought to it. You know, when you join, it was just exciting, it was interesting. I never really had a career path plotted out. I just drifted from enjoyment to enjoyment to enjoyment. So hostygen negotiated undercovered drugs down the D's course where I met you, and I must say in all sincerity, and the viewers might be surprised to listen, but I really appreciated all the years that you came down and lectured on the Detective's course which I coordinated. There was always hard to get police to come down, even in service for their own people, but it was an experience that I could never give them, so you you know, over the years coming down, So you know, I hate to publicly admit it. Thanks very much.
Just repeat that a little bit loud and a little bit clearer. No, I look, I think, and that's what and the people that went before me, the Russell Oxford and Paul Magers, Paul Jacob and that used to fill that role. And then passing that, passing that expertise down, I think it's so important passing that lineage down, their training, the things that you learned out on the streets. So thank you for the privilege. I enjoyed that very much. So it was good. Okay, getting back to the point, getting back, getting back to getting back to the point. What was the point I joined the police? Why did you join the police? But hostage and negotiation that that's an interesting field to work.
Oh, look, it was fascinating. I was there for eight years. They didn't have any full time hostage negotiators then, but they do now. But I would like to think that once upon a time they're very selective as to who they chose to be hostage negotiating.
Yeah, I know what you're saying without saying, but.
Yeah, it was fascinating. It was really fascinating. You know, I went to a lot of people. Don't do a lot of suicide intervention. You do a lot of people who are taken in US, who are in strongholds who are wanted for violent crimes, and of course psychiatric or people undergoing psychotic episodes holding other people hostage, generally members of their family. So that was yeah, that was just an amazing experience. I was on SBS a few months ago now about witness or mind matters. I think it was called about the role of being in a shader and how victims and victims and witnesses recall things under times of stress. But certainly I remember there was a story of we got called out to Danar Kouma and there was an offender wanted for an armed hold up and it was in our house, and it was in the middle of nowhere, so there was no mobile phone coverage, and we go down and the tactical operations units surround the place at about six am, and then we had this thing called the Ball of Death seth.
I'm glad we changed that name. The Ball of Death.
Yes, And it was literally just like a speaker, a small pa speaker encased in metal and attached to it. There was about, oh, maybe I don't know, fifty meters of a wire and you could actually speak and it would amplify for the for the speaker and because of no mobive phone coverage and we didn't know the phone number of the house, the t o U went in about eight am and they smashed a window and they tossed the ball of death in and we're hiding behind a hedge, as you do, yes, as you did, And then we turned on the sirehen. It waked the bloke up and he was not happy. So we said, you know, we are the police. We need you to come out. And it was dead silence, and we're waiting for about thirty seconds and he's grabbed it and he's thrown it back through the window, through the top pane of the window, which hadn't been smashed. He could have thrown it through the bottom. Pain but stop, faint and we see the ball of death and he'd cut the wire and come hurtling across the lawn and rolled on the ground like a ten pin bowling ball. And he yelled out, read what I've got on the and f and I can't mean what do you called it? And he gave me he said why don't you know? He said, you blokes, f off. I won't say what it was, but f off. And we laughed. And then about ten or fifteen minutes later, after you calm down, you got I hopped on the paid I can't remember his name, his poplic Gary.
I said, oh, I did come out. You must have been You did.
Come out, yeah, I said, Gary, we've got the place around it. You're not going to go into where you wanted. You said, okay, look, give me give me five or ten minutes. And I'm looking at I was with Chris at the time, and I said, what do you want five or ten minutes for? And then somebody dawned upon us. He wanted to give his partner a special home of good goodbye, and he came out and it was fine.
It's bizarre things that go on that sieges I was at the siege. You have the robot that we used to send them with the Tactical Operations Unit, and we had to carry the robot leopard crawling all the way and carrying the carrying the robot which was quite heavy. It wasn't carrying it. We get it all the way in, we get back without being shot, and we're all happy. But one of the tires fell up, so then we had the leopard crawl all the back and carry the rabot out fix its little tire and send it back in. But yeah, they're serious situations. But yeah, hearing us laugh about it, You've got to find the humor in these situations because otherwise it's too tight. You're hanging on too tight. Policing. You worked, you work some of the tough errors. You worked out West and that you would have seen a lot of crime. You became a became a detective, You became involved in training of detectives, which I think is absolutely crucial, and we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. But you also decided to become a bit somewhat of an academic. Run us through your qualifications so we know who we're talking to.
