Police Life: The Experts podcast - Season 3 Episode 1: The only cop in town - transcript

When you're the only police officer in the place you call home, you need a full bag of skills, training and experience. And, like leading senior constables Lisa Lorenz and George Crawford, a fair bit of personality.

Listen to this episode and other episodes of Victoria Police's official podcast, Police Life: The Experts.

Transcript of Police Life: The Experts podcast, Season 3 Episode 1: The only cop in town

Voiceover: You’re listening to Police Life: The Experts, a Victoria Police podcast shining a light on our people and their extraordinary skills.

Voiceover: The general duties police officer must be versatile. A jack of all trades. The Swiss Army knife of Victoria Police. Each one carries the skills, training and equipment for every situation they will encounter when keeping the Victorian community safe.

[Lively music and sounds of sirens and police actively responding to an incident.]

Voiceover: At the Victoria Police Academy, they learn to follow orders and work within a command structure and hierarchy. As a group, the recruits will undergo reality-based training, and classroom lectures to meet the requirements of the role. This includes firearms training, interviewing suspects and witnesses, handling family violence matters, emergency driving, human rights and even how to take notes. However, on the job, they will also be expected to think and act as individuals when circumstances dictate…  

[Lively music fades into peaceful, country street sounds and music.]

Voiceover: Like when you’re the only cop in town.

Across Victoria, there are more than 300 police stations. Almost 100 of these are single-member stations, where lone police officers are dedicated to serving the small country towns they call home.

Working by themselves means they need to call on their full bag of skills, training and experience. They also need to have a fair bit of personality.

Leading Senior Constable Lisa Lorenz: Hi, my name's Lisa Lorenz. I'm a leading senior constable of police and the officer in charge of the Tangambalanga Police Station.

Tangambalanga? I love it. A little lesson on pronunciation. So ‘tan’ like a suntan, ‘gamble’ like the pokies, ‘anger’ – what I'd be if my husband took up gambling. Tangambalanga. I love it!

Oh my god, how many pronunciations have I said? If when you're coming up on the radio and something's happening and you've got, you know, you've got a witness flagging you down and you've got this job that you're dealing with. And you're trying to remember the number plate and all of a sudden, ‘Tangambabanga, me, I've got information.’

You can't say it yourself. It's a mouthful.

Voiceover: If you find the name Tangambalanga difficult to say, don’t worry, because the locals often just call it Tangam. It’s a town in Victoria’s north east, just 20 kilometres from Wodonga. And Lisa has been the local cop there for the past eight years.  

Leading Senior Constable George Crawford: Yep, I'm glad it's her saying it on the radio, not me. And if she's stuffing up none of us have any hope.

Voiceover: Two-and-a-half-hours’ drive south east of Lisa in Tangam is another small country town, Jamieson, where Leading Senior Constable George Crawford is the lone police officer.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: As soon as I started these duties, I knew I was in the right place. I was meeting like-minded people who cared about the community, wanted to improve it for others.

This community has a uniqueness to it that I've never seen in other areas. And I'm biased to it, I get it, I know it. And because of the community, I know I've got their support. We get things done. You know, even if we don't have the right resources at the time, if there's a big search, everyone drops what they're doing and helps out. And the compassion through this community is amazing. And I have seen great compassion throughout other communities, but this one's pretty unique as well.

Voiceover: Jamieson sits at the joining of the Jamieson and Goulburn rivers in the heart of Victoria’s picturesque High Country. It’s close to Lake Eildon and the state’s best ski slopes. The town has a population of around 300 people and attracts tourists interested in all things outdoors. Rarely has a police officer been so suited to the community they patrol.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Some of my hobbies outside of say, employment leading into VicPol were like a bit of four-wheel driving, hiking, a little bit of hunting, those kinds of things, which all kind of led themselves to this environment in particular.

One of my passions is kayaking. I love kayaking. I'm not the best kayaker, but I enjoy getting out there. So during summer, before shift, if I've got time, I'll drive up the road, I'll put my kayak in and I’ll paddle down and then I go to work. So the fact that I can paddle to work, loosely speaking, is a great way to start the day, you know, a bit of exercise.

Voiceover: George started at Victoria Police in 2010 and Lisa in 2000.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: So I was a personal assistant to one of the managers at Telstra at the time. And I'd come home from work and the news was on, the six o'clock news, and there was an old man who had been beaten up, very severely beaten up, and the crooks had taken 50 cents from him.

So he'd been beaten up for his money and he only had 50 cents. And that left a really lasting impression on me. I knew I couldn't, you know, solve world peace. But I looked at it and thought, ‘Well, why can't I have something to do with this to stop this from happening?’

