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Beyond the Headlines: The Real Story on Tasers | George Hateley · Real Crime with Adam Shand

0:05
Speaker 1: Appoche production.
0:14
Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shanned. I'm your host,
0:16
Speaker 2: Adam Shan Let's talk about tases. In May twenty twenty three,
0:21
Speaker 2: ninety five year old Claire Allen died after being tasered
0:24
Speaker 2: by New South Wales police officer Christian White.
0:27
Speaker 3: The great grandmother died overnight one week after allegedly being
0:32
Speaker 3: tasered at her nursing home in Cooma, south of Canbero.
0:36
Speaker 2: White was charged and found guilty of manslaughter, be the
0:39
Speaker 2: avoided jail, being sentenced to a two year community corrections order.
0:43
Speaker 2: There was a fair bit of public outrage about that
0:45
Speaker 2: and it sort of brought tases back into the public
0:48
Speaker 2: debate again. Tayses have been around for thirty years. You
0:52
Speaker 2: could say that they've saved maybe three hundred thousand plus
0:56
Speaker 2: lives from death or serious bodily injury in situations where
0:59
Speaker 2: the lethal force would have been justified. Yet still, when
1:03
Speaker 2: you ask artificial and intelligence whether tases are safe, I
1:08
Speaker 2: will tell you that there's still no consensus. Tases are
1:12
Speaker 2: generally considered less lethal and safe when used correctly, but
1:16
Speaker 2: they still carry risks, especially for vulnerable people or in
1:19
Speaker 2: high stress situations. Some studies suggest that the taser can
1:23
Speaker 2: directly pace the heart into a ventricular fibrillation. Now North America,
1:28
Speaker 2: there have apparently been over four hundred and forty deaths
1:32
Speaker 2: where tases have been used, but the people have died afterwards.
1:36
Speaker 3: Police purpose bray and taser ninety two year old amputee
1:39
Speaker 3: who died three weeks after assault at care home.
1:44
Speaker 2: George Hateley was a Special Operations Group police officer in
1:46
Speaker 2: Victoria and was involved in lethal confrontations with firearms during
1:50
Speaker 2: his service. After leaving the force, George introduced the taser
1:55
Speaker 2: to Australia. And he's my guest today. Get a George.
1:58
Speaker 1: Hey, glad to be here.
2:01
Speaker 2: The controversy over tases continues. Your experience is very different.
2:05
Speaker 2: Are they safe?
2:06
Speaker 3: They're safe as anything. It's safer than most things that
2:10
Speaker 3: police that carry on their belt or on their best
2:13
Speaker 3: They're extremely safe. And I can back that up with
2:15
Speaker 3: medical and scientific and my experience over twenty five years
2:19
Speaker 3: with taser.
2:20
Speaker 2: And yet AI still says there's no consensus. But what
2:24
Speaker 2: is AI know?
2:25
Speaker 3: AI doesn't know the true facts and details that I know.
2:28
Speaker 3: And I can strongly say that they are safe, and
2:33
Speaker 3: I'd argue with AI any day. About that, and AI
2:35
Speaker 3: is dependent on what information you put into it, and
2:38
Speaker 3: I've got information that would improve its intelligence.
2:42
Speaker 2: Because in the case of clear Nyland, to me, that
2:45
Speaker 2: was not the taser. That was just poor police practice.
2:49
Speaker 2: Yet taser gets mentioned every time. Can we go through
2:52
Speaker 2: that instance and just work out what went wrong? And
2:55
Speaker 2: that's such. It was five am, for instance, he was
2:57
Speaker 2: at the end of his shift. They were asked to
2:58
Speaker 2: come back again to deal with Claire, who was walking
3:01
Speaker 2: around the corridors of the nursing home brandishing a steak knife.
3:05
Speaker 2: I don't think it should ever have been used.
3:07
Speaker 3: No, it's like taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut,
3:11
Speaker 3: way over the top. I think, you know, everyone would
3:16
Speaker 3: agree with me to say that was unnecessary, unacceptable in
3:20
Speaker 3: a tragic situation.
3:22
Speaker 1: Shouldn't have happened.
3:23
Speaker 3: I could have thrown a bucket of water on her
3:25
Speaker 3: or grail that I would have had this better effect
3:28
Speaker 3: than what she was exposed to.
3:30
Speaker 1: It was a horrible thing.
3:32
Speaker 2: Because let's explain what a taser actually is.
3:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an electric emission device. And when I say that,
3:40
Speaker 3: it's operated by a battery, and basically I'll talk in
3:45
Speaker 3: layman's terms. It takes about ten amps to kill someone.
3:51
Speaker 3: You know, if you stick your finger in a two
3:53
Speaker 3: forty volt PowerPoint, you could get electrocuted, and the ampswer kill.
3:57
Speaker 1: It's not the voltage.
3:59
Speaker 3: Fifty thousand bolts is just an ability to transfer the
4:02
Speaker 3: electricity from one point to the other. You can go
4:05
Speaker 3: Science Works and touch a device down there. It's got
4:07
Speaker 3: a million bolts and they'll stand your hair up right.
4:09
Speaker 3: It's quite funny. We often go through doors and get
4:14
Speaker 3: out of cars and get zapped by voltage.
4:16
Speaker 1: It's not going to hurt us.
4:18
Speaker 3: The difference between Taser is interesting, and I go back
4:23
Speaker 3: to the guy that actually invented the technology. His name
4:26
Speaker 3: escapes me at the moment, but he was at NASA.
4:31
Speaker 3: He was reading his paper and he's reading an article
4:34
Speaker 3: where a farmer had been connected to a wire fence
4:38
Speaker 3: for several hours and he didn't die. This sinus couldn't
4:42
Speaker 3: work out why, and he investigated it, and what had
4:45
Speaker 3: happened was a power pole had fallen over and the
4:49
Speaker 3: electricity had connected with the wire fence and the charge
4:52
Speaker 3: was traveling down the wire, but it was intermittent charge.
4:58
Speaker 3: Now that's different to what electricity does to us. If
5:01
Speaker 3: we get a charge of electricity, it's constant, where Taser
5:06
Speaker 3: has pulsating charging. For example, when you're exposed to Taser,
5:11
Speaker 3: you get exposed nineteen times a second of electrical pulses,
5:16
Speaker 3: not a constant charge. A constant charge will kill you.
5:19
Speaker 3: But the pulses give a breathing space Albert nine seconds.
5:25
Speaker 3: So that's basically how it works. If you're talking about amperage,
5:30
Speaker 3: like I said, it takes about ten amps to kill someone.