So when I was in the police, I just had I wasn't very good at school academically at all. I mean on my late bloomer. So when I was in the police, I decided to put myself through you. And you say, when I was in the place, I got a degree in psychology, a degree in criminology. Then I went on and did my NBA Masters in Business Administration, and then I went on and did my when I was down at gulb and lecturing a university teaching and learning a degree, and then I went on and did emergency management. So when I actually that was just by luck. And so I always found interesting. I wouldn't tell to a nerd what people probably might disagree.
That's I won't say what's up said about that?
And so when I left. I left in two thousand and ten or twenty eleven after some bad he's pushed me off a roof at Saint Mary's. I was in.
GDS negatiations about it. Don't push me, oh stuff to you, and they pushed you off a.
Roof talking about a loser.
People are listening, who you might get a sense of I who pushed off the roof just shut up?
Ah. Anyway, that my colleague who had the blake, who I was with at the time. It was a young perbasery constable. It just happened to be there. He just left the army and he was in the SAS and he is as I'm laying on the ground with a fractured skull and fractured leg. Literally, I'll get them by, I'll get them so and next couple of seconds later, a couple of minutes later, I hear his blood curdling scream. He's obviously giving these blokes a bit of summary justice.
Well yeah, yeah, well they should take offense. You can't throw Vince off the roof.
That's right, Yeah, that's too much giving concrete, I can tell you that.
Well, look, despite the smile on my face, I'm sorry to hear that's what ended your career. But train off a roof. We've had a lot of people had different reasons. Why did you leave the police roof? And lucky you had your say, yeah, I know they might have jumped on you after they threw off the roof. Okay, so you've found your way into academia. Academia and you're lecturing criminologists. Where are you lecturing at mcquarie Union.
Yeah, McQuary Union. So when I left and I was recovering from my injuries, it was just by sheer luck that this opportunity came up, this job. So I went down and it was informal talk with the boss at the UNI, in charge of the of the department, and he said, look, if you want a job, it's there for you have no one in policing. And I said, yeah, give it to go. And they've been there fourteen years now and absolutely love it. It's fantastic. The kids are excellent. None of them necessarily want to be in the police, so they want to go into things like Asia or asis or Department of Defense or Attorneys General or cyber or something like that. So I talk about to the kids, and I call them kids, but they're not. They're adults about my experience. But also, you know, what is policing, And when you think about it, it is how I see the police is like they're referees in society. So you know, so police are called upon to do all manner of things, as you know, and I'm sure the listeners know. And then the police adjudicate on a situation and they bring in their own personal experience, so being in their own life experience, they listen to the views of the victims the offender and look at the situation and they make a judgment call. And sometimes a judgment call is good, sometimes it's not so good, and sometimes it's horrendously bad when I make a catastrophic mistake for no fall of their own. Sometimes, so I see the police like a referee in society of trying to keep society fairly harmonious. Not everyone as we are going to agree with what the police do. And I often say that the kids. You know, when I talk about mental health and having been a negotiator, people look at things retrospectively, and you don't have that luxury at the time of looking at things retrospectively. You make a judgment call and what you believe to be the best decision to be made in a situation. So to help them understand about the policing, I often use the word that police are like street corner psychiatrists because they deal with mental health, drug and alcohol, gambling, of course, you know, domestic violence, something I'm very passionate about, but all manner of crime. And you know, the time pressure is put on police to deal with all these particular issues. They go from one job to another job to another job. And I tell the kids it's just like if you can imagine a pinball machine, the ball has been flipped all over the place, and they've got to make these judgment calls. You know, you're going to a violent domestic and then another one comes on over the police radio and you go, oh, which one's more serious, and you pick to go to one, and you don't know if that decision is right until til afterwards. So I try to get I don't try to change the student's point of view. I try to get them to challenge it, to think about, well, what is policing in today's society actually like? And it's certainly not clear cut, as we both know.
