Jacks and Jokers (13 page)

Powell would leave behind a force that placed enormous emphasis on how officers worked on the streets and how they reacted to, say, incidents of football-crowd hooliganism. Part of his training was spent learning how to march properly and how to resolve violent domestic disputes. He also participated in full-on, in-your-face physical training.

As for Brisbane, he would be heading into a force whose members in their cadet training sat at little wooden desks like schoolchildren and learned aspects of policing and the law by rote. As in Lewis’s time, training consisted of a few hours in the exercise yard at the Petrie Terrace depot playing with old rifles, or jumping fully clothed into the nearby Ithaca public pool – just in case their policing saw them in the drink.

He didn’t know it at the time but Powell was on his way to a place so languorous and informal that he would not believe his eyes.

A Visit to the Matador Club

On the evening of 3 March 1977, Commissioner Lewis was enjoying a meal out at the Police College on official business after a busy Thursday.

Earlier in the day he had personally seen Superintendent Tony Murphy ‘re functioning of CIU’, and had been briefed on yet another upcoming Royal tour. So by the time he’d gotten home to Garfield Drive in Bardon, he was due for a rest.

Over in South Brisbane, however, his troops were readying themselves for a raid on the notorious Matador Club, owned and run by petty gangster Roland Short. The Matador Club advertised regularly in Brisbane newspapers and promoted as a feature its fortress-like security. It ran games of Manila and blackjack, along with pornographic movies, prostitution and ‘all manner of obscenities’, in the words of the ALP attack dog from Inala, Kev Hooper.

On Saturday evenings at the Matador you could join in ‘Swingers’ Night’, an event that attracted clients from as far afield as Dalby, Warwick and Toowoomba. Its newspaper advertisement read: ‘BIG SWINGERS PARTY NIGHT. Come and meet new faces at our Swingers Party relaxing atmosphere in Spanish style setting. All couples welcome. Single girls invited. All amenities available. Ring Geoff – 446345.’

Geoffrey Luke Crocker was the club manager. He also ran the Key Club and other parlours for Short. He would later describe what went on in the Matador. ‘On a Saturday night it was opened as a swingers’ party night, you know, couples only … like wife-swapping and that sort of thing,’ said Crocker. ‘We used to provide nibbles, you know, sausage rolls, cheerios and sandwiches and they bought their drinks; we supplied movies, blue movies. I used to supply two strippers on a Saturday and they used to pay $20 a couple to come in – and we were getting 50, 60, 70 couples some Saturday nights.

‘Well believe it or not none of the wife-swappers hardly ever used the rooms on the premises. It was more or less a meeting place … then they’d leave and go off to one of their own places. On odd occasions four of them would use one of the rooms.’

Monday night was ‘Strip Night’, where members had to undress. The club had sunken baths, private bedrooms and two-way mirrors.

Private investigator John Wayne Ryan was hired by Roland Short to fit out the security for the club. His work on the Matador was unparalleled in Brisbane’s club scene at the time.

‘Halfway up the front stairs of the club was a landing,’ recalls Ryan. ‘I installed steel gates there, and Short put in closed-circuit TV. I had a PMG technician I knew set a lot of this stuff up.’

On a typical Thursday, gambling was competitive and the house usually brought in thousands of dollars. At least ten prostitutes were rostered on.

During the raid a large contingent of police used force to batter down the wood and steel doors, utilising sledge hammers to penetrate the heavy security. They found little money on the tables and just three girls on the call-girl roster. The raid was led by police officer Kevin Dorries. At one point, Crocker ended up in a headlock as police broke down the steel door and elbowed Dorries in the face, cutting him above the eye. Crocker was handcuffed.

‘Dorries kept saying to everyone, “If this prick moves, kick him in the guts, he’s an animal”,’ recalled Crocker. ‘He had me handcuffed and slapped me to the desk and he said, “You’re wearing everything, smartarse”, and I could hear screaming and yelling out the back of the place where the toilets and sauna and showers were, and that was Roland going up through the air conditioning duct – a copper met him going through the other way …’

Fifty people found on the premises were charged with a total of 71 offences including keeping a common gaming house, using premises for the purposes of prostitution, various drug offences, assaulting police, resisting arrest, illegal sale of liquor and exhibiting obscene movies. Short was arrested, as was Geoff Crocker.

