Wrongly glamorized?

A job in motorcycle police work looks to some like a charmed existence. But those in the field can tell of near fatal crashes, abusive motorists, and days-long duty away from home.

A stride their gleaming, late-model BMW motorcycles every day, speed cops might seem to live a blissful working life. They might one day ride across the Nullarbor Plain under a clear, blue sky as whales frolic in the Great Australian Bight.

On another day, they might escort an international VIP in his or her motorcade, and then get to meet the dignitary.

And, as a glorious Adelaide summer lingers, “speedies” would many times cruise the city’s idyllic beachfront suburbs on their purring, two-wheeled Beamers.

“You’re out there doing a job, but on a nice day it’s fantastic,” says Gary Rutherford, of SAPOL’s northern motorcycle section. “It’s not really a tough job on those days.”

From the southern motorcycle section, Steve Axon is one who has taken that coveted ride across the Nullarbor Plain on his way to the WA border. “I’d never been before,” he says, “and there I was riding across on a beautiful day watching whales basking in the water.

“It was nothing I’d ever expected to see, and I’m getting paid for it. It’s fantastic.”

Many, outside the ranks of motorcycle cops, likely see this kind of police work as not even a real job.

But do days in the sun and breathtaking scenes of the outback tell the true, or even the whole, picture of life on the bikes? Have the seemingly fortunate few, attached to either of the motorcycle sections, really found Utopia in their careers?

Sgt Peter Cribb has spent the last 38 years as a motorcycle cop. And, today, as the manager of a Southern Motorcycles team, the 58-year-old still loves going to work. He does not tell war stories easily, but those he can tell certainly shatter the image of Utopia on the police bikes.

As he once took a 2am cruise north out of the city along King William Road, a car with its lights out approached from the opposite direction. Its drunk driver had it positioned on the wrong side of the road, and headed straight for Cribb.

To Cribb, the car had only just become visible after it had rounded a bend near the Women’s and Children’s Hospital. With not even seconds to spare, and to save his own life, Cribb swerved into the western gutter, and almost mounted the footpath.

“Your heart stops,” says Cribb. “I didn’t see him until he was around the bend on the wrong side of the road.”

Meanwhile, the drunk driver had continued idly by into the city. Cribb, with his composure regained, chased him into the Festival Theatre precinct with another motorcycle officer. The pair caught up with him but, to bring his lethal driving to a halt, had to pull the keys out of his car.

He would later emerge with a blood-alcohol reading of .2 – four times over the legal limit.

Cribb made that narrow escape from death five years ago. But, for cops on bikes, close calls forever loom. Just last month, as Cribb rode south along West Tce, a driver changed lanes and clipped his pannier bag. The impact was powerful enough to force him off the road.

“Fortunately for me,” says Cribb, “there was a break in the footpath. I went up along the footpath and came back down a driveway. He said: ‘I’m sorry, I just didn’t see you’. But half the pannier bag was missing.”

One of Cribb’s southern colleagues, Glenn Nitschke, had his closest call just west of Ceduna, as he escorted an over-dimension load to the WA border. He and another speed cop had taken up standard positions in front of the load.

That left Nitschke, 44, to ride at slow speed on the wrong side of the road some distance behind his colleague, as on-coming traffic approached. Off the road ahead, the driver of a utility waited for the load and, seemingly, its escorts to pass.

Says Nitschke: “When I was within about 50 metres of him, he decided to come straight back on the road as if he didn’t even see me. It resulted in me manoeuvring my bike right across the other side of the road to avoid a collision.

“It’s happened to me enough times that I want really to forget about it. It has been quite dangerous in those situations.”

But situations of danger and police motorcycle work would seem inseparable. In everything from hail to searing heat, these white-helmeted, leather-clad cops work to enforce road traffic laws across the entire state.

Through enforcement, they aim to reduce, as far as they can, SA’s road fatalities and casualty crashes. That means daily encounters with drunk, speeding and other life-threatening drivers, as speedies manoeuvre them off the roads for, at the least, a warning.

So every shift comes with risk. And, in so many cases, only high-level training and expertise save speed cops from the wrongdoers they seek.

The highly experienced Cribb speaks of ones who fail to see the speedie, turn so as to cut him off, or inexplicably stop. He sees them as simply unpredictable.

“You really have to watch their hands to see what they’re doing,” he says, “because they do it at such a late moment. You’ve got to concentrate.”

Rutherford, 34, describes speedies as “just vulnerable” from every direction. “Unlike in the cars, where you’re cocooned, you don’t feel as if you’d have a second chance,” he says.

“If I get T-boned in the side in a car, as long as it’s not on my side, it’s probably not too bad. But, on a motorbike, it’s just not an option.”

Axon, 37, explains that, “a lot of the time”, speedies ride in drivers’ blind spots. “To see what they’re doing,” he says, “whether they’ve got a seatbelt on, or they’re on a mobile phone.

“We will position ourselves where they can’t see us, but we’re mindful of where we’re riding. You’ve got to be mindful of that.”

The most powerful illustration of the dangers of police motorcycle work came last year, with the tragic death of Senior Constable Bob Sobczak. A husband and father of four, he died in an Adelaide Hills collision in May.

Nitschke, a member of Sobczak’s team, still remembers him with deep sadness. “I saw Bobby there (at the accident scene) within half an hour of him being killed,” he says.