5:33
Speaker 3: Taser has got point zero zero to one amps, so
5:38
Speaker 3: two hundredth of an amp. That's the amount of amperage
5:42
Speaker 3: you know Taser. So when you look at it that way,
5:45
Speaker 3: it can't kill. It medically can't kill. And I've looked
5:49
Speaker 3: at a lot of those AI studies or examples. You
5:54
Speaker 3: look at them and they're old, they're twenty eight years old.
5:57
Speaker 3: We're talking early two thousands where TAYS was extremely controversial
6:03
Speaker 3: and Amnesty International jumped on board. Everyone jumped on board
6:06
Speaker 3: saying these are devices of torture, they are killing people
6:10
Speaker 3: and so forth. And you mentioned four hundred and forty
6:13
Speaker 3: Taser deaths, Well, if you look at it, they were
6:16
Speaker 3: probably Taser related deaths. And I know from examples that
6:22
Speaker 3: a lot of these taser related deaths are related because
6:26
Speaker 3: taser was used. I can name a lot of deaths
6:29
Speaker 3: that happened similar sort of circumstances where police and I
6:33
Speaker 3: won't say bad guys but mentally disturbed people were involved
6:37
Speaker 3: and they died. Taser wasn't there, so it wasn't that
6:39
Speaker 3: much controversy, but they died from things like positional a
6:43
Speaker 3: fixture where three, four or five heavy coppers would land
6:47
Speaker 3: on top of them.
6:48
Speaker 1: They couldn't breathe, they die.
6:49
Speaker 2: That's the George Floyd example from America, where.
6:52
Speaker 3: It's similar to pin down, or the Brazilian student back
6:55
Speaker 3: how many years ago, six, seven, eight years ago might.
6:58
Speaker 1: Be longer, Yeah, it might be looking up.
7:00
Speaker 2: But that one always gets played when people talk about
7:02
Speaker 2: tasers that they refer to the Brazilian student shoplifting in Sydney.
7:06
Speaker 2: He gets chased, police attend and he's tasted, but then
7:11
Speaker 2: they all jump on him as well.
7:13
Speaker 3: Tragic, but the homicide squad rang me up the next morning.
7:16
Speaker 3: He said, George blake'spain taser.
7:19
Speaker 1: He's died.
7:20
Speaker 3: I've had a few phone calls like that over the years,
7:22
Speaker 3: and I straight away said, tell me the circumstances, they
7:25
Speaker 3: told me, and I go, Tas, it didn't kill him,
7:28
Speaker 3: And I go, he, do you know that. You know
7:30
Speaker 3: I'm in Sydney, I'm in Melbourne at the time. And
7:32
Speaker 3: I said, I can tell you now from what you've
7:33
Speaker 3: told me, tases didn't kill him unless he swallowed it.
7:36
Speaker 1: He might have choked on it and died. That's the
7:38
Speaker 1: only way it can kill.
7:40
Speaker 3: What happened in actual fact with that, and the coroner
7:43
Speaker 3: came and gave that decision. And the thing I said
7:47
Speaker 3: to the homicide squad that morning, tell me about the
7:50
Speaker 3: actual wires, because the wires that are used to tether
7:55
Speaker 3: the dart to the cartridge, So you've got wires inside
7:58
Speaker 3: the cartridge. When the electricity hits the cartridge, it deploys
8:02
Speaker 3: two darts, one at horizontal eight degrees, and it spreads
8:08
Speaker 3: the darts, which spreads the electricity. And in the case
8:12
Speaker 3: of deploying it properly, the wires should be crimped, because
8:17
Speaker 3: they're crimped when they go in the cardres they folded
8:19
Speaker 3: and they have this crease in the wire. I said,
8:24
Speaker 3: what are the wires like and he said, oh, one's
8:25
Speaker 3: crimped and one straight. I said, well, one didn't connect
8:28
Speaker 3: to him. He said, how do you know that? And
8:30
Speaker 3: I said, well, if you fire a taser into mid air,
8:33
Speaker 3: the wires will deploy to the maximum distance and they'll stretch.
8:38
Speaker 1: They won't have a crimp.
8:40
Speaker 3: And he said, ah, it was simple, so it wasn't effective.
8:44
Speaker 1: No, it didn't.
8:45
Speaker 3: And even if it did, the currenter said it was
8:48
Speaker 3: positional to fix youre that killed him. They all piled
8:51
Speaker 3: on top of him. Keep in mind, those policemen at
8:54
Speaker 3: that time of the morning had done a shift through
8:56
Speaker 3: the night. One of their members, another officer, had been
9:00
Speaker 3: shot during an armed robbery attempt m robbery. And the
9:05
Speaker 3: little bloke in the seven eleven that called the police
9:08
Speaker 3: it was a language barrier and he said robbery, robbery,
9:11
Speaker 3: and they've got this over the air Chinese whisper that
9:16
Speaker 3: there was another armed rubbery in progress. Police, having experienced
9:20
Speaker 3: that in that shift late at night, early in the morning,
9:23
Speaker 3: went to it hyped up. Saw this bloke run out
9:25
Speaker 3: of the seven eleven store, bare chested off. He goes,
9:29
Speaker 3: please chase him. They fired the taser. They eventually get
9:33
Speaker 3: to him, pole on top of him.
9:35
Speaker 1: He dies.
9:36
Speaker 3: Coroner, not the media, not you, mah or anyone else.
9:40
Speaker 3: The coroner said he died from this, not taser. And
9:43
Speaker 3: I can give you dozens of examples, and some of
9:47
Speaker 3: them in Australia and mostly around the world.
9:50
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was now twelve years ago. That was Betho Ladizio,
9:54
Speaker 2: the Brazilian student, and that really has stuck with people
9:58
Speaker 2: in their minds when they think about tasers. But as
10:01
Speaker 2: you say, people don't read the fine detail. And you
10:05
Speaker 2: you were in Victoria Police during a very bloody era
10:07
Speaker 2: when a lot of suspects were shot. You were involved
10:10
Speaker 2: in at least two operations where suspects did die. What's
10:14
Speaker 2: the alternative where if you're having to shoot suspects who
10:17
Speaker 2: could otherwise be incapacitated, where are we.
10:22
Speaker 3: I was involved in one two, I was involved in
10:24
Speaker 3: quite a few. Not the shooter in every case, but
10:27
Speaker 3: I saw a lot of deaths as a result of
10:31
Speaker 3: lethal force. And as a result of that, not me,
10:35
Speaker 3: but the hierarchy decided to bring in a new system
10:39
Speaker 3: where it was called Operation Beacon. And I actually left
10:42
Speaker 3: the police force and they brought that in.
10:45
Speaker 2: Because of that.