Well, I think the fact that you've got that lived experience as a police officer, so you've got the street smarts that come with play, but the fact that you've drifted into lecturing and the academic side of it. It's a good combination of skills that you can look at it objectively because it's very easy to criticize the police that they made a decision, but let's look at the circumstances of the decision. Like you just said which domestic to go to? Or why did you leave that job and go to that job? You're going to make these calls, and invariably police work is adjudicated on six months twelve months down the track in court by barristers being paid a lot of money to make the police look stupid on whatever decision, So you're virtually in a no win situation. I would often say to people that get out of the witness box and they've been cross examined and smashed in the witness box and they gave but we didn't do anything wrong. And you explain, well, it doesn't matter. It does not matter. You are going to be criticized. That's the way the system is set up. In the adversarial system, You're going to be attacked. And that's the way you're interest in domestic violence and getting back to your outburst things just you became like a YouTube sensation, didn't you after it? Everywhere I looked, there's look it was.
It was so just going back to it. So it was my after I finished, you know, berating them to a point, everything I said about reading those one thousand, three hundred and sixty two Corona inquires of twenty years as correct. You know, all the all the information I said was great. It was not a scripted response. It was something that was just you know, off the off the top of my head. And had I know when I was going to be asked a question, I probably would have had something better prepared. So far as berating them was concerned, but I think that you know, when it comes to domestic violence, and my response it was more I've forgotten.
The question was just what prompted that, yeah, the comments that you made there, because clearly it was coming from a deep inside you. It was genuine yeah, And I think that's why it got people's You know, if you sat there and gave an academic response and all that, you stripped it away and said, oh that you want to know the truth. This is yeah.
Yeah, I mean seventeen million views across the socials, which was just standing much to the horror of my four teenage kids.
Woul embarrassing.
Ah, my two daughters. I got a twenty year old daughter and a fifteen year old daughter. Of course they're taking claim that those views are theirs. And I got twin sons who are in the middle, and they really don't care less. Although, as I said recently when I gave a talk to an NGO, my twin sons, when I were asked to mow the law and like I hid yesterday, they said, oh, how dare you? How dare You're a disgrace? It back come back at me. It's treacherous kids, teenagers. But yeah, I think that had a woman said it, it wouldn't have gained traction. But because I'm an old, fat white male, I'm stereotypical a game traction. I'm really glad for the cause, and I think the big challenge we might go into this later, but I think the big challenge over the next ten years in this area is trying to get men to come into the conversation to deal with how to rectify domestic violence. And the reason I say that is having spoken now to thousands of people all year the NGO space, you know, White Ribbon and places a lot, not so much Clawed or Rainbow Lodge, but other places similar to that. You know, they've had decades and decades of blood, sweat and tears with our government support. And now because men are the problem, to ask men to come in and assist them, they're going, WHOA, this is our space, you know, and we are victims of domestic violence, so we now don't want men coming in and telling us what to do. I don't think it's the men telling them what to do. It's about the men supporting the women who are already in this particular area. And I think the next ten years is going to be really important to try and get men to assist organizations, non government organizations to try and reduce domestic violence. Because as we know it's men that inflict the violence. It's men to destroy society. Do they start wars in the Middle East? You know, they trush society with environment. So men are the problem. But now to try and get men into the conversation or decent people into the conversation, it's going to be really hard.
And you've got all these women that have been working hard for a very long time without any help and building it from ground up, and then okay, we're going to get the men come in here. There's so many issues too and to address with it. And I'm looking at some of the points that flowed on from your comments on Q and A and talking about addressing drug and alcohol abuse, how that factors into domestic violence. So it's not just it's not one dimensional. There's a lot of factors that come into it that talk to me about the impact of alcohol and drugs in domestic violence.