And that's what I've done ever since and I love it. It's not that I get to stop, you know, one person from getting beaten up, but to play a part in the big picture, to prevent road crashes from happening. To be able to put a human face to what is happening, and to be able to show empathy to somebody when they are a victim, and to able to contribute to catching those offenders, and holding them accountable in court, that's a big deal.

Voiceover: Both George and Lisa cut their policing teeth doing general duties policing in Melbourne for several years before moving out to larger country police stations. But for Lisa, Tangambalanga wasn’t her first single-member station.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: So I was working at Hamilton. I was there for three and a half years. I did a lot of upgrading as a sergeant over there thinking that was the path I wanted to take. And there were other single-member stations around the area with some great members that were working there and I saw what they did and how they did it and, you know, even had to call them out to do some jobs at times, and decided that actually, I think I'd like to give that a go.

So I moved from Hamilton to Harrow, which is halfway between Horsham and Hamilton, and I worked there for three and a half years, and loved it. Harrow is a great little community. There's 90 people in, well at that time, there were 90 people in Harrow proper, and about 300 people in my response zone, which, geographically, it was huge.

Yeah, you'd think nothing of doing 400ks a day, every day. Like, it was just, it was part and parcel of working in that community.

I do remember coming home from work one day and my husband was a teacher and we had two young kids, both at primary school at the time, and one of them had grown out of their shoes overnight, as kids do. And my husband had had to take them for a drive over to Naracoorte, which is in South Australia, and he chose Naracoorte because of the half an hour time difference.The shops were open for an extra half an hour over there.

So he's gone over there, bought the kids some shoes and he's come back and we've had a chat about whatever was happening. And, um, you're going to want, want to get out the beeper here. And he said to me, ‘Well, what do you want Lisa? We live at the back of bum [BEEP] nowhere.’

And I went, ‘Oh my god, maybe I'm liking this position, this remote community, a whole lot more than my husband and my family are.’

So we had a look at what came up in the Gazette and Tangambalanga came up, which is about 600 kilometres from Harrow in the north east of the state, right near Albury/Wodonga, which has a Myer and all the shoes that the children could possibly need. So we put in for and I got the position and we moved over here. And now I've been here for eight years. I can't believe it's gone so quick.

It's such a great community. And I do think about where the community was when I first came out here. So eight years ago, and we've got three new residential estates and an industrial estate that just simply did not exist before, before I came out here. Not because I've had anything to do with it. That's just, you know, time - I didn't create these estates. That really sounded like, like I created them by simply moving out here. No, no, that's not the case. They were happening whether I moved out or not. But, it's a great community and it's obviously a community that, that does need police here.

[Sounds of magpies warbling and birds chirping]

Voiceover: In every small community, there are always certain people and roles that make the town tick – the general store owner, the president of the footy club, the publican, the owner of the post office… and the local cop.

And being the person charged with keeping the town safe, first impressions were important for Lisa and George. They needed to create strong connections with the other movers and shakers.

[Driving and walking noise plays as Lisa patrols the streets]

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: Let’s go to the pub, hey?

Producer: Let’s.

[Sounds of laughter, footsteps and door opening as Lisa enters the pub]

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: How you going?

Kirsten (pub staff member): Helloooo officer Lisa!

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: How are you, Kirsten?

Kirsten: Oh, fine and dandy for a Sunday sesh, darl.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: Have you got many booked in?

Kirsten: No one’s booked in, no. They just show up and surprise me.

Pub patron: Is it a surprise when we show up though, or not?

Kirsten: No, not really, not really.

Voiceover: Anthony Keck has been the owner of the Union Hotel in Tangambalanga since early 2020. He recalls the first time he met Lisa.

Anthony Keck: Actually, you were on holidays for a week or something and I put a sign on the door – I don’t know whether you remember – just to say that I had called to say hello.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: Oh, yes.

Anthony: But this is when the fires were on, so you guys weren’t, the station wasn’t manned. This is like January 2020. I remember I put a note on the door then we caught up a few weeks later. Yeah, so I was certainly keen to catch up with her and it was important that we have a relationship, you know. Pubs are a pretty important place in a little community, I reckon. Yeah, especially a little community like this.

I met you and I thought you were pretty straight up. I had heard a bit of, a few comments that you were pretty strict. But you were pretty new to town then, and you know, it evolves as it goes and I think it’s a pretty good relationship now. Everyone’s, you know, on the same page. So it’s good, it’s really good yeah, yeah.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: I like to think that's how I operate – firm but fair. I know that when you spoke to Anthony earlier, he mentioned that I'm strict. I like to think that the same rules apply to everyone.

