Why you should think twice about online vigilantism

**Meshel Laurie** (0:00)
This is a true crime podcast, as the title suggests. So please consider this your warning, that it's not suitable for children, and it probably will contain content that may be triggering to some people.
Also, it's an Australian True Crime podcast, so Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners should be aware it may contain the voices of deceased people.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:19)
The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders' past, present and those emerging.

**Hamish Mckenzie** (0:42)
I was walking to work one day from the train station, about 10 minutes walk from the office, and on my way to work, just in front of me, there was a mother and a little child. She must have been about five years old, and it was a nice spring day. I remember looking at the child and thinking, isn't that a beautiful sight? A mother and a daughter, they were holding hands. I still remember the little girl to this day, she had a yellow dress on, was carrying a teddy bear that was almost trailing along the footpath as she walked down. As I walk in front of me, they were about 100 meters from my office. I remember my heart started beating really fast, and I thought, what's going on here? Am I having a heart attack?
What's going on? As the mother and the daughter got closer and closer to my office, I started to think, I know that girl is coming here for an interview.
From that moment, that child went from little girl, holding a teddy bear, cute little girl, to a victim of child sexual abuse because I knew exactly what she was there for.

**Meshel Laurie** (1:46)
Hamish Mckenzie is the Detective Superintendent of the Western Australia Sex Crimes Division. That means he's the boss. He's also a doctor, not a medical doctor, but a PhD of philosophy. He definitely sounds more like a policeman than a philosopher, as you're about to hear. Sex crimes is a very challenging area of policing, and Western Australia is a very challenging jurisdiction. It's the kind of place that elicits jaw-dropping trivia like this. All of Western Europe could fit inside Western Australia, but Western Europe has a population of 195 million people, whereas Western Australia has a population of just 2.6 million people, and they're very spread out and very diverse.
Western Australia is the largest single-policing jurisdiction in the world. Most of it is desert, and it's home to some of the most lucrative mining on the planet, which means lots of fly-in, fly-out workers. 8.7% of the state, some 22 million hectares of land, is governed by the Aboriginal Lands Trust, and there are an estimated 12,000 people living in settlements in those lands. All of which means that policing, like everything else, is done differently in WA.
But according to Hamish Mckenzie, child sexual assault is the one area of law enforcement where egos really do take a back seat to results. He joins us on Australian True Crime, which serving officers rarely do, so we're very grateful to talk about his work and how we can continue to work together in child protection.

**Hamish Mckenzie** (3:32)
So we have responsibility across the state of Western Australia for all sex crime related matters and that's not only children, but that's for adults as well. And we also manage the Serious Offender Management Squad, so they manage the 4,000 reportable sex offenders throughout Western Australia.
So we got quite a big responsibility throughout the state to respond to sex crimes. On occasions we will travel to the north of Western Australia, and that involves maybe a five, six-hour flight, perhaps longer with a few stopovers. So we'll deploy anywhere as required.

**Meshel Laurie** (4:10)
In the olden days, you know, oftentimes we cover crimes from say the 70s, the 1970s.
When I say olden days, it's not that long ago. And people would go on the run, criminals would go on the run from the eastern seaboard, from Sydney and Melbourne, they'd go on the run to Western Australia. They'd go and hide in Perth. But in the days before the internet, you know, it seemed like such a long way away. And that's your jurisdiction, is that that huge state. So how many officers do you have in your division?

**Hamish Mckenzie** (4:38)
So we have just over 200 officers.
But we are supported by other specialist areas, as well as other specialist detectives in the country, so throughout regional West Australia. So there's a number of detectives' officers that we work very closely with. And of course, we can draw on officers from all throughout the WA police, not just my own area but anywhere including our intelligence divisions and other specialist support areas.