Shortcut: The Search Warrant That Turned into a Siege

**Meshel Laurie** (0:03)
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. And we know that you love hearing from a retired copper as much as we do. So we've got one for you today. His name is Anthony Macklin, a former Detective Inspector with the NSW Police Force. Anthony's career saw him undertake roles in the Child Protection and Sex Crime Squad, investigating complex, protracted, serious sexual offences across the state. For all that, he's still got a very cheerful outlook on life. And he joins us on Australian True Crime to talk about his career.
This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence.

**Anthony Macklin** (0:52)
Look, I spent 18 years in NSW Police. So we go back to 2004, and I'm a young detective working at Cogger, which is now St. George. And I'm only like a probationary detective at this time. The homicide happens on a Thursday. And the interesting thing to this is, this young woman has come to the police, probably a week before seeking help, because she's got concerns about her ex-partner. Now, the police officer, junior police officer at the front counter, did everything by the book. At that time, there was no grounds for any immediate action, but he took a statement, did the event properly, he applied for an AVO, but it wasn't as we had it now, he, it wasn't grounds for an urgent AVO. So basically, she had to wait for a couple of weeks before this could be put in place.
And he would have to be served to, to attend court and know that was coming through as well.
In that time frame, things have escalated and he's basically gone to her house and shot her at her unit. And the interesting thing is, of this is they've done the search warrant, they've done the crime scene at the home. They know where he lives. He lives in a location in Banksia. They've put surveillance on that location, but this guy's not anywhere. They don't see any lights coming and going, but they haven't got any lights in the house the whole night, but they haven't had surveillance on it until they've worked out who the likely suspect is. So that's been 10 o'clock at night. They're looking for activity on his phone. There's no activity on the phone. They've gone to all the different locations that they think this guy might be. There's an all points bulletin out there. We can't find him. No one knows where he is. We've even had people search the different locations where you might expect someone might try to do something terrible to themselves. And there's just no sign of him. So it comes up and you're like, okay, we're going to go do a search warrant on the house on Friday morning. I'm like, okay.
So the sergeants are having a discussion about this. And I'm the new guy and they're like, okay, well, it looks like we're going to have to go in and do it ourselves, which wasn't unusual at the time, but not for a guy that's just committed a homicide. I've done a bunch of search warrants before. It wasn't really an issue. However, on this one, I was a bit concerned because the sergeants are like, this is not good. This is a bad situation. And so a few people brought up, why don't we get the tactical operations unit, the SWAT unit to come and do the clearance for us, and just do the entry.
And they said, we tried. However, we've pushed it up through our inspector. And the superintendent at the time was an acting superintendent who was on the promotions list. And the standard operating procedures were, tactical operations unit will not attend unless you know he is on site, and it fits their criteria as in armed and all the rest of this. And like, we've got pretty good chances in there. We really don't know.

**Meshel Laurie** (3:57)
Surely I'm not the only one thinking, he could be sitting at the window with the gun pointed out, waiting for us to rock up.

**Anthony Macklin** (4:02)
Exactly right. So we come to this point and everybody's like, we've tried to push it, but you need a system commissioner level authority before they'll let technical operations unit roll out. And everybody just says, no, not happening. We didn't have enough staff. So I'll ring up the anti-theft team and a guy I used to work with, older detective style guy. I'm like, look, we need you to come and help out with a search warrant. So he's turning up. We're taking a girl out with us who's only just come back. She's on restricted duty. She's not supposed to be out in the field because she's also had a knee reco. So they're like, well, you shouldn't be out, but we don't have enough people. So you're going to come and just be the video operator, which we need to take for a search warrant. They're like, who wants to do the door? I crack the door. I'm like, okay, well, I'll do the door with a sledgehammer. I haven't done that before. Something new and different. So we turn up. We get everything in order. We've got an inspector from another command that has to come to be the independent officer. We explain the situation to him. He's like, so Tactical Operations Unit aren't coming in? I'm like, nope. So to go into this house, it's a semi-detached house. So it's got a common wall. You go up about five or six steps to the front door. The doors on the right-hand side, as you look at the premises, there's two windows to the left, and then there's a driveway, and there's a big banister about waist height. Now, I'm 6'3, and it's about waist height for me. We funnel up there. The girl with the bad knee is inside. You can imagine there's this small grassed area.