BOAR THE EIGHTH
by The Boar
Gidday everyone.
Firstly I'll answer the few questions asked and then fire into another war story.
Rusjel - Yes mate, the cops must tell you they are invoking powers. They must tell you their name, where they are from and that they intend on invoking a power (search etc) and that if you fail to comply you might be committing an offence. As for attending the station as a volunteer, of course you can refuse. They will probably then arrest you so the argument is moot, but yes you can't be forced to volunteer.
Spottedquoll? Are you sure you're not planning something?
Good police work takes many forms. Convincing those mates of your hypothetical idiot crook who have been present for all his bragging that they should tell the cops is good police work in itself. Gloves? Face masks? Fuck me you might bear a bit of watching my friend! Don't believe everything you see on CSI Miami (my personal favourite, that red head bloke shoots shit out of everyone and the chicks are all sensational!). There are many ways to process scenes and gloves and face masks don't always protect you from leaving trace.
Speedbandit? How do I think we should stop road trauma? What the fuck? How can I answer that? The only sure way is to stop everyone driving and riding and make everyone walk! Seriously that's a question that many men and women much smarter than me have been trying to solve for many years. I do agree that there is inconsistency (read stupidity) with points loss for minor speeds compared to major offences which cause collisions. I suppose there has to be some punishment for that 6 k's over, and your idea of a fine only sounds fair.
Overall I truly think that the causal factors for road trauma are so wide and varied, with responsibility falling to so many different organisations and people that solving it know is almost impossible without an entirely different philosophy being employed.
What do I mean? Okay, is it the fault of the young driver/rider who gets little or no training before being unleashed on the roads? Is it the fault of the old fart that still needs their licence but has caused more accidents than icebergs? Is it the fault of the middle aged rider/driver who thinks they have more ability than they actually do? Who is to blame for the increase in population which leads ultimately to the overcrowding of our roads? Is it the fault of the government who can't upkeep infrastructure such as roads to an appropriate standard with these population increases when our forefathers could, or would, not foresee the degree of growth that has occurred across the country? Is it the manufacturer who builds vehicles and motorcycles that do three times the national limit?
Or is it the problem that when you mix all these factors tragedy could prevail. Young Billy thinks he is hot shit in his new ute out driving. He comes up on old Pa who is pottering around at 10ks under the speed limit making everyone impatient. Young Billy does the big overtake move when he shouldn't, straight at middle aged Mal who has just come back to biking and riding a bit hard. All three are going to meet at the one place at the one time and because the road has no run off (or even worse those stupid fucken wire ropes) we end up with a dead heat, literally.
Shit Speedbandit, I could go on about this for hours and you know what, I'd still be no closer to an answer. No, you're not a menace with that many lower speed fines over that amount of time. But unfortunately the powers to be (the Government) define penalty. Lobby your local dickhead, sorry MP, and see how you go. I for one would support a more realistic approach to the points system. (But I can see it being harder to solve than the mystery of why the universe exists.) Overall I think for the road trauma issue we have to start with much better training, realistic testing and (gasp) restrictions on what younger drivers (and drivers/riders out of the game for a lengthy period) can ride/drive. I would also look at regular testing of drivers/riders who are involved in collisions. This is all pie in the sky stuff though. Who is going to pay for it? Who decides the standards? Fuck me, I don't know. I just hold my breath every time my kids go out in their cars until they get home safely. I've knocked on way too many doors to tell people their loved ones are dead.
Okay, for those of you who wanted a war story, he's one of my adventures in the tactical teams.
This is the fifth time we have had to do this shit. "This shit" is a suicide intervention on an attention-seeking arsehole. In my experience if someone is really serious about offing themselves then they won't ring the police, ambulance and fire brigade and won't do a few hundred superficial cuts up and down their arms. Sure, I agree that this bloke had BIG issues, but suicide, nahhh, he just liked the attention.