So one of my areas have studied, I like, is police shootings, and I've read the coronial reports and I've got a spreadsheet at home. I'm going to write an article one day when I get around it. I don't know when that is. But when you look at the fatal police shootings in Australia from twenty twelve to twenty ten, or twenty twelve anyway to twenty twenty two. If you look at the fatal police shootings that have occurred, ninety percent, whether it be a domestic violence or whether at be people with mental health, ninety percent of those people have underlying historical, well developed drug and alcohol addiction problems, psychiatric problems. So we talk about domestic violence. So if you looked at the figures for domestic violence, like the Coronia Report are reports I've read, if government spent more on the drug and alcohol then a lot of the problems could be could be solved because it is those fundamental drug and alcohol issues that cause domestic violence. I does drugging alcohol cause these problems. If you look at there's a thing called, believe it or not, the Misery Index, and it's a measure of the state of the nation's welfare. It looks at what's the word I'm looking for, looks at economics, it looks at an unemployment then it puts it on a graph and it's a credible graph. And if you go back about thirty years and you looked at the misery index, and you're superimposed that over the deaths and domestic violence. There is almost a one hundred percent correlation between harsh economic times and spikes in domestic violence in murders, I should.
Say, OK, so domestic violence related murders, yep, yep.
So based on what I've read anyway, Like, now, why has there been so many women murdered because of unemployment, because of interest rates going up, because of the cost of living, because of lack of housing. And it can't be over the last thirty years where it's spiked and we're talking like, you know, you think it's probably have earned about ten times over the last few decades. It can't be coincidental that in harsh economic times more women are murdered.
It makes sense. And you just talk economics, housing issues and all that for relationships gone bad. Quite often people are stuck within the relationship because economically that they can't afford to separate. It can be as simple as that. And then you've got this ticking time bomb. Yeah, yeah, carrying on.
Yeah, And not only that, you hear people say, I mean, I've spoken to about three thousand school childrens across the schools New South across Sydney and some of the kids say, well, why doesn't the women have a bit of a cunning kit as we used to say, you know, you used to put a bit of money. But the problem is they aren't in the economic control of their finances.
That leads into the coersive control aspects of it.
Yeah, so they can't even vulnerable. Yeah, even if they wanted to leave, they can't because they don't have any money to leave and going. The kids don't under like the school kids I'm talking about now, I don't really understand that that you know, that's an element of it. So you know, that coercive control and the kids, you know, trying to get them to understand, particularly girls, you know, what are the subtleties as we know about coercive control. And i'd say to that skilled children I talk to, you know, in very simple terms, particular to the girls, you know, if the relationship doesn't feel right, then it's probably not good.
Good advice the advice. Yeah, but with that coersive control, I think that's something that's really good changes where the legislation has been implemented, because I think from policing and we've talked a lot about coercive control on this podcast. But with policing, we used to turn up at the domes. Well there's no assault that's taken place. We didn't have any powers to act on what's occurred. It's obvious what was going to occur, but we didn't have the legislation COURSI control. I think the introduction of it's great. I think we're just going to make sure police are informed about it and they how to look for the signs of it, gather the evidence so the legislation can be used to it's full of strength. Yeah.
I also think, as you would know with any new law, it's going to take the police a while to adjust to it and to be able to prove it in court, and then on top of that then there's going to be appeals because it's new law. So I think I think the evolution of it will probably take probably five maybe ten years before it becomes fairly normative. But we're going to be, as you labor intentive to go back and to pick up all the pieces to thread them together to come up with to paint a picture. In Scotland, the law there about coercia control, which is one of the best in the world only needs three three pieces of information or three what's what I'm looking elements? Elements? Yeah, yeah, to show that someone has been coercive, so they only need three. In New South Wales, I don't think there's any specific number, but trying to piece it all together and it's going to be you know, it is going to be time consuming. SMSs and all the pictures and the behavior of the individual.
Yeah, yeah, there's a lot to take in. It's gathering its evidence as complex as a homicide investigation. I look at it and that's wherever the police can embrace it, understand it and have the resources to deal with it. That's going to be a big thing. I'm looking at that figures And you mentioned that based on the fact you've read one three hundred and sixty two coroners reports in U Soth Wales over the last twenty years and underfunding is a common element. First of all, that's a lot of coroner's reports.
To reach and I never saw your name in one of them.