10:46
Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, no, it was more political. I
10:51
Speaker 3: enjoyed my life in the police force. I joined on
10:53
Speaker 3: the twelfth of July seventy six, resigned on the twelfth
10:56
Speaker 3: of July ninety four, and I designed it that way
11:00
Speaker 3: and went into business that I'm in now, So.
11:04
Speaker 1: You look for alternatives.
11:05
Speaker 3: The alternative then was not knee jerk, but it was like,
11:08
Speaker 3: we're going to do something to stop this ongoing fatality rate.
11:14
Speaker 3: And interesting period because the inspector in charge of the
11:19
Speaker 3: police training at the time was Inspected Jim Ben, a
11:22
Speaker 3: good mate of mine, had been in the SAG, like
11:24
Speaker 3: a lot of other guys that went from promotion after
11:27
Speaker 3: they left the SAG, went to training, and what happened was,
11:32
Speaker 3: in my early days, you were told not take a
11:35
Speaker 3: gun out of your host unless you get shot at.
11:38
Speaker 3: What Jim and all the other guys taught police officers
11:41
Speaker 3: was defend yourself. Now, I can tell you a dozen
11:45
Speaker 3: or twenty five different reasons why you should get your
11:48
Speaker 3: gun out if you were facing a real and impending threat,
11:53
Speaker 3: because basically, a criminal can fire a weapon before you
11:57
Speaker 3: can send a message from your brain down your finger
12:00
Speaker 3: to defend yourself, So you have to have that weapon
12:02
Speaker 3: out if you've faced with a real threat to your life.
12:07
Speaker 3: So they started training in that respect. They started training
12:10
Speaker 3: a much better tactically better use of firearm, but more
12:13
Speaker 3: importantly the tactical side of things. And what happened, as
12:16
Speaker 3: Jim ben said to the media at the time, they said,
12:19
Speaker 3: why Victoria police shooting more people? In fact, the whole
12:24
Speaker 3: of Australia double at was Victoria's rate of shooting. Jim
12:30
Speaker 3: Vent very casually sat back and said, because we're better shots,
12:36
Speaker 3: and that was fact.
12:37
Speaker 1: That was true. You couldn't ask him to explain about.
12:41
Speaker 2: And the people being shot also had firearms themselves. A
12:44
Speaker 2: bit of a war going on at that time between
12:46
Speaker 2: the police and the crooks, which obviously culminated in the
12:48
Speaker 2: Wall Street murders of two police.
12:51
Speaker 3: Officers, Damien Here and Stephen Tynan, which is really tragic, horrible.
12:56
Speaker 3: So you look for alternatives. Beacon was one, but you
13:00
Speaker 3: look at what the world's like now. It's more equality.
13:03
Speaker 3: So you got little people. When I say little people
13:08
Speaker 3: physically not what they used to have. I used to wear,
13:12
Speaker 3: you know, I wore thick socks when I went for
13:14
Speaker 3: the high test and just got in and I'm five
13:16
Speaker 3: nine and.
13:17
Speaker 1: A half and I think you've added an inch they
13:19
Speaker 1: heaven you, Yeah, I think I might.
13:21
Speaker 2: I think you did.
13:21
Speaker 3: I shrunk jumping out a helicopters too much. So you've
13:26
Speaker 3: got a different type of person on the street now.
13:28
Speaker 3: They're not physically able to deal hand to hand combat.
13:33
Speaker 3: So we need to give them the proper tools. Because
13:35
Speaker 3: if you are faced with again a real and impending
13:39
Speaker 3: thread and you're a person that is looking at six
13:42
Speaker 3: foot six and he says I'm going to take that
13:45
Speaker 3: gun off you and shove out your backside, and you
13:47
Speaker 3: know that sort of thing, you've got to give them
13:50
Speaker 3: an alternative otherwise they're going to use that lethal force,
13:53
Speaker 3: and they justified to. If a bloke comes to me
13:55
Speaker 3: and says I'm going to kill you and I've only
13:58
Speaker 3: got a gun, I'm going to have to use a
14:00
Speaker 3: gun against you, it's gun day.
14:01
Speaker 1: It's gun day. Yeah. So taser is a great alternative battens.
14:07
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you know you've got to get in close
14:09
Speaker 3: and close caught a battle situation. It's not always ideal,
14:13
Speaker 3: and unless you're an expert you train every day all day,
14:16
Speaker 3: it just doesn't work.
14:18
Speaker 1: OC spray.
14:19
Speaker 3: You know, I've been drowned in it and still run
14:22
Speaker 3: through courses where being drowned in it, shoot targets do
14:28
Speaker 3: relaads and shoot accurately and still suffering in pain and discomfort.
14:34
Speaker 3: It doesn't stop you. And especially if you're mentally rage, alcohol,
14:38
Speaker 3: drug effected, it may not affect you at all. Oc
14:41
Speaker 3: spray or hit with a baton and I swung a
14:44
Speaker 3: bat and a couple of times until that didn't work,
14:46
Speaker 3: bounced off their head. But tas is a different thing.
14:49
Speaker 3: Taser will incapacitate. It works like a bullet in a
14:53
Speaker 3: lot of ways, but it hasn't that lethality. A bullet
14:57
Speaker 3: placed between the eyes and followed down through the spinal cord.
15:02
Speaker 3: I think it's don't quote me, but it's C two
15:04
Speaker 3: C three of the spinal cord will topple a person
15:08
Speaker 3: over instantly.
15:09
Speaker 2: Roughly just near the breastbone sort of thing.
15:12
Speaker 3: I think it's just below the base of the head
15:15
Speaker 3: around down the back of the neck sort of thing
15:18
Speaker 3: that area. Because I've seen it, I've done a lot
15:22
Speaker 3: of research, I've spoken a lot of other place in
15:24
Speaker 3: respect to shootings. And there's a classic movie people can
15:28
Speaker 3: go watch The FBI Killings. It's a fantastic Hollywood movie,
15:33
Speaker 3: quite old. But I saw the recreation of that particular
15:36
Speaker 3: shooting in Miami, Florida, where several FBI agents confronted two
15:42
Speaker 3: sailans heavily armed, and the coroner at the end of
15:46
Speaker 3: the thing where two FBI agents were killed. The two
15:50
Speaker 3: bad guys were killed, but two FBI agents were killed
15:53
Speaker 3: and five were injured shot and the coroner said that
15:57
Speaker 3: one of the first rounds that the FBI agent shot
16:00
Speaker 3: was a fatal shot to the bad guy, but he
16:03
Speaker 3: walked around for two minutes, killed a couple of agents,
16:06
Speaker 3: and shot a few more. So, bullet doesn't always stop
16:11
Speaker 3: a real and impending threat. People can still die. And
16:14
Speaker 3: that bullet went through his heart, by the way, and
16:16
Speaker 3: he still walked around for to admitute tayser will incapacit
16:21
Speaker 3: properly deployed, properly trained people, and I emphasized properly train
16:26
Speaker 3: officers will deploy Taser. It will work every time. Taser
16:30
Speaker 3: doesn't fail. Taser unit don't fail. It's the operators that
16:35
Speaker 3: failed to deploy properly.