There are certain things that I am incredibly strict on. There is no barleys for drink and drug affected driving. There is no story you can give me that will make that OK.

Voiceover: Introducing herself to the town meant letting people know they could speak to her about anything and getting to know their priorities. She also wanted to let them know where her line in the sand was.

[Soft drum music plays behind audio.]

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: So I'm here, I'm a police officer and I have a job to do, but I'm also a human being. I've got a husband and I've got children. I have pets, I cook, I clean, I go for runs, and I won't tolerate drink driving under any circumstances. So it's getting that information to them in, in a way that they don't feel that they're being put under the thumb or anything, but I'm not going to tolerate drink driving. So I'll just keep testing everybody. And if everybody comes up that they're not drink driving, well, that's my job done. But I continue to do that, to do those tests.

So Victoria Police have this ‘two-up’ policy and they prefer us to do things like breath test sites two-up. So if I'm doing a breath test site with another member or the Highway Patrol and my husband comes through, they'll, you know, sometimes police officers will go, ‘Oh, well that's your husband, you know, we'll let them go’. And I say, ‘No. No, I want him to be tested’.

Aside from the fact that I would be so incredibly disappointed and actually genuinely surprised if my husband had been drinking, the public need to know that he's not exempt from that. My husband would never drink drive, but they need to see that as well. So I want him to be tested. They need to know that I won't drink drive, my husband won't drink drive, and I won't tolerate it from them either.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Reducing fatalities on the road is one of our main goals in Victoria Police, and so I try and take that on board and chip away and do my bit for that. We've got a lot of hundred K zones in our area. I have been to more than my fair share of fatalities. Quite a few of them I've known quite well.

So I don't want to have to go to those things. So I'm out there doing speed detection, trying to keep people driving appropriately to their conditions. A big one for me is breath tests. I try and do a lot of very random breath tests that they're not expecting. It's very hard in a small community to do that.

I'll be out on a dirt road, four-wheel-drive track, I don't care where I am, I'll stop people and I'll, I'll breath test them any time of the day. If that's going to make a safer place for other four-wheel drivers, other community members, farmers, that's important to me.

[Sounds of a person moving around in a car and car keys jingling]

[Recording of Ldg Sen Const Crawford talking to another person]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Just going to have a quick chat to this driver.

[Sound of car turning off and door opens]

[Recording of Ldg Sen Const Crawford interacting with a driver]

[Sound of cars driving past in the background]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: How ya going today?

Citizen: Good.

[Sounds of car handbreak and doors opening and closing and engine running]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Where you been? At Running Creek?

Citizen: Yeah.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: No worries, I’ll just do a quick breath test.

Citizen: Yeah. Don’t drink but you’re welcome to.

[Sounds of breath test straw being unwrapped]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: How long you out there for?

Citizen: Until the 24th.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Oh nice, you’ve got a good set of time, another 10 days.

Citizen: Yeah.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Beautiful. Are you off over one of the river crossings or on this side?

Citizen: On that far side.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Far side, yeah beautiful, nice spot.

Citizen: Come out here all the time.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yeah, you definitely have a good stint out here, that’s for sure.

Citizen: Yes.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: As I observed you driving a motor vehicle, I now require you to undergo a breath test on this device. And is the car behind with you or someone else?

Citizen: Nah.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: No worries. One continual long breath. Fantastic. I think the dog wants to get in on it.

[Sound of breath test machine running]

Citizen: Yeah. (Laughs)

[Car door opens and closes]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Thanks for that. Have a good day.

Citizen: I will. Thank you.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Catchya.

[Recording of Ldg Sen Const Crawford interacting with a driver]

[Sounds of cars driving past and breath test straw being unwrapped]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: How ya goin?

Citizen: Yeah good, yourself?

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yeah good, yourself?

Citizen: Yeah.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: What’s news for the day?

Citizen: Dunno. Just out for a cruise.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yep. Where’s home for you?

Citizen: Oh Mansfield.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Mansfield. Yeah I thought I recognised the car or something, yeah.

Citizen: Yeah I was in Sheepyard.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yeah lovely.

Citizen: Coming past.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: One continual long breath. Fantastic. What was the track like between Sheepyard and here like?

[Sound of breath test machine running]

Citizen: Well one little bit was a little bit rough.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yep.

Citizen: Took me three goes, you know, just had to find the right...

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Right angle and get a bit of momentum. Awesome. Fantastic. Have a great day. Seeya.

