In 2004 I was living in what most people would call a lower-class suburb of Launceston. The houses were mostly old Housing Commission places, weatherboards that had seen better decades, patchy lawns, mismatched cars in driveways, and the occasional couch sitting out on the verge waiting for council cleanup.
It wasn’t glamorous, but it was home.
One afternoon I was sitting in my radio room, doing what I often did, monitoring the radio networks around town. At the time Tasmania Police were still operating their EDACS network, and if you spent enough time listening you started to recognise the different talkgroups and unit types.
The scanner stopped on one of the police talkgroups.
“Tango 55, can you meet Juliet 19 at [my street name] with some tools.”
That immediately caught my attention.
“Tango” units were traffic.
“Juliet” units were the Special Operations Group.
Traffic cops don’t normally meet tactical teams with tools.
I rolled my chair back from the desk and looked out the front window.
Nothing.
The street looked exactly the same as it always did. A couple of parked cars. Someone’s dog barking down the road. Kids’ bikes lying on a lawn.
The radio stayed quiet.
No updates. No chatter. Just silence.
A few minutes passed.
Then suddenly two unmarked police 4WDs came flying up the street. They didn’t slow down much either, they turned hard off the road and drove straight into the front yard of the house next door. Gravel and dirt sprayed as they stopped.
Before the engines had even fully died, doors flew open.
Six SOG officers piled out in full tactical gear and moved fast toward the house. No hesitation. Straight to the front door.
Within seconds they forced entry and disappeared inside.
The whole thing happened so quickly it barely felt real.
At that point I might have been checking a few of the SACPAV UHF High Band frequencies as well. I might have caught a few signal bursts on those frequencies.
But everything there was encrypted. Nothing readable.
Less than two minutes later the scanner stopped again on the main talkgroup.
“Juliet 13, offender secured. House cleared. Charlie units can come up.”
That was it.
Just like that.
Then the rest of the circus arrived.
Marked and unmarked police cars started turning into the street one after another. Detectives. Uniforms. More vehicles than our quiet little street had probably seen in years.
By this point people had come out of their houses to see what was going on. Neighbours stood on their lawns watching. Some were whispering. Others were openly staring.
Meanwhile I was sitting ten metres away in my radio room, having listened to the whole thing unfold before anyone else even knew something was happening.
Later it came out that the guy next door had been dealing in stolen property. Police also had information that he might have firearms in the house, which explained why the tactical team had been sent in.
But the part that stuck with me was just how close it all was.
All of it, the planning, the entry, the arrest, happened less than ten metres from where I was sitting at my desk with a scanner.
One quiet radio transmission. A few minutes of waiting. And suddenly, it was happening next door.
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