Kev Hooper was suspicious of the raid. ‘As no VIP members were in the club at the time of the raid, this leads me to suspect that they had been tipped off,’ he later theorised. ‘My enquiries show that Roland Short is well known to a senior commissioned police officer. He visited this police officer some days before the raid and after the activities of his club were exposed in [the]
Sunday Sun
.

‘I believe that Short had a good idea when the raid would be made.’

Hooper said one of the missing VIPs of the Matador, not sighted during the raid, was a prominent member of the National Party. ‘This National Party man is also well known to the night manager of the Matador Club on the night of the raid, Geoff Crocker, who tried to thump one of the policemen who was merely doing his job.

‘Crocker is also in the massage game in his own right as the owner of a Valley massage parlour.’

Commissioner Lewis noted in his diary for Friday 4 March: ‘Saw Supt. MacDonald re successful raid on Matador Club.’

The club was open for business again a few days later.

The Studious Constable Campbell

With Lewis settling in as Commissioner, and the new post-Whitrod landscape still something of a chimera, 28-year-old Constable Bob Campbell made a decision to enrol in a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Queensland.

Campbell had been sworn in on 10 December 1968, and was serving at the Fortitude Valley police station. He had been an enthusiastic advocate of former Commissioner Whitrod’s police arts and sciences course, which he had completed, and now wanted to take his education even further. He was interested in psychology and history.

Campbell informed the police department: ‘I am undertaking this course in order to improve my knowledge in the field of human relations and I feel that such knowledge would assist me as a police officer.’

Subsequently, he applied for eight hours off each week to attend tutorials and lectures. This was granted under the proviso his lectures were not available outside duty hours, and his attendance in departmental time did not interfere with ‘the efficient functioning’ of his station.

Campbell had taken the usual path to Mobile Patrols after he was inducted, and uniquely was a ‘community police officer’ at Jamboree Heights, 14 kilometres south-west of the Brisbane CBD. It was upon his arrival at the Fortitude Valley station, however, that his eyes were opened to another side to policing – graft and corruption.

It was no accident, Campbell theorised, that things had changed dramatically since Whitrod’s departure. ‘After Mr Whitrod left Queensland, I observed a gradual transition in the Police Force in which those who had been suspected of dishonest practices were no longer being kept from positions of Trust within the Force,’ Campbell would later write. ‘At the Fortitude Valley Police Station, where I was attached, a few other Police Officers and myself continued to work honestly and diligently. The norm of conduct, however, had changed, and drinking and loafing were at an alarmingly high level.’

Campbell was urged by other officers to ‘slow down’ so he wouldn’t show them up. He continued working at his own pace. This, in turn, led to bullying and harassment. In addition, he was seeing some disturbing police practices on the streets. ‘The era of honesty ended with Whitrod,’ Campbell wrote in hindsight. ‘Any person who had a reasonable intellect or who was honest, like I pride myself on being, was subject to a new form of treatment.

‘On one occasion, I heard a detective, who had recently survived a court battle involving a corruption charge relating to the attempted bribery of Inspector A.V. Pitts, attempt to persuade a gentleman involved with the Ugolini Realty gaming parlour, one of the many protected by [Inspector Tony] Murphy, to pay him money, on behalf of Murphy, in return for allowing him to operate without prosecution. I have been well aware … that there are certain massage parlours and gaming centres that weren’t to be touched.’

Campbell, like so many before him, had unwittingly wandered into one of the Rat Pack’s many whirling pools of graft, and learned things he shouldn’t have.

Just months earlier, former Licensing Branch officer Kingsley Fancourt had resigned after finding himself caught in another such whirlpool. He felt he had no future in a police force strangled with corruption.