I deny that allegation. That's a lot of reports to read and what was the focus of that? What was you're reading those reports and what did you learn from that?
The purpose I'm actually starting to read them years ago. Was to try and understand, well, actually, it's more from a police shooting point of view, you know, why did the police end up shooting an individual? So that's how that was the beginning point. It was never initially about domestic violence per se. It was more our interest or my interest in you know what, why why do police shoot someone? And you hear this phrase in academa, and I'm always correcting my colleagues at work, the police use of fatal force. Police don't choose to use fatal force. The police shoot someone invariably to stop them doing something. If they die a result of it, then that's unfortunate. But this term that they used in academia, you know, police use of fatal force is a bit of this moment mis noma. Yeah, that's right. Academic, you wouldn't think so. So it was about looking at the police shootings, but it developed into about trying to get an understanding of the dynamics of domestic violence and mental health. Because when I talk to the students again and even at school about police shootings and mental health, I'm getting off the point slightly, but I'm trying to fill in time.
For you events, I can guarantee you who we're going to fill the time up I've just got. We're on the ground floor. I can't frae you off.
But when we talk about police shootings and mental health, I say to the kids in class, you know, they say, oh, well, why didn't the police do this or why didn't the police do that? After the event, and I said, well, first of all, when you're arrived at the scene, you don't know anything about the person. You don't even know their name. Sometimes as a negotiating didn't even know that. Well, you might have known the name, but that was about it. You didn't know if they had one or two mental health issues, whether or diagnosed or undiagnosed. You didn't know what medication they were on. You didn't know if they'd taken their medication the day before. You didn't know if they took heart their medication. You didn't know if they doubled up because they'd missed it the day before. You didn't know if the medication they had taken was out of date. Then if they had alcohol, what was the impact chemically on the brain of you know, spirits or beer or wine. And then in if they smoke the Devil's let us marijuana. What's the impact upon that? And then you, I say to the kids, and now you expect me to know, You expect the police to know within thirty seconds if someone is rational or not. When you look at the world HAATH organizations for mental health, it's something like who says, it's something like one in every three purple in the Western world suffer some type of mental health issues. So that means the three of us here, you're the one Gary.
I'm looking around not necessarily let people. Let the listeners form their own opinion. Who's got the mental health in I haven't been. I was just thrown under a bus.
And that's going to dog you for the rest of your life, poor bar.
Continue.
So yeah, so I can't even remember the question.
Now you just the reports and what you were finding mental health And I'll chime in there with In my role as homicide inspector, I oversaw a lot of critical incident investigations where police have someone in cussy has been killed by police. So a lot of them and I'm just thinking anik daily, I'd say eighty percent of them are involving mental health issues. There was some recommendations that flowed on from a very sad case that I oversaw was the shooting of Courtney Topic. Oh yeah, so I was. I was an officer in charge of the critical investigation there. That was the poor girl coming out with a mental health issue, carrying a knife but also a smoothie from Hungry Jacks or whatever, walking on the grass verge and shot and killed. And it still haunts me to this day what happened to there. And I know her parents well. I stay in touch with their parents and the things that they struggle with. From that. On the back of the coronial inquiry, there was a lot of recommendations about better training with police mental health, so teaching police how to deal with someone that's suffering mental health de escalating instead of escalating, because if we go strictly by the rule book, you're dealing with someone that's not thinking rationally and they're not going to always respond to your commands.
Yeah, and just on that case, I remember and correct me if I'm wrong. I think that when I read it, the coroner said that it was highly unlikely whatever the police was saying to us, she did not couldn't comprehend exactly exactly so again when I say to the kids, just because the police are talking to as you know, talking to them, doesn't necessarily they actually can comprehend and hear what the police are saying. And that was a tragic, absolutely tragic.
Yeah, that was horrendous, And like I hope and as I said, a lot of recommendations came from it. I'm speaking to Courtney's parents recently, and I don't think all the recommendations have been implemented, but it's certainly something that we need to upskill the police on. And like it's easy to blame the police because they're the ones that get blamed, but we need the proper funding for this type of training as well, don't we. And to have someone with mental health capabilities, Like if you get called to a situation like that, have someone on call with mental health training that can come and assess the situation.