Voiceover: Not long after breath testing two drivers on a dirt track, George drives through a remote bush campground on the banks of the Howqua River. Patrolling in this environment demands a police car capable of four-wheel-driving, especially when the track goes through the river.

[Sounds of four-wheel-drive driving through water and rough terrain]

[Upbeat drum music plays mixed with the sounds of four-wheel-driving]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: We’re just going over to a couple of different campsites. This is where I love sending a photo to friends who work in Melbourne to say, ‘Where have you got your div van today?’. This is a few different campsites here. I had a drowning here a couple of years ago, so it’s good to make a presence known.

[Recording of Ldg Sen Const Crawford interacting with children]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Where’s your helmet? Have you got one? Hey that looks like fun. Who’s the best at that? Yeah, show me what you can do on that thing.

(Inaudible sounds of children speaking)

You’ve got your own, do you?

(Sound of police radio)

Whoa! You wouldn’t want me trying that, I’d fall on my head. Oh yeah, it’s a bit tricky.

Child: …and I landed on my head.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Ooh, no, you don’t need that. That’s where a helmet is going to help, too. So make sure you wear your helmet when you’re riding around. Thanks, buddy.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: So talking about making things safer, if you look at my daily duties, it's all chipping away at the different angles of how to make the community a bit safer.

But my initial goal was to identify the needs of the community.

Yeah, so one of my ideas was to leave the police car at the station and just walk around on foot and have those incidental conversations.

So my initial, I think close to, you know, six months, a lot of it was on foot walking around, just speaking to people in their front yards.

So I'd try and replicate the same as best I could driving down some of the roads. If I saw a farmer out near a gate, I'd stop and say g’day and, and there was no other reason than just introduce myself and find out what were some issues for that particular person.

[Sound of footsteps walking]

[Recording of Ldg Sen Const Crawford interacting with a male]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Oppie.

Citizen: George, how are ya, mate?

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Yeah, good. How are you?

Citizen: Good.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Stayin busy?

[Sound of cars and trucks driving past]

Citizen: Yeah, pretty nice. Everybody needs their place mowed before Easter.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Busy time of year.

(Inaudible speaking)

Citizen: Yeah, that’s it.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: I’ll catch you in town?

Citizen: Yeah, absolutely.

[Sound of people chatting in a social setting]

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: So the general store’s kinda like, well, we’ve only got the one store for this kinda stuff. It’s the main hub where people come to find a bit of info and whatever. It’s run by the lady at the back by the name of Andy. She’s an absolute godsend. She, yeah, looks after everyone.

[Sound of cars and trucks driving past]

Voiceover: The relationship and teamwork between Andy Dolling and George is one of the most important for the tiny town.

[Recording of Andy Dolling speaking about Ldg Sen Const Crawford]

[Sound of people chatting in a social setting]

Andy Dolling: He’s wonderful. Any problems, George. Or I email him, he comes. And we need him.

Andy Dolling: Yes, he is a character. He loves meat pies. (Laughs) I think he’s going to eat something exotic, and he has a meat pie. He’s moved on to chunky meat now. (Laughs)

Producer: He’s very exotic.

Andy Dolling: Haven’t you, George?

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: That better not make the podcast.

Andy Dolling: He’s very exotic. Sometimes he’ll have a salad roll. Not very often but occasionally. (Laughs)

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: She’s the eyes and ears of the town.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: So the community have to have trust in the police and that trust is built up over time. But without trust, members of the community won't share sometimes very important information, such as if a person is growing drugs, or if they're aware of some domestic violence or crimes that are perhaps a little bit more sensitive, they need to have the trust in the police officer to share that information with them. So it's important to me to earn that trust, that I have earned that trust, with my community. And in small communities, it's absolutely necessary.

Voiceover: Lisa’s firm but fair approach is one of the ways she earns trust in Tangam.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: I had a, another interesting character that was living in town and he'd got on the gear, onto drugs, and him and his partner weren't doing crash hot. And we'd had some very interesting conversation. I'd had to interview him and charge him with multiple offences and she was very much on his side.

She did not believe he'd committed those offences, despite the fact that I had video evidence of them happening. And she called me up one night and she was very scared, and she clearly needed help. And she's called me up and said, you know, ‘He's, he's come home, Lisa, he is off his face. He's on something and he's filling up the car with fuel. He's about to drive off. He's gonna hurt somebody. He shouldn't be driving. Lisa, I don't want him in my house, but he can't drive like this. Can you please come and help me?’