Campbell, though, was different. He would stand and fight. And he would pay a heavy price.

Old Acquaintances

It didn’t take long for Jack Herbert to zero in on his acquaintance with the new Commissioner. Herbert would refer to him as an ‘old friend’. Lewis begged to differ. His time in Charleville had obviously put on ice any direct contact they might have had as friends.

Lewis says their social interaction at the best of times was limited. ‘I’d never … to the best of my knowledge, been closely involved with him prior,’ Lewis says. ‘I would have met him in pubs and some sort of function … but when I was Commissioner I know I met him again at the home of Barry Maxwell, who had the Belfast Hotel. And it sort of went from there. Oh, he’s a good operator there’s no two ways about it.’

Lewis remembers Herbert for his sartorial elegance and his manners. ‘He was, you know, he was a very presentable bloke,’ Lewis recalls. ‘He was always cleanly dressed and behaved himself and never swore in front of women and I think you’ll find there was a fellow wrote a book about him, which I never bought and never read but I think at the end of that he said, the one thing you can say about him was … he was a great liar.’

Lewis’s wife Hazel liked Herbert, and his wife Peggy. ‘Hazel spoke well of him, everybody spoke well of Herbert in that respect,’ Lewis says. ‘But a couple of times … he did use me. I thought he was being helpful but he was – how can I put it? – paving the way for himself all the time. And using people and doing it well.

‘And of course primarily, as well as seeing me from time to time, keeping in touch with his old workmates in the Licensing Branch, he … didn’t use me as far as I know, to personally protect his interests in the Licensing Branch. He used me to tell them that he was friendly with me.’

Lewis says he has no doubt Herbert abused the fact that he had a form of relationship with the top police officer in the state. ‘By Herbert keeping in touch with me and me seeing him from time to time and that, he was able to say to these fellows, “Oh don’t you worry, Lewis is on side, I’m giving him money,” or whatever … and yet not in any stage of that game did any one of them, up to and including inspectors or assistants say to me, “Hey, how’s our mate Herbert going?” Or, “I understand you’re matey with Herbert.” Because … Herbert probably realised that they’re not going to go to Lewis and say Herbert told me so and so. That’s a bastard of a situation. You sure used me, old fellow!’

Herbert would take away different memories of their friendship. ‘Around this time I started seeing Terry Lewis again,’ he said in his memoir,
The Bagman
. ‘It was quite a few years since the days when we’d both been taking money to protect SP bookmakers. I’d see him socially from time to time but that was all. By now Terry was Commissioner for Police.’

Another friend poking his head through the boss’s door was the former police officer and state member for Merthyr, Don Lane. ‘I never had much respect for him,’ Lewis says. ‘I never worked with him … He was a policeman of course, he was in the CIB at one stage I think, but he was then in the Special Branch for quite a while … His obvious interest was to get into parliament and he was very good mates with Bill Knox who was quite a pleasant fellow.

‘When I came back to Brisbane he used to ring me from time to time and … I don’t think … I never went to his home and he never came to my home. I might have seen him in a pub somewhere. Joh [Bjelke-Petersen] didn’t particularly like him I know that.

‘Joh didn’t trust him. Unfortunately, I think Joh was right as it turned out and I … and as a matter of fact at one stage of the game they used to swap [Police] Ministers a bit … and I know I said to Joh one time, “What about giving Lane, you know, consider giving Lane the police [portfolio]? He’d know it all.” And Joh said, “No way in the world.”

‘I’d have to say Lane was an opportunist.’

Lane’s memories would prove a little different. ‘In the police, he [Lewis] had occupied the Juvenile Aid Bureau office adjacent to that of the Special Branch where I worked and I saw him most days in passing,’ he records in his memoir,
Trial and Error
. ‘We had shared a beer after work on a number of occasions with other officers, sometimes including Jack Herbert.

‘On one occasion I had been to his [Lewis’s] home for a barbecue attended by twenty or so police and others, with their wives. I knew him to be an intelligent and courteous man …’