Yeah, well they've got I think the PACER program I think might've been in Victoria. I can't remember. Is it in Victoria? Do you know? I'm not sure any but one thing that I've read about it and even done a bit of academic research in it, and something that I struggle with with that particular model is that the police and MBOs. A nurse gets called to the mental health episode, but in any event, the police have to be the first ones or variably go in first, because they can't relinquish their responsibility to not protect the nurse or the ambo or whatever.
That's a difficult situation, isn't it so?
And then again I could be wrong, but having read a couple of cases, there has been some reluctance by say the ambos outderstandably say, well, the nurses or the mental health worker to actually go in to the premises because their life could be put in jeopardy. So the situation really in some respects unless that person is really compliant, then that model doesn't necessarily work in every situation because the police can't put someone else's life in danger.
It always falls back on the police. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a difficult situation. Looking at domestic violence, and forty three percent of cases involve current or historic domestic violence or the when we're talking about women killed by an intimate male partner, so forty three percent of cases involve a current or historic domestic violence or so breaking that down then we won't talk academic, will talk just a common type talk. Basically, what we're saying here is that forty three percent, So almost half of the murders domestic murders. There's a history of domestic violence, a history or a current. So where are we failing there? It's almost like red flag, red flag yep.
Okay, So that's a good, good point, and I thought i'd say that for the viewer's sake. That's a great point. Gary.
Thanks means you're still helping me. You let me think I was lecturing down on the detective course for all those years.
So that that forty three percent. So when students ask me, I'm talking about school kids now that I talk to, they say, why doesn't she leave? And as a negotiator, you not learn it because it has to be someone innate to you to be negotiator. But everyone has different levels of rock bottom emotionally before they can make a decision to leave. So Vince Hurley is in a relationship with Gary. Vince Hurley decides to leave the relationship, Emily, can you just remove the knife from the studio? Vince Hurley decides to leave. But when he makes that decision to leave, in actual fact, he might not leave for six weeks, then when he decides to leave, he leaves, and then the cord the three or four days afterwards. This is the most important thing, But then they have to readjust to that life outside of a relationship. So when people say where are we going wrong? Sometimes I think it's really hard to pinpoint a specific thing because everyone's going to be different in the way in which they make a decision to leave a relationship. I've got a friend who highly intelligent, well paid job, has been in a I wouldn't say a physically violent relationship but certainly a coercive relationship for ten years and she knows it. And all I can do as a friend of Nona now for twenty years is just be there to support her. But she has to make that decision to leave now. She knows that getting back to the point of that forty three or nearly half, she knows that at some stage it could escalate, but she either she doesn't want to leave or she can't bring herself to leave. So I think there'll always be a percentage of people, unfortunately, who for whatever reason, whether it's for the sake of the kids or because they don't have any support outside, or they don't have the emotional strength to do it. There will always be subject to this tragic circumstances of being murdered. So that forty three percent I can understand now, having read the coronial reports and look at this academically, that some people just will never leave a relationship sometimes also because they are so dependent on the individual, because of the coerce you control. They have no choice, you know, they where do they go? Particularly people from Middle Eastern cultures or East Southeast support me. No, they don't, they don't, and some of them see it as a bit normative that the male is the dominant figure in the relationship. Mind blowing, just mind blowing.
So at that point, if we know that domestic violence is a precursor to looking at the horror amount of women that are killed by their partners, have we got to take a stronger action of the court's got to recognize the significance of the offense.
Yeah, I think because when we were in we had prior arrest policy as just mentioned on Q and A, and we can't arrest our way out of it. It's long gone. The horse has bolted, and I think that sometimes magistrates' hands abound. You've got limited options, not like the states where you see these really sometimes fantastic penalties or results where they may can offending say go and work in McDonald's if it's yeah, something like.
That, a little bit more creative, Yeah yeah.
Yeah yeah. So what was the question?
I'll go up a team academics. Have we got it? Have we got to focus more on the offense which is a precursor the domestic violence because we know it's a red flag, it's an indicator that this could escalate. What have we got to do from a court's point of view to identify the Okay, Vince has been bought before the courts now three times for domestic violence. This is not going to end well, So how do we deal with it at that level?
