The ambush that forever changed how Victoria is policed

Long before the deluded Desmond Freeman used a homemade firearm to kill, an equally paranoid gun nut opened fire changing forever the way Victoria is policed.

It was 41 years ago this month that police targeted a factory burglar, considered more a nuisance than a danger.

Back then police did not always carry guns, there were no tasers, capsicum spray or stab vests. Police women were just moving from carrying their batons in handbags.

Police didn’t need anti-riot shields, rubber bullet guns and flash/bang explosive devices. There was no Public Order Response Team or Critical Incident Response Team. Many cops clung to the notion the uniform itself made them bulletproof.

Police were still on point-duty at Melbourne intersections – the ultimate in police presence. It was a time before terrorists used vehicles as weapons and police in the city moved about in groups of five.

A carjacking was a movie plot and the only home invasions were on drug dealers.

But there was still crime. The annoying burglar would break into a dozen factories a night to steal cash tins and valuables around Oakleigh, Clayton and Moorabbin. None were considered major crimes but as the burglar showed no signs of stopping, Cheltenham police started staking out at-risk targets.

There was no way of knowing their low-level offender would shoot to avoid capture, and they were setting themselves up for ambush.

In late May 1985, local police started their operation to trap the burglar. Rather than patrol in the open they would wait out of sight and hope to spot him.

It was the same tactic that would end in tragedy in 1998 when police officers Gary Silk and Rod Miller were shot dead on stakeout duty in Cochranes Road, Moorabbin.

On June 19, 1985, Sergeant Brian Stooke and Senior Constable Peter Steele pulled over a yellow Ford Cortina in a factory zone in Keys Road, Cheltenham, just before midnight.

As they searched the car the driver bolted. When the police chased him, he turned and fired, hitting Stooke in the body and then Steele in the upper arm.

He could have disappeared but returned to the defenceless Stooke, who was lying on the road, and shot him three times, leaving him a paraplegic.

Just like Freeman, who shot three police, including firing into one already downed, the suspect didn’t shoot to flee, he shot to kill.

Sergeant Ray Kirkwood and Constable Graham Sayce were next. As they searched for the gunman they were ambushed.

Kirkwood was shot in the shoulder. A bullet grazed Sayce’s head. Dog handler Senior Constable Gary Morrell was shot in the hand. The bullet would have entered his chest if not for his ballistic vest.

Almost certainly this was not the first time the burglar had shot police.

In 1982, police were looking for a serial factory burglar in the same area and on October 12, Constable Rod McDonald was on foot, checking factories by torchlight.

“As I turned I saw a person crouched under some bushes ... I saw him bring a handgun up pointing directly at my face, he just fired, and I simultaneously threw my hands instinctively in front of my face,” he recalled.

The bullet hit and destroyed his right thumb, bounced off his torch, entered his left wrist, travelled along his arm, before lodging just under the skin at his elbow.

The burglar stopped for 18 months after McDonald was shot, then returned.

After the 1985 shootings police soon received a tip that the gunman was Bulgarian army deserter turned factory worker Pavel “Mad Max” Marinof.

When police searched his house he was long gone, but there was plenty of evidence to show he was a gun collector and probably an underworld firearms dealer. A shooting range in the basement was a fair hint.

Like Freeman, an element in the community was happy to hide Marinof from police. It would take eight months to find Marinof (for Freeman it was seven) and like Freeman the confrontation would be deadly.

On February 25, 1986, Detective Sergeant John Kapetanovski and Senior Detective Rod MacDonald, pulled over a panel van on the Hume Highway near Wallan driven by a suspect. It was a judgment call – they were not wearing ballistic vests but decided to intercept before losing him in Melbourne traffic.

Pretending to search for identification he drew his handgun and fired twice at Kapetanovski, intending to shoot him in the chest and head. The first bullet entered his chest passing into the bone of his right arm. The second would have hit him between the eyes.

“Kapa” instinctively threw up his left hand – an action that saved his life.

The shot hit the palm through the inside of the middle finger, blew off the top joint and was deflected long enough to crease his right eyebrow.

Amazingly, two police nearly four years apart were saved from certain death by their reflexes – McDonald in 1982 and Kapetanovski in 1986 – throwing their arms up to stop a bullet, with both suffering significant hand injuries.

Marinof turned the gun on MacDonald, shooting him in the chest, and then began to drive away.

The severely wounded MacDonald fired his shotgun through the back windscreen, killing Marinof instantly.

Even though they thought he could be the multiple police shooter, Kapa and Rod did not initially point their weapons at him. He was given the benefit of the doubt.

Mad Max was the start of a dark time in the Victoria Police Force, leaving police increasingly vulnerable.

A month after Marinof shot two police before he was killed, a car bomb exploded outside the Russell Street Police Station.

There were 21 people injured and police constable Angela Taylor, 21, dux of her academy class, was killed, the first Australian policewoman murdered on duty. She had lost the toss to get the watchhouse staff lunch. If the coin had landed on the other side, she would have been protected by the building’s thick walls.

On August 9, 1987, failed soldier Julian Knight opened fire in Hoddle Street, killing seven people and wounding 19. He was 19 years old.

Four months later, Frank Vitkovic, 22, walked into the Australia Post office in Queen Street and opened fire with an M1 carbine, killing eight and injuring five. He died after falling or jumping from the 11th-floor window.

On October 12, 1988, constables Steven Tynan and Damian Eyre, responded to a call over an abandoned stolen Commodore sedan abandoned in the middle of Walsh Street, South Yarra.

It wasn’t strictly the job of the Prahran divisional van, but the two young cops volunteered to cover it. Waiting in the shadows was a gang of armed robbers determined to kill the first police to arrive. Tynan and Eyre were shot dead.

After the three years of violence, police imported US training methods to make young police hyper-alert to the dangers that could exist on a routine shift.

The results were disastrous.

In 10 years from 1984 police shot and killed 31 people, and from 1987 to 1989 the toll was 11.

An internal review by Superintendent Bruce Logie found police priorities were hopelessly unbalanced with little conflict resolution training available.

Coroner Hal Hallenstein found police had developed a “culture of bravery” where they would race into dangerous confrontations, make the situation worse and then be forced to shoot suspects when they lost control.

In 1994, the then chief commissioner, Neil Comrie, ordered a new training program called Project Beacon where safety became the priority of any police operation. For the first time police were trained in conflict resolution and had to complete a refresher course every six months to remain on the street.

The plan was to cordon and contain until specialist negotiators arrived.

Now the wheel has turned. The 2014 Sydney Lindt cafe siege, where 18 hostages were grabbed with two shot dead, changed all that.

Again general duties police are being trained with US-made, active-shooter programs.

Police have built a $1.8 million simulator to reproduce around 100 life-and-death scenarios from gang confrontations, where police will try to negotiate peacefully, to a shootout with a possible mass killer.

It is a 300-degree, five-screen set up with police armed with replica firearms linked to the computer program. When we visited it was armed offenders storming a campus. The police had to make split second decisions to fire, without hitting students in the school.

Waiting for help was not an option.

The first police on scene are now expected to take on terrorists even if they are hopelessly outgunned.

The former head of the Special Operations Group, Bill Duncan, told us that a good shot with a handgun can hit a target up to 20 metres. A fair shot with a long arm can hit a target from 150 metres.

The perfect and tragic example is the Bondi massacre where police could not wait for the specialist terror police.

The father and son kill team fired 100 shots in six minutes, killing 15 people and wounding more than 40. First responding police returned fire less than four minutes after the first shots. They killed one and arrested the other.

We now expect every cop to be a hero. Welcome to the new world.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.