He did not like me, this man, because I charged him with all of these offences and he was probably gonna get locked up as a result of it. So I wasn't working at the time, and I've put the uniform on and I’ve come up on the radio. I've called the 251, the sergeant, from the closest station that was working at the time to say, ‘Look, this is the situation, this is what's happening. I'm going to go out there because we can't afford for him to get on the road’.

We organised for some backup to come out to give me a hand, but they were going to be 20 minutes away. So I've driven to this property, I've stood there and watched what's going on for a little while and realised this guy was clearly, like, he was three shades to the wind. He should not have been driving. He was clearly under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, and we couldn't afford to get his car on the road.

So we have a device called a terminator. It's about a foot long and it's got, like, nails in it to flatten a tyre if it's driven over. So I took that and went and had a conversation with him. I kept myself between, the car between him and me. I put it under the car and the whole time I kept thinking, ‘Oh my god, if this guy gets near me, you know, he's going to be so angry’. Eventually he's got in the car and gone to drive off.

And as soon as he started the car, he has driven over the terminator. The tyres just gone psshhhh, and gone straight down to flat. He was so angry! He has got out of that car and they live on a hill and I'm going, ‘Oh my god, do I run down the hill backwards? Do I run down the hill forwards? Do I run towards the house? I'm sure she's going let me in the house’.

And in the end he's, you know, come around the car towards me and he's changed his mind and he's gone into the shed and he’s put himself in the shed. So I wasn't going to let him go back in the house and she's already gone back into the house and locked the door.

But I had to, still had to wait for backup and they came and I had my exit strategy and in the end, because he was so angry with me, he actually talked to the members that came to back me up, to de-escalate the situation and to take him into custody for some other matters that were necessary as well.

[Soft guitar music plays behind audio.]

Voiceover: It was a reminder for Lisa of the risks in being the only police officer in town and the need to always have an exit strategy. But it also affirmed her approach of treating everyone with respect.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: So she knew that regardless of whether or not I've charged her partner with offences, that I'm still going to do my role as a police officer to keep her and her children safe and protected. Regardless of the fact that she'd called me all sorts of names for charging her partner with offences.

And that's a really tricky line to take and to hold as a police officer, that you can do your job and you can have somebody hate you with a passion one minute and then ask you for help the next. And you have to do that every time.

Yeah, you don't have another member to say, ‘Oh look, this person doesn't help me, could you go out and deal with this matter?’, because you're it. The buck stops with me.

Voiceover: While policing backup might be further away at single-member stations, earning the trust of your community means help is always at hand.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford: Just the other day, six in the morning, was kind of darkish. I was pulled over on the side of the road. I saw a car off to the side down a track that was parked that looked out of place to me. When I see a car out of place, I stop and I make an inquiry.

Anyway, I've pulled over, it's low light, and I've investigated this car and I’ve had two locals drive past me and they saw it looked unusual and they just stopped to make sure I was OK. And they didn't need to get out of their cars, they stopped, they wound down their window, ‘George, all good?’, just making sure I was OK, that I wasn’t dealing with something that I couldn’t deal with by myself. Fantastic. Like, two very conscious community members just looking out for their local copper. That in itself is amazing.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: I can't tell you how many occasions it's happened where CFA and/or SES have turned up to either a crash scene or a search and they've actually helped me sometimes before they've even got their uniform on. That they've stopped at a scene and they've gone, ‘All right, well, Lisa, if you've got that, I'm just going to, I'm just going to divert the traffic over here’, or ‘Lisa, I'm not in my uniform, what do you need me to do?’

‘Right, I need you to divert this traffic. Here, put my yellow vest on inside out so the police is on the inside so they don't necessarily think you're a police officer, so that they can see you and you don't get hurt’. You know, it's not uncommon when you live a bit further out to be the only person at a crash for 20 minutes and to deal with that crash, especially if it's on a more, a major road, by yourself for 20 minutes when you've got traffic everywhere and you've got somebody injured, maybe somebody trapped or killed. That's a long time by yourself. So I've had lots of people step up and help me out with that sort of thing.

Voiceover: And the community backup goes beyond just policing matters.

Ldg Sen Const Lorenz: Oh, God bless small communities. Look, it's one of the really good things that happened. So my husband was a teacher at the time and he was on a school camp and my children, when school finishes, they would get on the school bus, which drops them off at home and it's about a 40 minute trip.

So they, just before my shift had finished, I got a crash, which was actually quite a ways away and, but it was after the school had finished so the school couldn't hold on to the children because they'd already got onto their bus to go home. So still in primary school, they were at the time. And I went out to this crash because it had to be dealt with. It was actually a very serious crash.