I mean, we've got electronic brace ankle bracelets which will come to I'm sure I think that I going back to Claude robertson rain By Lodge, big fan of that I would like to see. And this is just my point of view. Currently we take the women, The women have to leave the relationship and go to a refuge. I don't know why men who have got a track record of it two or three, but say just use three as a marker why the men can't be removed from that house and sent to play similar to Rainbow Lodge, where the men are removed, not the family, so the kids don't have to change school. As we've heard from Claude in the past, that they can still go and work, earn a living and hopefully give money to the family. So removing the men and putting them through a program pay for six months, that has to be better than what we've got at the moment where the women are primarily removed. The only problem with that I see is that putting aside the current housing crisis is that some women organizations would say, well, women refuges are more important. So I think, you know, maybe over the over the next decade, houses are dedicated to men to try and address their anger management. I've also spoken to a number of politicians. Everyone goes to Huff and Puff classes when their wives are it's pregnant. I don't know why men can't then and there or similar program be set up at a community center of an evening for men who have been identified as having three domestic violence. The court goes right, You're off to anger management class similar to Huff and puff.
Yeah.
Not at the same time, obviously you need to go and address this. And if you breach this, then X, Y and Z what happened to you? Well?
See, I think that's an important point because when yeah, you speak so passionately about defending women's rights and that, and there's no argument in this room, and I don't think any fair minded person would see it any other way. The statistics speak for themselves what happens to women, and men are the perpetrators. But the fixer problem. We can't arrest our way out of it because we try that and just it doesn't work. So I think this is interesting, and this is where you're looking at it, not just from the hard line policing point of view, but how do we fix a problem. We've got to fix the men. How do you fix the men? And we've got to get in their heads that it's not acceptable. Yeah, yeah, make them own it, because if they don't own it. I did in that Breaking Badness series spent some time in the maximum security prison. I was talking to inmates in there about people in for domestic violence. And someone may made a point and it's just from the inmates point, but I think it's relevant. Because they're in prison, saying if you put blokes in here for domestic violence situations, because that just came up in conversation. You've got blokes going in the prison. They're probably sharing a cell with someone else who's in a prison, and they're probably both sitting there thinking that bitch causes blah blah, and they're whipping themselves up into a frenzy. They've served their time, they get released. They haven't come out better people. They've just come out angry. So we need to address it in that area as well.
Yeah, yeah, you're right. You know, they what's them? They cement, you know, they build this anger within them.
And they because they won't accept their own responsibilities for the dickead zeb and they're blaming their partner for this is why I'm in here. They're just coming out probably more angrier. So we do need to work on that. Yeah.
I think when I talk to the school kids and even the students in class, I also never use about domestic violence. And I would say eighty percent of it. And I'm talking at prime are not primary school, high school from year ten to twelve, So we're looking at what fifteen, sixteen to eighteen and then the UNI students, most of them frame domestic violence. They focus on the word domestic. They don't see it just straight out violence.
So the language.
Yeah, so language is important, I think, and this is just again vent early talking that almost the word domestic needs to be removed from domestic violence because for the young kids, and this is the next generation, we need them to focus on the violence against the woman. It's not a domestic setting. They don't see a domestic argument in a shopping center because it's not within a home. They don't see that the footy. They don't see it domestic at a footy. Sorry, And they don't see it as just walking down the street when they're arguing. They only see domestic violence within the setting of the home. So we want to get through to the young people about violence against women. It's just straight out violent against women.
I do get what you're saying there, because the domestic you stand back and you think, oh, well, there's always two sides of the situation. So you've softened it right right from the start. Yeah, violence against women, because no one wants to where that Like people go, oh, it was a domestic situation, that was just a lover's tiff, that type of thing. They can hide behind that, Yeah, but violence against women not this similar to the one punch turned in the commentary became the coward's punch.
Yeah exactly, Yeah, exactly.
And the difference difference that makes. But it is about changing the mindset, is yeah, because it's just gone on too long and we need to address it. Do you think the government's funding all these things we talk about is part of it? We just haven't got enough money, yeah, or the government claim we haven't got enough money.