Now the 'organisation' I worked for was very clear about this type of 'high risk' stuff. It's all about containing the incident and negotiating it. I had many, many years doing this crap right back to the original days of the Tactical Response Group. Organisationally, we didn't always have the philosophy of 'contain and negotiate'. It originally started as sneak up on them, overwhelm them with massive manpower and firepower and bash them so they would never do it again. (Just joking about the bashing part (?)). I might add that a number of fatalities and shootings that were a bit 'grey' resulted in an entire change of policy, hence our approach that night.
Now this bloke doing the bit of attention seeking (I can't remember his name but we'll call him Bob for the sake of the yarn), as I previously stated, had at least five sieges where he was threatening suicide with cutting edge weapons (read "fucken big knives"). Trouble is, if he was armed with a butter knife then the response was just the same. A big travelling circus arrived with a command element, tactical police, negotiators, perimeter police (general duties and highway patrol), specially trained ambos and, if intelligence suggested the threat of an angrily lit match, the fire brigade.
As you can imagine it's a resource intensive, long-winded, time consuming, expensive and inconvenient (to both members of the public and police) way of dealing with a brain dead drama queen. At the risk of sounding pass? in the old days a truck crew would have turned up, kicked the door in, kicked his arse and dragged him off to the psychiatric centre where he clearly needed to reside.
Anyway, back to the night in question.
I was on the second team to be called out. That means for at least eight hours the boys had been in the field at a high level of alert, putting up with this dickhead's histrionics, running from room to room, screaming and threatening the cops with knives, albeit from a distance.
Now eight hours might not sound like a long time to put up with this shit, but those guys in the field are wearing a shitload of gear and it's exhausting. Even in those days the amount of gear you wore was staggering. Now I am sure you've all seen SWAT teams running around on the nightly news and in popular cinema. So what did we (used) to wear? Working from the inside out -- choice of G string was entirely personal (joke), fire retardant t shirt, nomex fire retardant overalls, kneepads, bullet resistant vest with ceramic plates front and rear (never can trust your mate you know!), tactical over vest carrying all assortments of bullets, distraction devices (grenades), knife, rope, rappelling carabineer, gloves, first aid kit, snack bars, door chocks, 100 mph tape (everyone in world has a use for that shit, not just bikers), flexicuffs and other assorted shit. Around your waist you would wear tactical belt order (the low slung holster) with your issue Glock pistol and front mounted light fitted. On the other thigh a pad containing spare magazines for your primary weapon, OC spray and maybe a multi-tool or similar. On your head you'd have a ballistic helmet, goggles and balaclava. Top that with your primary weapon (choice of shotgun, M16, H&K depending on the job) and you can see we where definitely fighting in the super heavyweight division. Frankly, at times I thought if I fell over I'd be like a giant fucking bug and would never be able to stand unaided again. It gets worse these days I'm told with Taser and other fun toys they've managed to acquire.
Of course there's little need to have submachine guns and such when your dealing with knives so we tended to strip a little bit of gear off, however there were other toys that you used. In those days, and I stress that because now they will just Tase the shit out of you or arc you up with OC magnum (that's a fire extinguisher sized bottle of OC spray that fires under pressure for a long, long way).
However then the plan of actually getting hands on with dickheads like Bob involved a formation with two shield men at the front who would charge in and smash the crap out of you, a legs man who only job was to take your legs out with a good old footy tackle, a handcuff man (obvious duties there) and finally a knife man who would wear large chain metal gauntlets. That blokes job was to grab the knife. Yep, grab the knife with your hands, break the blade or whatever but just get control of the weapon. To say it was a disconcerting feeling grabbing knives with these gauntlets on is an understatement. However you got use to trusting the kit. You might also notice that with that many blokes, wearing all that shit on them 'crowded' was the approach wherever we went, particularly inside homes.
Now Bob lived in a small Department of Housing place. He shared it with some other bloke (no doubt long suffering from coming home every so often and finding the joint surrounded by cops with ferociously bad attitudes and guns).