16:38
Speaker 2: Because you've been in that life and death situation at
16:41
Speaker 2: the airport there with normally Lee when he was robbing
16:44
Speaker 2: the ANSET terminal there. This is back in ninety two.
16:47
Speaker 2: They were very determined he was a very good arm robber,
16:50
Speaker 2: and he was ready to kill officers. That day, you
16:54
Speaker 2: were faced with that moment where they were trying to
16:56
Speaker 2: get away, you were there.
16:58
Speaker 3: What happened in a nutshell, I was faced with a
17:01
Speaker 3: real impending threat and Lee pointed a weapon towards me,
17:05
Speaker 3: and I felt instantly didn't even hesitate the fire because
17:09
Speaker 3: of the fact that I was defending myself. I had
17:12
Speaker 3: had sufficient training. We'd actually rehearsed for weeks and weeks
17:16
Speaker 3: and weeks on that pending arrest that we didn't know
17:19
Speaker 3: what they were going to do, whether they're going to
17:21
Speaker 3: hold a bankup or a payroll or something at the airport.
17:25
Speaker 3: Then it eventuated it was at the airport, and it
17:28
Speaker 3: was a situation that happened in nanoseconds, But it was
17:32
Speaker 3: the training that brought it out that I responded very quickly,
17:36
Speaker 3: and unfortunately for him, I got in first before.
17:39
Speaker 1: He got me.
17:40
Speaker 3: I'd say, that's fortunate for you, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:43
Speaker 3: But I put that back down to my training people.
17:46
Speaker 3: You know, we had to manatorily go to see the psychologist,
17:50
Speaker 3: and I was pretty settled about it, pretty comfortable with
17:54
Speaker 3: what I did because I'd trained for it. We'd talked
17:57
Speaker 3: about these sort of situations, debriefed over shootings that we've
18:03
Speaker 3: been involved with before, so mentally I was prepared for it.
18:07
Speaker 3: And the problem with on the street coppers when they
18:10
Speaker 3: get into those sort of situations, they're faced with traumatic
18:14
Speaker 3: stress because they haven't had the training that we'd had.
18:18
Speaker 1: And taking life is a big deal.
18:21
Speaker 3: But you know what, a lot of times police think
18:25
Speaker 3: about it could have been them instead, and that's what
18:27
Speaker 3: traumatizes officers more so than taking a life.
18:31
Speaker 1: And that's my opinion.
18:32
Speaker 3: I could be debated on that, but I've spoken a
18:35
Speaker 3: lot of police that have been in shootings and one
18:38
Speaker 3: of the first things they worried about, oh, George could
18:40
Speaker 3: have been made. You know, I've been in situation where
18:43
Speaker 3: other offers, we've been involved in shootings and we've had
18:48
Speaker 3: I've said buddy up and checked for bullet holes and
18:52
Speaker 3: they've gone what And I go check if you've been shot?
18:54
Speaker 3: Because we had best sun and I wanted them to
18:57
Speaker 3: check each other to see if they've been shot. And
19:00
Speaker 3: on a couple of occasions there was a few guys
19:02
Speaker 3: that were pretty upset about having been involved in a
19:07
Speaker 3: real life shooting where their life could have been taken.
19:10
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no doubt that normally Lee was going to
19:12
Speaker 2: shoot you. I mean he made look like he was surrendering,
19:15
Speaker 2: lowered the weapon, but then he raised it and you
19:17
Speaker 2: had no choice to fire. That didn't give you stress.
19:19
Speaker 2: But I know that the killing of Frankie Velastro, well
19:24
Speaker 2: known crook. You didn't pull the trigger, but that one
19:27
Speaker 2: did give you some stress.
19:28
Speaker 3: Why was that I knew him, I'd rested him years ago,
19:32
Speaker 3: and I was prepared to arrest him again at that
19:35
Speaker 3: particular instant, and I was gonna whisper in Frank gets George,
19:41
Speaker 3: and that would have would have been a funny thing
19:44
Speaker 3: at the top, because he was a bad guy. He
19:49
Speaker 3: was a violent rapist, he was a thief, he was
19:52
Speaker 3: a his firearms drug dealer a lot, and he was
19:55
Speaker 3: into it. When he got out of Jile, he was
19:56
Speaker 3: into it again. And it happened pretty quick. I mean
20:00
Speaker 3: I was opening the back door. We could see him
20:02
Speaker 3: when he walked out, and I was like, it was
20:04
Speaker 3: all glass and the wide door and I was opening it,
20:07
Speaker 3: and the guy next to me, thankfulness responded because the
20:10
Speaker 3: last I went for his gun. He was a badass,
20:12
Speaker 3: you know, and the guy next to me shot him
20:14
Speaker 3: and he was dead before he hit the floor, and
20:18
Speaker 3: that was an unfortunate day for him. But you know,
20:23
Speaker 3: we all survived.
20:24
Speaker 2: It, but you did have some issues after it, and
20:27
Speaker 2: then you've been a tough guy.
20:29
Speaker 3: It was funny because I had been involved in a
20:31
Speaker 3: couple of incidents where they've been shots fired before when
20:34
Speaker 3: I was a detective. There were several detectives on my
20:38
Speaker 3: floor Robbie Squad and Major Crime Squad that I was
20:40
Speaker 3: in that had been shot, none fatally, thinkingness, especially during
20:44
Speaker 3: the Mad Max days, a couple of being shot good
20:48
Speaker 3: mane of Mine, Rod McDonald and Sargant Caaperaninovski who had
20:53
Speaker 3: been shot by Mad Max. So I've been through a lot,
20:56
Speaker 3: but this particular thing, what happened was I just kept
21:00
Speaker 3: seeing the lastra being shot and full down and it
21:04
Speaker 3: was and it's driving me nuts. So I went to
21:06
Speaker 3: the site and said, I'm experiencing this and he has
21:10
Speaker 3: post traumatic stress. I said, I'm not stressed, and he goes,
21:14
Speaker 3: but that's a symptom, and I've gone ah, so I'm
21:16
Speaker 3: not going nuts and he said no. I never had
21:20
Speaker 3: it again after I got told I was informed that
21:22
Speaker 3: it was just a normal thing to experience, you know,
21:25
Speaker 3: But from then on, no problems because I was mentally
21:29
Speaker 3: trained and prepared for that sort of thing. We trained
21:32
Speaker 3: with the Army the sas everyone is trained to. The
21:37
Speaker 3: Armies are trained to kill first, and we're in a
21:41
Speaker 3: much harder situation because we have to be justified wholly
21:45
Speaker 3: and solely to use their weapons, where the army tend
21:47
Speaker 3: to know that it's the enemy in the field that
21:49
Speaker 3: they have to use their weapons, and we have a
21:52
Speaker 3: harder situation. We've got to think hard about it before
21:55
Speaker 3: we use our virums.