And one of the locals that lived in town had realised what was happening. He was a member of the CFA, so he was privy to some of the information as well. And he sent one of his more grown-up children down to sit with my children and make sure that they were fed until I was able to get home to them much, much later that day. So small towns, they do, they look out for you and they support you as their only police officer.

And I am the first one to put up my hand and say, I have got the best job in the world. I'm very fortunate to, not once, but twice, have worked for great communities and ones that I know will get my back if I need it. You know, to be a police officer, I love my job. I really do.

Voiceover: But being known by everyone in town can have its challenges. And like most single-member station officers, Lisa and George, and their families, live in police residences right next door to the station.

Ldg Sen Const Crawford I'm in line of sight of the local pub. So that in itself has other challenges. They know when I'm home, they know when I’m out with my kids, they know when I'm doing different things. So I have to work very harmoniously with the community.

When I was policing in Melbourne, you'd very rarely bump into people that you'd arrest. And in Melbourne I remember seeing one, I was walking not far from Crown Casino and I saw them and I was with my wife and I said, if he interacts, pretend you don't know me and keep walking.

In this environment it's completely different. All the community know who your wife is, what car she drives, what car you drive, where your kids go to school, they know so much more about you in this very small community environment.

So when I have to arrest people, I see them at the supermarket and I'll stand next to them and go, ‘Hey, how are you going? How's things been? Been behaving? Awesome. Fantastic’. And there's a mutual respect that we have and that we need to have because, just because they've done something wrong, I actually respect them as a community member and I need them to change their behaviours for whatever reason I've got them for.

And there's definitely a level of respect that, that I see here that I never saw in Melbourne. Yeah, there's still challenges here. There's still people who, the line is a bit blurry, and that's where I have to do my best at trying to protect my family from those, but it happens.

Policing in Melbourne, I remember, you know, you arrest a young kid for graffiti, crim damage, whatever it be. And their parents have come, ‘Well why did you, oh, my kid wouldn't have done that’, whatever the response I'd get. And then occasionally you get, ‘Oh yeah, my son's done this’, but most of the time, you’ve got some support, but not a huge amount of support.

We had an incident with some locals, they're great kids, they're awesome kids. They did something they shouldn't have done. It was within 24 hours their parents had them marched up here by the scruff of their necks and it was great. They were like, ‘George, I want you to hold them to account for what they’ve done’. And I say this with great respect to these kids, I had them in tears, and not from a, you know, authoritarian style.

They knew me and they were worried that they disappointed not only their family, but they disappointed me. These are kids that I high five and play basketball at the local school with. They're kids that will see me at the river. So they had disappointed me. And that was the biggest thing.

I didn't have to really do too much, but we, we organised with these kids, we've got certain options in the policing model to use a bit of discretion, but also hold them to account and things like diversions are available to first-time offenders. And these kids have a bright future, and I don't want to wreck that future. And so we looked at a diversion with a few conditions, which made it hit home for them.

So they had to write an apology letter to the community group, which means something in this environment. They had to make a little donation to the shire to help with the cleanup for the damage that they had created. They had do some community service and actually help out. And that's probably more than most courts will give them.

I asked one kid, I said, ‘Think of someone you wouldn't have work on your farm, because you don't trust them’. This is a farmer kid. And he knew exactly where I was going with this. He knew that he did not want the reputation that followed with that kind of behaviour. And that in itself was the lesson.

So yeah, awesome kid, super bright. Every time he sees me, he's like yelling out to me, ‘George!’. He's seen me in neighbouring towns and he's raced over, I think probably proving to his mates that he knew me, and that's fantastic. That's great.

It just had so much impact. And I had one of the parents saying, ‘I want more!’, and to have that support, he wanted them to really hold account for it, which is great. And it's great to have that support. I've jokingly talked about the ‘A Country Practice’ type of policing that we have here. We often solve it by the end of the episode.

[Soft guitar music plays behind voiceover.]

Voiceover: Every officer at a Victorian single member station brings to the job years and years, often decades, of different experiences and skills. One trait shared by each of these members is a desire to continually improve their community.

Sometimes this means they also need to learn new skills – for the benefit of those around them. In the case of Lisa, she took it upon herself to learn Auslan just so that she could communicate with a number of deaf people who live nearby.

George, with his previous career as a ski instructor and his outdoors experience, has become a trainer for Victoria Police, teaching alpine and survival skills to police who work in the nearby snow fields.

George uses these skills regularly himself. When a hiker or skier needs rescuing, and Victoria Police’s Search and Rescue Squad is tied up with work elsewhere, George is often the next port of call. His police car is effectively a one-man search and rescue vehicle.

