Legal columnist HUGH SELBY shares a “cautionary” tale of community policing and some of life’s choices…

He was a country police officer through and through. He’d been a blacksmith before joining up, followed by an inner-city first posting. Couldn’t get out of there quick enough. That was a long time ago.

Newly minted constables would be sent out to spend some time with him, to experience what it was like to belong to a community, to be an essential part of its glue.

Why, it was less than a year ago when Jamie, a new arrival, fresh out of training and with a degree in criminology no less, had talked about restorative justice and diversionary programs.

He’d listened attentively enough, though his mind was on whether his waders would last another season of fly fishing in the creeks that came down from the hills.

Fact was he’d been people-focused in how the law worked in their town for more than 25 years. When 15-year-old Zac did much the same as his dad had done in his late teens, it was a conference with the family and the owner of the borrowed equipment that came up with the solution that everyone accepted.

Their town was one of the best “Tidy Towns” in the state, and one of the cheapest to run, because the community embraced inclusion, giving back, learning responsibility and responding to delinquent acts with various versions of “You made a mess, so you’ll clean up a bigger one to cover the trouble you have caused”. 

When he heard that someone had a black eye, or unexpected bruises and scratches, he’d make a house call, timing it so that they’d all be home. He had several ways of explaining that riling each other up to the point of lashing out was not acceptable, that if they didn’t sort it then really unpleasant things would follow, things that were outside of his and their control. He’d encourage then to make an appointment to see Emma who had the gift when it came to empowering her clients with anger management issues.

Emma’s place was on the bus route, which made it easy for all those involved to get there and back. She, as it happened, was his daughter who’d made it all the way to a professional qualification. That made him and the missus so proud.

He was glad that there was no courthouse. The nearest working one was a way aways, with a couple of sitting days each month. Courthouses meant visiting magistrates and troublesome lawyers yearning to show how good they were at the expense of his people.

He and Jamie had gone to court a few months back to give evidence in Tyrone’s latest criminal case. Poor Tyrone, one of those for whom the light had never come on and probably never would. He wasn’t evil, not even bad, but doomed to forever be in court lists between his short stays in jail.

Tyrone’s family lived in his town and they had done for longer than anyone could remember. They’d started the local garage and in the office there were some sepia photos of cars with the spare tyre on the side, and trucks with timber flatbeds getting fuel from the old bowsers when Ampol was the Australian Motorists Petrol Company. After a few generations they still ran a good business.

Tyrone had an accident about the time he started high school. Nobody was sure whether that was the cause or result of his problems. He’d go missing from home and school for days at a time, getting by on petty thievery. By his late teens he was a smiling supplier of drugs around the area, always a bottom feeder. He never showed any signs of dependence, nor did he drink to excess. He was, quite simply, anyone’s patsy, with the simplest MO.

The visiting magistrate knew both him and Tyrone. At morning tea a few years back the talk had turned to local fishing. He’d taken the beak up the creeks one weekend. Much to his surprise this interloping lawyer could cast expertly and had a nice collection of flies in a box that, he explained, came from his father.

They’d celebrated by asking the cook at the local pub to grill the catch to which they added a few yabbies lured out of a dam.

That last court day with Tyrone (he’d be released soon) the police prosecutor had called him, taken him through his statement, and sat down. During all of that he’d looked at the prosecutor, at the magistrate, at Constable Jamie (who was there to watch) and at Tyrone who was sitting impassively behind his Legal Aid lawyer. 

He’d not seen her before, this youthful mix of confidence, anxiety, aggression and belief in the majesty of the law, packaged in city clothing and standing at 160 centimetres tops.

She asked if he’d cautioned the defendant when arresting him.

He picked up the glass of water, took a sip or two, looked directly at her and said: “Well enough.”

Emboldened she pressed on: “That’s not for you to say. Did you, or did you not administer the formal caution to the defendant?”

“Well, if you put it that way, I’d have to say, being sworn to tell the truth, that after a fashion I did, yes, I did”.

Exasperated, the next question, intended to be a gotcha moment, fairly shot across the space between the lawyers’ table and the witness box: “Tell this court word for word what you said to my client.”

There was a pregnant silence. Tyrone looked at the floor. The prosecutor put his hands behind his back and looked at the ceiling. The magistrate’s lips parted in the barest hint of a smile.

“Well, Tyrone, with all your previous for this offence, I reckon you know the words and meaning of the caution as well as I do. What do you say?”