21:56
Speaker 2: Well, and you know that this will be replayed in
21:58
Speaker 2: slow motion in the Supreme Court of the Coroner's Court
22:01
Speaker 2: and the whole public will be watching. So there's a
22:04
Speaker 2: lot of pressure, a lot more today even I would say,
22:06
Speaker 2: But did these experiences lead you to think about getting
22:10
Speaker 2: involved and introducing non lethal options like the taser after
22:14
Speaker 2: your career, Yeah.
22:15
Speaker 1: For sure. I was looking at anything and everything.
22:17
Speaker 3: We had a guy approaches when I was in the
22:20
Speaker 3: SAG with a thing called air taser, and it's the
22:23
Speaker 3: old type one. It just didn't work that much. We
22:28
Speaker 3: had a practice trial session at the Russell Street Gym
22:31
Speaker 3: in the boxing ring, and they put me in. The
22:34
Speaker 3: biggest guy on the sag hooded us and deployed this
22:38
Speaker 3: air taser and it hurt, but it just got me angrier,
22:42
Speaker 3: more worked up, and I fought harder at it.
22:46
Speaker 1: And beat worked through it, and it just didn't work
22:51
Speaker 1: that much.
22:52
Speaker 3: It was pain compliant, and that's what battons oc spray
22:55
Speaker 3: boughts to a certain extent, fists raal pain compliant taser
22:59
Speaker 3: is to a point explain that, Well, if I go
23:02
Speaker 3: up and pinch you on the arm, you go elch.
23:04
Speaker 3: If I hit you with a bat and you go ol,
23:05
Speaker 3: which might not necessarily stop you because he might be
23:08
Speaker 3: so rage affected, drug mentally, alcohol affected, you may not
23:14
Speaker 3: feel it.
23:15
Speaker 1: You know.
23:15
Speaker 3: I got in a brawl once where we went in
23:17
Speaker 3: and arrested the groom and the best man at a wedding.
23:21
Speaker 2: It must have been quite a wedding.
23:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, we sort of took a wild at aside to
23:26
Speaker 3: let him get married and then gather reception. But that's
23:29
Speaker 3: before the honeymoon, which was a topic of conversation afterwards.
23:33
Speaker 3: But we went in, grabbed this bloke, hit him by
23:36
Speaker 3: a headlock, dragged him out and it was a big
23:38
Speaker 3: wedding and all the ladies started to have a food
23:41
Speaker 3: fight with us, throwing plates and everything they could us.
23:44
Speaker 3: But it was a lot of coppers there and I
23:47
Speaker 3: wasn't going to let this bloke go. Dragged him out
23:50
Speaker 3: through the crowd, through the crowd of coppers waiting outside,
23:52
Speaker 3: police dogs, the whole thing barking, and then we handcuffed
23:56
Speaker 3: and put him in the back of a van and
23:58
Speaker 3: one of the guys said, George, you've been stabbed, and
24:01
Speaker 3: I was going where and he goes on your back
24:03
Speaker 3: so I had to watch it on covered in blood.
24:06
Speaker 3: They lifted up and everyone laughed. There was a perfect
24:08
Speaker 3: set of canine benches on my back. The police dog
24:12
Speaker 3: bit me.
24:12
Speaker 2: Your own dog.
24:13
Speaker 3: No, I didn't feel it, didn't feel it, didn't know it.
24:16
Speaker 3: And that's what I was saying when your rage affected,
24:19
Speaker 3: and I was at the time, you may not feel it.
24:21
Speaker 3: You may not be deterred by a bat and no
24:24
Speaker 3: sea spray or even being shit.
24:27
Speaker 2: You know, because this is terrifying for young recruits going
24:29
Speaker 2: into police forces around the country. They're loaded up with
24:32
Speaker 2: more options than batman on the utility belts and the
24:35
Speaker 2: whole thing vests and the rest of it. But they're
24:37
Speaker 2: also facing unique threats now. You've got people who are
24:40
Speaker 2: ice affected, you've got people with mental health issues who've
24:43
Speaker 2: been deinstitutionalized. You've got people who are now carrying knives.
24:47
Speaker 2: There's a lot more people carrying knives now, so there's
24:51
Speaker 2: got to be a range of options, and particularly where
24:53
Speaker 2: people I think they're also fast tracking training as well.
24:56
Speaker 2: There's a massive deficit of recruits. This all leads to
25:00
Speaker 2: a fairly lethal cocktail out on the road. Yeah, I
25:04
Speaker 2: don't don't you know. I feel sorry for them, but
25:09
Speaker 2: it's up to them. It all comes back to the
25:11
Speaker 2: office roomself train, Train, Train train. Physically, I was really
25:16
Speaker 2: focused on my physical fitness and that helped me a
25:20
Speaker 2: lot of my career, and not only just chasing crooks
25:25
Speaker 2: or getting into situations you know, physical force or anything
25:29
Speaker 2: like that, but mentally it helped me. You know some
25:31
Speaker 2: blokes that go across the pub and drink their concerns away,
25:35
Speaker 2: and I'd run up and down the stairs at Russell
25:38
Speaker 2: Street and give everyone a laugh because they run up
25:41
Speaker 2: and down and run up and now.
25:42
Speaker 3: But that's how I dealt with it. So what I'm
25:44
Speaker 3: saying is officers. Now, if they realize, and they should
25:47
Speaker 3: realize that they're not trained as well as they could be,
25:51
Speaker 3: go out and train themselves, get onto YouTube, get onto
25:53
Speaker 3: whatever they can, and just join pistol clubs. Because the
25:57
Speaker 3: more efficient you are with a firearm, the less you'll
26:00
Speaker 3: probably be using it, and if you use it, you'll
26:03
Speaker 3: use it efficiently. Because they went from six shots to
26:07
Speaker 3: fifteen shot magazines purely because in a lot of cases,
26:12
Speaker 3: police officers panic in a situation of life and death,
26:18
Speaker 3: would fire their first few rounds and miss and maybe
26:21
Speaker 3: miss with all of them. So fifteen meant you had
26:24
Speaker 3: more rounds to get on target. And you need to
26:28
Speaker 3: be more efficient with firearms. You need to be more
26:32
Speaker 3: efficient with anything you've got on your belt, baton, ac
26:35
Speaker 3: spray or anything like that. And one of the things
26:37
Speaker 3: I used to practice was I'd put everything on my
26:40
Speaker 3: belt and I used to turn the lights off, and
26:42
Speaker 3: I used to close my eyes and know exactly where
26:44
Speaker 3: my gun was, exactly where my spare magazines were, exactly
26:48
Speaker 3: where in my case we had zip ties for handcuffs.