By the time I got there on the second shift it was pretty clear that negotiation was a giant fucking of waste of time. Over all the years I was with the 'teams' you could generally tell within the first 30 minutes how the job was going to end. Dear old Bob was in for the long haul. He had more noises in his head than I could care to imagine and was trying to goad the boys into the 'suicide by cop' shit that a lot of these boofheads go on with. They haven't got the balls to do it themselves so put some poor schmuck cop in a position where he has to top them.
Anyway, it was decided to try and grab this fool next time he came out on the veranda doing his best Crocodile Dundee impersonation with a FGB (fucking great big) bowie knife.
Now you'll recall what we wear at these jobs so being fleet of foot was purely imaginary. In fact if you got into a good run momentum would be such that you could not stop. So the few attempts were comically at best and unsuccessful at worst. On the last attempt to grab him Bob decided that this wasn't as much fun as he remembered and disappeared. He had not disappeared as such, just no doubt pissed off up into the roof cavity but with our company philosophy we couldn't just charge in.
So for the next thirty minutes we tried a number of varying 'techniques' to draw him out. We couldn't use gas because did I mention that old Bob was OC resistant. There are not many who can put up with a face full of that shit. He was one and it made it hard to deal with. So to try and entice the fucker out we started smashing his windows, all of them. After that we breached his front and back door, took the dam things not only off their hinges but took out the entire door jams as well! (I'm sure the flat mate at this stage whilst standing at perimeter watching was making plans to relocate his place of abode).
Eventually the order was given to form up an entry team and go in and find this nuisance and explain to him the error of his ways.
I was Mister Lucky, I got to wear the chain mail gauntlets.
I should explain that the Boar is not built for speed. He is built to fight you in a phone box. I don't chase. I get the young blokes to deal with that running business. Just bring them back to me and I'll deal with it then. So overall the selection of the Boar as the knife man was based on years of doing that type of shit and with a shocking attitude to match.
We made the entry and moved deliberately through the house, clearing each room and cupboard as we went. It's a bit like hide and seek although when you get found the game changes a touch.
After clearing the house we all sort of looked upwards at the man hole and the accompanying dirty foot prints and toes marks that were clearly evidence on the hall walls. Old Bob was only wearing a pair of stubby shorts and was full of piss, vinegar, madness, covered with blood from the myriad of cuts on his arms and body and sweating like a rapist. At least that's how he looked when we last saw him so there was no reason to believe there would be any change at all when we found the fucker in the roof. I did note with interest as I was preparing to climb up that ladder there was plenty, and I mean plenty, of knives lying around the joint. I'm guessing he was suitably armed in the roof.
Getting through a man hole is normally a feat of some discipline, let's not even consider what it's like when you're trying to get through wearing all that shit that we had on. I went up the ladder first. I don't know why. I'm pushy, I suppose.
The pucker factor (on your sphincter that is) when putting your head into that man hole is about Richter 10 I can tell you. You are totally exposed and without assistance. Anyway I stuck my noggin up there and called out to dear old Bob to surrender before I came up there and kicked his arse. Not surprisingly old Bob decided to maintain his right of silence at that stage.
I managed to progress the upper part of my body into the roof. There was a water heater in the roof which blocked a large portion of my vision so using mirrors was pointless. As expected there was no light and the roof was also filled with that grey grungy shit the government sprays into housing commission home roofs to try and act as insulation. The environment, my friends, was fucked.
As I got the upper part of my body into the roof (my Glock was still below the roof level) old Bob came at me from behind the water heater with the speed of a thousand startled gazelles. However there was no more self harm on the agenda, he was going to bag himself a big fat cop and lunged with his knife (which looked about the size of a machete) straight at my throat. I actually remember his eyes, I could see them and I immediately thought "this fucker ain't kidding". (By the way the knife wasn't as big as I first though it was but I didn't realise until later.)
I still don't know how he missed, he had me cold. I managed to parry the thrust with my arm and then just lifted my arms up and slipped back down the ladder.
Now to say I was unhappy about the turn of events would be an understatement in line with saying George Bush Jnr is a 'little bit mad'. I was fucking enraged. So I might add was everyone else because if we had been permitted to do the assault earlier we wouldn't be dealing with this fuckwit in the roof.