[Upbeat background music plays behind audio.]

Ldg Sen Const George Crawford: So I carry stop sticks and normal policing type of equipment. Jumper leads, defibrillator, extensive first aid kit, a life jacket. Fuel for my chainsaw, chainsaw safety equipment, rescue rope, fire kit. Four-wheel drive tracks, which you won't see in many cars in the city, at least. Two sets of mud and snow chains, shovels, high vis vests. Roll of toilet paper, always handy.

Some of my drone equipment, a buoyant rope, done a few water rescues. Pamphlets that I can hand out to campers and do the education thing; there’s stuff about water safety. I’ve got a winch; it gets a fair workout in some of this environment. Standard snorkel, set of binoculars. I hate seeing dirty campsites, so I carry in a massive roll of garbage bags. EBT, for evidentiary breath test.

I’ve got dry bags with thermals and spare socks and over pants and an over jacket. I’ve got my wet weather gear, I've got spare gloves, food for close to three days for one person, and I've got a jet boiler, and I’ve got enough water. Traffic cones, a drag chain, snatch-em straps and other four-wheel drive recovery equipment in there, and then spare e-flares and stuff like that.

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Ldg Sen Const George Crawford: I like the variety, I like that fact that, you know, I think human nature, we like to sometimes go, ‘Yeah, I've planned out my day. This is what I'm going to achieve today, and I've got it done’. Sometimes it's really good to be having a predictable day.

So, looking at my day that I was going to do the other week, I was planned to assist a neighbouring station. They had a rodeo on and in the country, we do that a lot. We drop our whole area to go help a neighbouring area. Before I even got to the station for the briefing, I've got a job come over the radio for a rescue out right on the corner of my patch. Like, I'm talking, it was pretty remote.

A lady broke her leg; she was out hiking in a remote area. Thankfully she did have phone reception, but they also did have backup communications like PLBs and stuff. So, they were doing all the right things. It was a small group of, I think, four or five in their hike group, they were all in their 40s, she slipped, fell and broke her leg, and quite decently where she couldn't weight bear.

Once I worked out where they were, looking at their lat longs from my navigation and understanding from the description of where they said they were, I was double checking and making sure everything corroborated. Spoke to our search and rescue down in Melbourne, they were dealing with another incident.

[Helicopter sounds.]

Ldg Sen Const George Crawford: We got our Air Wing to have a go at trying to insert someone in through you know, winching them in. That was tried and five attempts were made, and it had to be aborted. While that was happening, I was still planning on that backup plan of us going in, and we often ‘Plan to return, but prepare to stay’ is a phrase that we use. And I knew how far a walk it was, and I'm not that fast of a walker, so it's likely to be an overnighter.

So I had all that gear with me. I've got my hike gear, I've my overnight gear, I've got my emergency rations for three days, I'm ready, let's go. I started to move forward with the Ambulance Victoria members. By the time we got up there, I liaised with Parks Vic and we met up in what we'd called a forward staging area. I've got two ambulance wilderness-trained members with me. I've got two Parks Vic very experienced members with me, and I've got me, one Vic Pol member. And we, we formed the search. Oh, well, it's not a search party, it’s a rescue party cause we knew where they were.

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Ldg Sen Const George Crawford: And I did the calculations and how long it would take and I estimated that we wouldn't get there till about 2am walking through the night. All of the party, all five of us, experienced, trained, and we've got the right equipment. We moved in and so we would have started hiking at, I think it was about nine or 10 o'clock at night.

And we would've got to the patient by about one or two in the morning and ambulance could do their thing, looking after the patient, doing all their patient care stuff they do. Myself and the Parks officers help set up a bit of a shelter for the ambulance officers because they had their hands tied up doing all their evaluations.

And then we could try and make some kind of shelter so they could get what we call ‘horizontal rest’, because there's gonna be no sleeping. But we did have to wait once they stabilised and gave some pain relief and were happy with the patient's condition. And to have horizontal rest on some rocks on a cliff line with the most spectacular view of the stars on one of the best nights I've ever been out there, and someone calls this work?

And physically we're exhausted, emotionally we're exhausted, but we've got a job to do that needs to be finished. So we had our rest, and by about 5 or 6am when, oh 6am when we were getting first light was the next kind of hurdle. So myself and the Parks officers went out to look for a safe extraction point for Air Wing and we found one and you're not going to do that at night easily.

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Ldg Sen Const George Crawford: So we made a makeshift stretcher out of found materials using sticks and bits and pieces. It was one of these things in your bushcraft that you learn, and it was a fantastic operation.