26:53
Speaker 1: But I knew where all my equipment was and.
26:55
Speaker 3: I had it on the same position every day, so
26:57
Speaker 3: It was muscle memory, which is so important with training
27:01
Speaker 3: to make sure that you respond quickly and accurately efficiently,
27:07
Speaker 3: because under stress you revert to your training. If you
27:11
Speaker 3: don't train much, you're going to run around like a
27:13
Speaker 3: chip without its head. And that's why in situations that
27:16
Speaker 3: I've been involved in, I've been able to react, and
27:21
Speaker 3: my officers with me in the SAG, especially because we're
27:24
Speaker 3: so well trained because we trained all day every day.
27:27
Speaker 1: That's why we're so good at what we did.
27:30
Speaker 3: Never had a fatality in SAG, had a couple of blankes,
27:34
Speaker 3: fired a shot, but no actual injuries.
27:39
Speaker 2: It's one thing about training and fitness and so forth,
27:42
Speaker 2: but decision making is so important too. We roll back
27:45
Speaker 2: to Clean Island. Example, Christian White made a poor decision.
27:49
Speaker 2: When you've got all these options, how are you supposed
27:52
Speaker 2: to organize your mind around what to use when, because
27:56
Speaker 2: you'll have to explain it later on.
27:59
Speaker 3: Look, you mentioned before he'd done a long shift. He's
28:02
Speaker 3: probably mentally tied. And again where the fitness fitness helped
28:07
Speaker 3: me a lot, it made me more awake. Were effishent
28:10
Speaker 3: on the ball in training in the SAG. When I
28:13
Speaker 3: first went there, we had to do one thing that
28:15
Speaker 3: was a twenty mile not clumbing twenty miles where we'd
28:18
Speaker 3: run on bitchman and GP boots overalls, carry a shotgun,
28:22
Speaker 3: a water bottle and a handgun. And it was a
28:24
Speaker 3: silly thing, but it was going back in the dark
28:27
Speaker 3: ages where they introduced that, you know, you've got to
28:29
Speaker 3: be a hard man, you know. And I got into
28:31
Speaker 3: it and I said the boss, when I was the
28:33
Speaker 3: instructor training new SAG members or a three month period,
28:39
Speaker 3: I said, we've got to revert to reality based training.
28:43
Speaker 3: And what that is is when I used to go
28:45
Speaker 3: home sometimes on call, I'd get into bed and the
28:48
Speaker 3: beeper go off in those days, and I'd ring the
28:50
Speaker 3: office and they'd say, I've got a sieg John, so
28:53
Speaker 3: you get up. Hadn't ending to sleep, probably a long
28:56
Speaker 3: day training whatever, and I'd go out to a siege,
29:00
Speaker 3: finish it by three or four in the morning, get
29:03
Speaker 3: back home, get into bed. I remember this vividly had
29:06
Speaker 3: one leg in bed and the people went off, George,
29:09
Speaker 3: you're the on call bomb tech. You've got to go
29:11
Speaker 3: to a suspected IUD bomb. And I get up went
29:16
Speaker 3: to that fixed that it was a false alarm and
29:20
Speaker 3: then too late, came back home, how to shower at work,
29:24
Speaker 3: got ready for the next day's work, went through, did
29:28
Speaker 3: our normal training, no excuses, and you can't go and
29:30
Speaker 3: have a sleep, let's get out. And you know, we
29:33
Speaker 3: had limited offices, so you had to do it. You
29:35
Speaker 3: couldn't sook up and say, oh, you know, too tired.
29:39
Speaker 3: You did it, and that was real life stuff. So
29:42
Speaker 3: I introduced that reality based training into the SAG in
29:46
Speaker 3: the early days. And what we did was we'd train
29:50
Speaker 3: the guys hard during the day physically and mentally, making
29:55
Speaker 3: them make decisions and so forth. And then we did
29:58
Speaker 3: it at an old ym S building in the city
30:01
Speaker 3: that's demolished now, but they gave it to us to
30:04
Speaker 3: further demolishing their training, which was a bit of fun
30:07
Speaker 3: and a bit of reality to do things there that
30:10
Speaker 3: we did. And late at night after a nice big meal,
30:14
Speaker 3: they're all happy that they ate nicely. And at the
30:16
Speaker 3: end of the day we put him to bed in
30:18
Speaker 3: these sleeping bags at the top of the roof. But
30:21
Speaker 3: we had one guy as post security, and it was
30:24
Speaker 3: a real you know, we wanted to keep it real.
30:28
Speaker 3: About ten minutes after they all got into bed, they
30:30
Speaker 3: all went off to sleep, and they all looked snubbled
30:33
Speaker 3: in their sleeping bags. And then I said to the
30:36
Speaker 3: guy and post, wake them up. We've got a seed situation.
30:39
Speaker 3: And he looked at me with deer eyes in the
30:43
Speaker 3: headlights sort of thing, and I said, wake him up.
30:47
Speaker 3: Got them all up, and keep in mind they're in
30:49
Speaker 3: a deep instant sleep and all of a sudden they're
30:53
Speaker 3: required to operate as I was on those particular occasions
30:58
Speaker 3: where I was waken up to the night we'd done repelling,
31:03
Speaker 3: and it was a certain sort of repelling. You don't
31:05
Speaker 3: have an anchor point. You use the anchor points as
31:07
Speaker 3: your buddy system. So two of you have a harness on.
31:11
Speaker 3: One would lay on the roof and the other one
31:13
Speaker 3: to jump over, and his anchor point was the guy
31:15
Speaker 3: on the roof. But there's a full croom point where
31:17
Speaker 3: there was a little nib wall and the rope would
31:19
Speaker 3: go over the nd wall and that was the pressure
31:22
Speaker 3: that was on the rope. Scary when you're first, but
31:26
Speaker 3: when the guys did it, they realized, you know, but
31:28
Speaker 3: keep in mind now they're.
31:30
Speaker 1: Tired, physically tired, mentally tired.