Yeah. You know. Earlier I was talking about the misery index and then the spike in domestic violence homicides over the last thirty years. If you then go and look at the state and federal government and I'm talking about New South Wales at the moment. State, if you look at their funding, their funding always it comes after a spike, okay, is never proactive. So when Anthony Albanizi earlier this year gave nine hundred and it might have been twenty five million dollars for domestic violence, now, first of all, that's commonwealth things, so the state's a bit. The state can only take some of it and implement it at a state level. But when I read his press release and then when I heard him talking on TV that money he talks about generational change, and then the press release and in his transcript of the interview, I think I read about thirteen times the word generational change. But the funding was only for five years. Bloody politicians, how can it be? The last time I checked the McCorry dictionary, a generation wasn't six years, it was twenty years.
Or they're just short little.
So they just irritate and it's wrong, you know, twenty well even I mean, I'm not just saying that the nine hundred million or whatever it is is not good. It's fantastic. But and do you know why I think this has been cynical? Why it's only six years or five years?
Election term, yep.
Election cycle. So I think he'll anticipate winning the next election and the funding runs out just before the election after that, so if he doesn't get re elected, the money won't be spent, or if he thinks he's got a good chance of being re elected, he'll announce more funding.
It's a cynical view, but when you look at politics, yeah, they put themselves out there so were allowed to ask the question.
I mean looks. Take Bridget McKenzie on Q and A. She had that colored spread shed pork barreling of the electorate years a couple of years ago. They funded that shooting range or gallery down it. They might have been waggle wogger. So they're happy to spend money on things for them, their own personal interests or vested interest to win an election. But when it comes to funding domestic violence or mental health, or drugs and alcohol, they do not They do not have enough funding. If you look at a graph, and even by not coincidence out of curiosity, I used AI also for this.
I asked it. Yeah, it's amazing, scary.
The students you said all the time, they'd go, god, I'm a big fan of it.
Yeah. Well we've got to embrace like I really and I'm coming crashing into the modern technology, but you've got to embrace it. Ah.
Yeah, Look, it's it's fantastic, but it's it's a resource.
It's a resource that is should use.
Yeah, and if we had another hour, I talk about that, by the way, because I talk about it, well, we.
Do have another hour. In part if I don't throw you off the roof beforehand. Damn it, we're on the ground floor. But sorry, we're off track because I do want to talk about AI and investigations because I think it's going to change change the landscape in a big way. But yeah, the funding and it always worries me. I'm talking state elections here where if it's there a law and order issue, they go, Okay, we're going to increase the police. You and I know that it's not about the quantity of police. It's about the quality of p and the training they get. And you see spikes in the police increase. But when you stay in the police long enough, you know when that intake of people that were initially rejected from the police have now been accepted. Yes, how problematic that can become in an organization working with those people.
And even when you get even if there was sufficient police, and there's not at the moment. But if you took when I joined, and probably you, for the first.
Two years, I was hopeless, you're blind.
So really, the productivity that Vince Hurley produced in the first two maybe even three years as a basally comfortable amount drew it was nothing. So I didn't have any occupational maturity. So even if I went in now, for example, Yeah, I'd have life experience, but I'd still be wouldn't be that productive because I'm in a new area of work I wasn't familiar with. So productivity for the police is virtually is not a great in the first couple of years. So even if you do have the numbers, and they certainly don't have the numbers at the moment, no.
And we'll talk about that because I think it's really at the at the critical point. At the risk of being controversial, I don't know if just increasing everyone's pay by thirty is the right move, But we'll we'll talk talk about that. That that were rejoining, I'd love to see you back down in the academy marching. You would have got into trouble. Okay, well, we'll be back for part two shortly, if I don't pray Vince off the ground floor. But I look in all jokes aside, and we're making light of situations. But what we're talking here is about stuff that we're both passionate about. And you've got that wealth of knowledge. You've got your little smarty academic stuff, but you've got the streets smarts as well, and combining it so there's so many more things I want to speak to you about when we come back for part two.
Can't wait. Thanks mate, Cheers,