I politely requested a long baton and climbed back up the ladder. This bloke was going to get my best Don Bradman between the eyes if he came back trying to shiv this fat old boar.
I managed to get into the roof without being attacked, as did two more of the team. Bob had pushed himself back into the corner of the roof and had now gone back into the 'stay away or I'll kill myself' mode. He had reversed the knife out in front of him with both hands holding the handle and the blade pointing towards his guts. He had started huffing and puffing working himself up to taking that big inward plunge and turning himself into a kebab.
The boys with me had him lit up with the lights on their Glocks so if he started this attacking bullshit he was already blinded by very bright light in addition to being totally covered with lots of lead.
I am not a negotiator. Let me make this quite clear. I have little patience for this type of shit and don't feel like copping gobfuls off some fuckwit in a roof. I admire those cops that do negotiate, however I don't.
But, on this occasion I tried. I started to talking to him because I had backed myself. I thought if I could get over the beams, just get that little bit closer, then I could jump him, grab the knife and go home without having to have killed anyone or watch them kill themselves.
So I started talking to him and edging closer. When he could sense movement he would start whipping up again. Start huffing and puffing, tensing his arms in preparation to drive the knife into his own gut.
Don't stay serious here, they was still a chance for a one liner. As I was edging closer Bob sensed the movement.
"Stay away from me cunt, I'll do it, I tell you I fucking will."
Attempting to be clever and use a subterfuge I replied, "Give me a go mate, there's not much room up in here and I'm getting cramps."
A smart arse voice from behind one of the Glock lights then added,
"Yeh mate, look at the size of the fat cunt, let him move a bit. If he gets a cramp we'll never get him out of here."
Everyone in the roof (numbering quite a few at this stage) including old Bob laughed.
Negotiation continued but breathing was getting harder so I suggested the boys tip a few tiles off to let in a bit of air. About eight square metres of roof tiles disappeared into the night. (Don't forget the flat mate who was at this stage no doubt on his mobile trying to see if the Department of Housing had an after hours number!)
Finally I got myself close enough. I think Bob sensed it too because his breathing and body posture changed. He finally had the balls and I had no doubt he was going to do it.
I pounced.
Now I'd like to tell you I sprung like a panther, sleek and feline springing through air with deadly accuracy and speed.
In reality I'm sure I looked and reacted like a rhino trying to dry root a basketball.
I banged my shins on the beams, hit my head on the rafters and generally bumbled my way at him. What I did manage to do was grab the blade of the knife.
Bob decided then he had one my chance to score himself some bacon so turned the knife towards me and pushed it towards my throat. The other boys were trying to get in the crawl space to help me but there was little room. Bob was now covered with sweat, blood and that grey grungy shit. I couldn't hold him and didn't know how long I could control the knife. The boys couldn't take the shot so I decided this was going to stop right now. I unleashed one of the best straight rights I have ever thrown. I followed that up with about four more in quick succession. With chain mail gloves on the impression was branded into my knuckles for weeks and Bobs face for some time longer I'd expect.
At this stage at least one of the other team members managed to get in. Bob was struggling like a bastard, we were slipping and sliding off him.
The next thing the roof below us gave way. The gyprock did anyway.
So there the three of us were, hanging off the beams, me still punching Bob at every chance I could get. A piece of gyprock about three metres square with all that grey gungy shit fell from the roof right onto the flat mates bed and stereo system. Shortly after, so did we.
Bob got handcuffed and dragged out. Check over by the ambos and carted off to the rat house. I went off to get my shins stitched and my knuckles treated.
Funnily enough about two days later I got a phone call from Bob. He rang to apologise. I was flabbergasted. We had destroyed his home, belted shit out of him during the arrest (lawfully) and dragged him off to the psych centre. Yet he still rang to say sorry (in his own way that is).
Anyway, from that day forth we never had another siege with Bob. Thank fuck.