31:34
Speaker 3: And they got their gas masks on because I kitted
31:37
Speaker 3: them up with everything, gas masks that they'd been exposed
31:39
Speaker 3: to gas that day. When I say gas, tear gas,
31:42
Speaker 3: so that hurts, it's uncomfortable, it's annoying. Got the gas
31:46
Speaker 3: masks on, you get limited breathing helmets, ballistic vest weapons,
31:50
Speaker 3: method of entry tools, weighing you down. And they had
31:53
Speaker 3: to slide down the rope and enter a couple of
31:56
Speaker 3: flaws down which is about the fifth of the sixth floor.
31:59
Speaker 3: But if they failed, they'd go to their death sort
32:03
Speaker 3: of thing. There's a certain amount of pressure we put
32:06
Speaker 3: on them. And then it started rain. The rapes got slippery,
32:10
Speaker 3: and it was a scary situation for the untrained, but
32:13
Speaker 3: we'd try to prepare him as much as possible.
32:17
Speaker 1: One of the guys went to the.
32:19
Speaker 3: Edge of the building and just before he jumped, I
32:21
Speaker 3: put my hand on his shoulder and it was a
32:22
Speaker 3: safety thing, and I just said, you safe, mister so
32:26
Speaker 3: and so, and he looked at me, said yes, and
32:28
Speaker 3: I said you sure you're safe, and he said and
32:30
Speaker 3: then he started hesitating, And eventually we realized that he's
32:35
Speaker 3: tied his rope in his figure eight, which is on
32:37
Speaker 3: your harness and you should loop it in and not
32:40
Speaker 3: put the tail end into the figure eight first, because
32:43
Speaker 3: his next step was going to be his last step.
32:45
Speaker 3: He was going to hit the bottom of the ground
32:48
Speaker 3: and the rope was going to follow him through. So
32:50
Speaker 3: that was under stress, under pressure. We put him under
32:54
Speaker 3: so much he just failed his decision making. And that's
32:58
Speaker 3: what we used to do. And one of the instructors
33:01
Speaker 3: on my course said to me, because those really physically hard,
33:05
Speaker 3: and every Friday afternoon they took you to your limits.
33:12
Speaker 3: What he said to us after the course he said,
33:14
Speaker 3: we took you to your limit and showed you there
33:18
Speaker 3: was a beyond. So if you could do ten, twenty,
33:22
Speaker 3: thirty fifty push ups at a time, they'd demand one more.
33:27
Speaker 3: You get to them, You go right, I've got a
33:28
Speaker 3: goal fifty push ups. Do fifty push ups. Done those, sir,
33:32
Speaker 3: And then he'd say I want you to do one more,
33:35
Speaker 3: and that one more was often took ten minutes. You
33:38
Speaker 3: get halfway down, he said, hold it and you know.
33:42
Speaker 3: So it was constant physical training, but mentally we threw
33:47
Speaker 3: in a lot of mental stress as.
33:48
Speaker 2: Well, especially when a little smart ass George Hateley, had
33:51
Speaker 2: run a marathon virtually to get to the academy to
33:55
Speaker 2: show how fitty was before you even got there, how
33:57
Speaker 2: your knees these days? Mate?
33:58
Speaker 1: After all that, hadn't he replacement?
33:59
Speaker 2: Yeah? There you go.
34:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, but you don't care, You don't you know. It's
34:03
Speaker 3: all about you self esteem, your pride, your ego, and
34:08
Speaker 3: you do things. I mean, I went during the course
34:12
Speaker 3: my course, we had to do several runs and I
34:15
Speaker 3: had done some repelling and inverted and landed against the
34:18
Speaker 3: concrete wall and hit my glue really badly. And I
34:23
Speaker 3: went to the physiad and the doctors and all that
34:26
Speaker 3: try and fix it up before the Monday morning. And
34:28
Speaker 3: then the next thing, he gave me a certificate not
34:31
Speaker 3: to attend work for seven days. So I went back
34:33
Speaker 3: to work on the Monday and did this run and
34:37
Speaker 3: at the end of it, I walked out of the
34:38
Speaker 3: instruct and gave him the certificate and he just looked
34:40
Speaker 3: at it, laughed and screwed it up and through.
34:42
Speaker 1: Aye. I wasn't going to let them beat me.
34:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you certainly practice what you preach. Just on taser.
34:49
Speaker 2: You've been tased I think more than a dozen times,
34:52
Speaker 2: and it wasn't because you're an offender. I might ad
34:54
Speaker 2: you do you volunteer it?
34:55
Speaker 3: Yeah, thirteen times, I counted every month.
34:57
Speaker 2: But what's it like?
34:59
Speaker 3: Oh, excruciating pain, but funny enough. I really tested myself
35:04
Speaker 3: and and it was a good example in Las Vegas
35:07
Speaker 3: where I went for a conference and they had this
35:10
Speaker 3: new taser technology called x RA and it was a
35:14
Speaker 3: shotgun shell that fired out of a shotgun and deployed
35:17
Speaker 3: a taser technology within it via an impact round. And
35:22
Speaker 3: they asked for volunteers and I put my hand up
35:24
Speaker 3: because I'd put my hand up during the conference a
35:26
Speaker 3: lot of times. They've done a lot of medical and
35:30
Speaker 3: scientific tests on blokes that were fat, alcoholics, smoked, unfit, obeese, whatever.
35:37
Speaker 3: I'd put my hand up each time they wouldn't pick me.
35:40
Speaker 1: And I went up to him.
35:41
Speaker 3: I said, I've traveled all the way from Australia and
35:44
Speaker 3: you haven't let me play any games yet, and they
35:46
Speaker 3: said they laughed, and they said, George, you ain't smoke,
35:48
Speaker 3: you don't drink, you're fit. We want people that are
35:52
Speaker 3: you know, out in the street, potential people that might
35:56
Speaker 3: get exposed to days. We want to test that. And
35:58
Speaker 3: they tested it so much detail medically and scientifically. Anyway,
36:04
Speaker 3: I put my hand up to test the extrap and
36:08
Speaker 3: then everyone's clapping and I looked around and there's only
36:12
Speaker 3: one other blake that put his hand up out of
36:14
Speaker 3: four hundred and fifty coppers.
36:15
Speaker 1: There clever, And I thought, oo, what have I done here?
36:19
Speaker 3: So the first blake went up and on stage, they
36:22
Speaker 3: connected him up rather than shitting, because it was an
36:24
Speaker 3: impact round. It would have put a golf ball size
36:27
Speaker 3: lump on your chest if they had to hit me,
36:29
Speaker 3: and instead they connected the technology with alligator clips, which
36:33
Speaker 3: worked the same electrical exposure.
36:35
Speaker 1: On your skin clothing.