We got them to that safe location area; they dropped down a couple extra members from the Search and Rescue by this stage and they helped stabilise the patient with the ambulance and got them air lifted out. Then there was the five of us sitting down there going, ‘OK, we've now got five hours’ hike out, and we've still got a four-wheel drive out of here, and we’ve still got to keep moving’.

So, yeah, and this is where I love working with the people I work up here. We've all got the same mentality. We're feeding off each other's energy. Yeah it was a really, really good experience to walk out with the remaining of their hike party and that was a really good bonding session with them, but also for us as professionals in the area, with the ambulance and with the Parks, that, you know, in trying circumstances, we're able to, you know, very, very successfully get this person to safety and to a hospital where she needed surgery. It was a very, very successful operation and in relatively interesting circumstances with minimal resources, but that's country policing.

So my shift was about 27 and a half hours. So yeah, it's, it's a nice long shift. It's, I don't think it's my longest, but it's definitely up there. And it's quite funny, when I got back from that job, it took me away from my community for, well, two days pretty much and people said, ‘Oh jeez, where have you been? You're obviously not around, jeez haven't seen you for a while’. And they don't realise all the work that you've been doing. And they'll go, ‘Oh, jeez, you must be rested. You must be this’, or ‘Have you been out having fun?’ and to be honest, I was having a bit of fun. But when people don't see you, they often think that you're not working. And in this environment, you could be working in a completely different area, and no one see you for a while because of the nature of the job.

[Soft guitar music plays behind voiceover and audio.]

Voiceover: Like so many single-member station officers, George and Lisa have fallen in love with their little towns and the communities they serve. And often the feeling is mutual.

Ldg Sen Const Lisa Lorenz: I have got some lovely flowers on the table. So with my growing community and I do have some older people in town, and with all the scams that are going on at the moment, I was seeing a little bit of a pattern. And a lot of, or too many, people in my community were becoming victims of scams, losing literally hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So I put together a scam prevention workshop to help educate my community on that. As part of that, I had a specific couple come along, they called me couple of days ago and said that they've been scammed. So I popped around to the house and the lady was absolutely beside herself. She has a trip coming up and, you know, all the things that she normally ignores, because she knows that they're scams, she's got an email or a message about this trip.

So she's contacted them back and said, you know, whatever it was and they said, ‘No, there's a lot of messing around. We're gonna give you a $700 refund’. And then they've said to her, ‘No, I've made a mistake. I'm terribly sorry. Instead of putting $700 into your account, we've put $70,000 into your account. Are you able to send that money back to us?’

So they then sent her receipts or screenshots showing the $70,000 that they had put into her account. She's taken that on face value and then gone and transferred money back to them, which is obviously over the limit. She has given them access to her computer, so they gave her directions or instructions on how to download an app and when she's put in her bank details, they've obviously captured the account name and the password for that.

So they've then gone and transferred a whole lot of money out of her bank account. She has realised that something's not right. She's contacted me and I've straight away said to her, you know, ‘Contact your bank. Let's get these stopped wherever we can and let's prevent any more losses’. And she's actually been able to stop all of those big payments from going out. So we're talking 150 odd thousand dollars.

And at this stage, it looks like her loss has been limited to $99 to a Western Union transfer. I've then sent her off to get her computer cleaned out and both of her phones checked up to have the rescue me app removed and to get their access removed from her laptop. And her husband who was there through, throughout it all he's bought me some lovely flowers from their garden and they smell so beautiful. Can you smell them?

I'm very pleased that I was able to limit the loss. I was very pleased that she was able to recognise from the scam workshop that she attended that I'd done that this was a scam, which enabled her to contact me to limit that. But at the end of the day, this is my job.

I'm proud that I was able to help her. This goes right back to that poor old man that was beaten up back in 2000. I have been able to play a part in the big picture, but it's not the be all and end all, I haven't got the scammers. And I can guarantee that they're scamming somebody else as we speak, but it’s a part of that big picture. And that's exactly what I joined up for.

[Theme music plays starts and plays behind voiceover.]

Voiceover: Police Life: The Experts is a Victoria Police production.

Your host is Belinda Batty.

Written by Jesse Wray-McCann.

It was produced by Jesse Wray-McCann and Lane Mihaljevic.

The senior producer was Ros Jaguar.

Audio production and original music by Mat Dwyer.

Theme song by Veaceslav Draganov.

Executive producer was Beck Angel.

This podcast was created by the Media, Communications and Engagement Department at Victoria Police.

To learn more about the work of Victoria Police, go to police.vic.gov.au.