“If I go chase someone, that’s in the back of my mind. Only about four weeks ago I went to chase down a rider who had committed offences of fail to stop and excessive speed. With the speed I was travelling at to get him, I was wondering: ‘Is this (chase) really worth it?’

“Sometimes I’ll bail out. Other times I’ll continue, because every job has a danger. We just have to realize that being up on the motorbike is another danger.”

But the speeds at which some offenders risk their own doom, and that of others, are fearfully excessive. Says Cribb: “Our blokes have had speeds of 170km/h when they have followed and timed them.

“We don’t get into high-speed chases on a regular basis, but there’s nothing preventing them from timing high speeds.”

Southern Motorcycles boss, Inspector Linda Williams, knows well the risks her officers face. As she herself travels both metro and country roads, she sees plenty of errant driving, and “the way people cut bikes off”.

She also comes to hear, through what she calls a good working relationship, the stories of her men’s close calls. But Williams has too much faith in their abilities to worry unduly about their safety.

“I have confidence in them to be able to look after themselves,” she says. “They’re very professional people who are very well trained. They’re confident, and not immature about the way they ride their bikes.

“The key to dangers is to recognize them, and then work through how you can minimize them. I think we on the bikes do that.”

However perilous their work becomes, speedies remain, perhaps inexplicably to some, committed to their work. Attached to one of two teams of 15 officers within each section – northern and southern – they cover vast areas of the state.

Based at Sturt, Southern Motorcycles Section is responsible for six local service areas – Adelaide, Sturt, South Coast, Hills Murray, Riverland and South East. Northern Motorcycles, based at Holden Hill, covers the rest of the state.

From pedestrians to heavy vehicles, officers police every mode of traffic. And, to conduct a country campaign, or escort a wide load from the WA border to NSW, they could spend up to 10 days away from their families.

As well, speedies provide their expertise to other areas within SAPOL, through attachments to such units as Avatar and Operation Vigil.

With civil-disorder training, they also take part in crowd control at protest marches, and assisted their colleagues at the Baxter Detention Centre last month.

Still, at the core of the motorcycle officer’s role, is his constant battle against the common offences of drink-driving, speed, failure to wear seatbelts and mobile phone use.

Available to a speedie are three forms of action – report, arrest and caution. At the end of a seven-day period, he might have taken such action against as many as 70 offending motorists and pedestrians.

“We had an operation on the Southern Expressway,” says Williams. “We had two people out there on 11 occasions in one month (March), and those two people got over 500 TINs (traffic infringement notices).”

The two officers focussed their campaign on speeding drivers and, according to Cribb, deserved great credit. “They worked hard,” he says. “But, bear in mind, it’s not about numbers. It’s about cutting speeds.”

Cribb insists that speed cops are proud to work in their field, and feel personal disappointment when the road toll rises by any number. “Up until seven weeks ago, we were five behind last year’s total of fatals,” he says.

“Then, in two days, there were three killed in one car and two in another, which put us six behind. That’s the most disappointing thing: not reaping the benefits of the hard work we’ve put in.”

Nitschke, who lost his brother to a road accident, picks up on the same theme with the subtly confronting way he describes the speed cop’s core purpose. “It’s making sure that people get home tonight,” he says.

“Be it here or up to the Northern Territory and Western Australian borders, it (our work) is driven by intel. That intel’s purely about people who didn’t get home that night.”

But not every member of the motoring public sees the speedies’ cause as noble. Those hit with fines of hundreds of dollars tend naturally to describe their offences as trifling, and brand the cops as revenue-raisers.

And motorists’ often release their anger through vicious, on-street verbal attacks on the officers who issue them fines. “This is bullshit!” some exclaim. “Why the f--- are you picking on me?” others bellow, “it’s not as if I’ve done anything wrong.”

Moreover, of whatever they stand accused, motorists’ most common response is the denial: “I was wearing my seatbelt,” or “I wasn’t doing that speed.”

Some furious offenders snatch their traffic infringement notices, which they promptly screw up and throw into the gutter.

“You have them in waves,” says Axon. “I had a particular day last month where everyone I spoke to was just rude, totally anti-police and anti what was happening.

“Once I had a gentleman who threw his mobile phone and smashed it to pieces on the road, because I got him in town doing a burnout and not wearing a seatbelt.”

But each speedie knows that whatever form a motorist’s rage takes, it can always turn to physical violence against him. As they work alone, speedies soon learn diplomacy.

Says Cribb: “If it starts looking like you’re going to get belted, you either say nothing, or back down and go back later. You learn to be more tolerant.”

Nitschke suggests that, for motorcycle cops, motorists have a hatred that, in some cases, fades and, in others, endures. He recently discovered the intensity of someone’s hatred for him.

“I moved into a semi-rural area with a small acreage,” he explains, “and had some graffiti, a quasi death threat, on the bitumen. It said: ‘Kill you, pig’.” Outwardly unmoved by either the threat, or its anonymous author, Nitschke has continued to perform his role.

The job might have its unpleasantness – motorists’ rebukes, time away from family, and serious safety hazards – but speedies are not lining up to quit. Little, it seems, could ever inspire them to part with the motorcycle cop’s lifestyle.

The Sobczak death likely caused most to reflect on their positions but, explains Cribb, “you get back and get on with it”.

Williams, too, understands speedies’ strong attachment to the job. “Personally,” she says, “riding a bike in all kinds of weather wouldn’t be something I would look forward to, but they do.

“They love what they do and give 100 per cent of themselves to the job.”