36:37
Speaker 2: The clothing, Yeah, that's none of the nipples or anything
36:40
Speaker 2: like had a bit of extra pain to it.
36:42
Speaker 1: Now I could mention, O, there is, but that was painful.
36:46
Speaker 3: So they connected him up first, and he screamed like
36:49
Speaker 3: a pig, like a stuff pig.
36:52
Speaker 1: And I thought, Jesus, you know.
36:54
Speaker 3: And even one of the girls in the office, one
36:56
Speaker 3: of the taser girls, said, George, I was feeling so
36:59
Speaker 3: sorry if you've happened to go up there.
37:01
Speaker 1: Anyway, I go up.
37:02
Speaker 3: They got this bloke on the floor, they cannect me up.
37:05
Speaker 3: They hit me with it, and it was a different
37:09
Speaker 3: sort of exposure. It was like waves of pain. It
37:12
Speaker 3: was interesting, it was different, and I didn't make a sound.
37:16
Speaker 3: And at the end of the five seconds, everyone is cheered,
37:19
Speaker 3: and they put a microphone in front of me and said,
37:23
Speaker 3: how did you feel? And I said that hurt like
37:26
Speaker 3: how I think I might have said it hurt like shit,
37:29
Speaker 3: you know. And he said, wa, didn't your squall at
37:32
Speaker 3: And I said, I didn't want to let you blakes
37:34
Speaker 3: know how much it hurt and the whole place, you know,
37:37
Speaker 3: I just come out with you. I was the type explanation.
37:41
Speaker 2: And then in a great moment of questionable parenting, you
37:44
Speaker 2: got your daughter at another conference to get tased as well.
37:47
Speaker 3: In fairness, she volunteered. She said to me, Dad, can
37:50
Speaker 3: I get exposed to taste? And I said anyway. She said,
37:54
Speaker 3: after I have a child, I want to get tased.
37:58
Speaker 3: So she volunteered. No. I got her on a course
38:00
Speaker 3: here in Melbourne forty five guys from around Australia, so
38:05
Speaker 3: st guys, tough physically tough blakes. And they all got
38:11
Speaker 3: on the course and early in the very early in
38:12
Speaker 3: the course, the first couple of hours they say, okay,
38:15
Speaker 3: we I want people to get exposed to taste. It
38:19
Speaker 3: unlike today, not allowed to not allowed to do it
38:21
Speaker 3: too scary, I said, I want a volunteer. My daughter
38:24
Speaker 3: put her hand up first, and everyone's looking, and my
38:27
Speaker 3: daughter's quite an attractive girl. She fed long blonde hair
38:31
Speaker 3: in a pony tail, and half the blakes were looking
38:34
Speaker 3: at her. And I was lining up a few blakes
38:36
Speaker 3: to warn them, and one in particular came up and
38:38
Speaker 3: he said she married, and I said, yeah, and stay away.
38:42
Speaker 3: She volunteers and hearts. The two Americans I had out
38:47
Speaker 3: instructors master instructors said George, you're sure about this, and
38:51
Speaker 3: I said, yeah, she wants it.
38:53
Speaker 1: They go, are We're going to shoot her? And I said, no, wait,
38:55
Speaker 1: you shoot her.
38:56
Speaker 3: So they lined her up and had a person either
38:59
Speaker 3: side of her to help her down on the mats,
39:03
Speaker 3: as was the practice, rather than let someone for because
39:05
Speaker 3: they can hurt themselves and that's the byproduct of tasing
39:09
Speaker 3: someone sometimes. Anyway, they exposed the five seconds, laid it down.
39:14
Speaker 3: She sprung up on her feet, turned around and without
39:17
Speaker 3: making a sound during the whole five seconds, turned around
39:21
Speaker 3: and said, not as painful as childbirth, and the forty
39:24
Speaker 3: five blakes all just dropped their chins, and you know,
39:27
Speaker 3: every one of them got tased, and every one of
39:29
Speaker 3: them screened, and they're all embarrassed.
39:31
Speaker 2: And you've gone, that's my daughter.
39:32
Speaker 1: That was funny.
39:33
Speaker 2: Now the threats keep coming. The officers are well equipped.
39:38
Speaker 2: We see new variants of non lethal options like bean
39:42
Speaker 2: bags and we've got taser. What's the future is it
39:44
Speaker 2: better decision making, better training, or bigger guns and more
39:49
Speaker 2: sophisticated non lethal options.
39:51
Speaker 3: A mixture better training. I can't emphasize enough. Train, train, train,
39:56
Speaker 3: with anything and everything. Whatever you've got better alternatives in
39:59
Speaker 3: the future. There's someone in the pipeline. But in fairness
40:03
Speaker 3: to police agency's and what room there is on belts,
40:07
Speaker 3: it's limited what they can introduce, and they've got what
40:10
Speaker 3: they've got.
40:11
Speaker 1: They just had to work with what they've got.
40:13
Speaker 3: I mean, I started off from the police force with
40:15
Speaker 3: a branding thirty two caliber pistol which would just bounce
40:19
Speaker 3: off a crook with a leather jacket on. And we
40:23
Speaker 3: had a little lead filled baton that we used to
40:27
Speaker 3: put in our pocket with a secret pocket inside the
40:29
Speaker 3: pocket that you kept this baton that never used it.
40:32
Speaker 1: You'd be embarrassed if you pulled it out.
40:34
Speaker 3: And that was it. We had to use our fists
40:37
Speaker 3: in those days, which wasn't a lot of fun going
40:41
Speaker 3: to the George Hotel and Sint Kilda, which was an
40:44
Speaker 3: interesting exercise every time we used to go in with
40:47
Speaker 3: the Heber coppers and police dogs and all come out
40:49
Speaker 3: with bruises and scratches.
40:51
Speaker 1: It's funny that kind of an.
40:53
Speaker 2: Og kind of way. Anyway, Thanks for you, Tom George.
40:56
Speaker 2: It's a fascinating topic and I think it's tremendous that
40:58
Speaker 2: the state police forces and the FEDS, I guess, are
41:01
Speaker 2: looking at officer safety because we've got a hugely high
41:04
Speaker 2: level of assaults on lease, many more life threatening situations.
41:07
Speaker 2: It's very dangerous out there and they need to be equipped,
41:10
Speaker 2: but also they need to be trained very well. If
41:13
Speaker 2: you've got stories for us, please get in touch. You
41:17
Speaker 2: can send me an email Adam Shand writer at Gmail.
41:19
Speaker 2: Maybe you've been tased, maybe you've been person who's operated
41:23
Speaker 2: to taste. I love to hear from you. This has
41:25
Speaker 2: been real crime with Adam Shanded. I'm your host, Adam Shanded,
41:28
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