Chapter 11

The first arrest

Detective Senior Sergeant Murray Gregor from the Ethical Standards Department, who’d been on the investigation from the start, was the one who knocked on my door at 5.45 a.m. on Friday 5 December 2003. He was accompanied by a bunch of other detectives. I’d been on leave for a week or two and I was due to return to work that day.1 My wife answered the door and led a horde of police officers into the kitchen.

As Murray Gregor handed me the search warrant and read me my rights, alongside the shock was the vague realisation that it was unusual to read someone their rights as soon as you walk through the door. It meant they were going by the book, but they hadn’t even said why they were there.

While Gregor stayed with me, the other detectives began searching my house. They went into my closet and took my police uniforms – taking back police property was a pretty good indicator that their minds were made up before they’d even come in the door. Gregor told me that I was under arrest for conspiracy to commit burglary and theft and conspiracy to traffic a commercial quantity of a drug of dependence.

And all this was done on the word of Terry Hodson.

Arresting me in my own kitchen on an uncorroborated statement from a criminal arrested at the site of the robbery was really bad investigative work. Even from a legal point of view, you can’t convict a co-accused just on the word of someone else charged with the same crime, but that was all they had.

I was taken into the ESD offices at the World Trade Centre and sat opposite Murray Gregor and another detective in an interview room. Gregor fired questions at me suggesting that I’d conspired with Dave Miechel and Terry Hodson to rob the Dublin Street house. I denied all allegations.

While they questioned me, I was asking a set of my own questions in return.

‘We put it to you, Mr Dale, that you…’

‘Who said that? Where did this come from? Someone’s obviously told you this crap,’ I said. ‘Now, if Hodson’s told you this stuff, the only thing I can think of for him to say something like this would be to try and benefit any sort of problems he may have. I don’t know whether he’s got any problems, but… why would they tell you this? Why would they try and say I had any involvement in this whatsoever is—’

I could tell that they were uncomfortable with me pointing out the flaws in their case, not to mention their logic. They looked ill at ease, and it dawned on me that the decision to arrest me had been made well above their pay grade. I think it was also because when I asked for the source of their information, we all knew that there was only one source, and it wasn’t a reliable one.

Around 8.15 a.m., Gregor announced that he was going to suspend the interview.

 

Just after 11 a.m., I was taken to the Melbourne Custody Centre until my appearance with Terry and Dave before a magistrate in the Melbourne Magistrates Court. I never saw Terry, but I was put in a cell with Dave.

My first words were shouted: ‘I know why you’re here, but what the fuck am I doing here?’

‘Dunno,’ he said with a shrug. He wouldn’t look me in the eye, which wasn’t unusual. He let me rant until my fury was spent.

Two cops together in a cell – both of us super-aware that every breath we took, every word we spoke, would be monitored. After my initial rant, we both settled into a silence broken only by small talk.

My anger when I saw Dave in the cell had delayed my reaction to being put in a prison cell. Had Dave not been there for me to yell at, I’d have looked around at the bare concrete walls, the bare concrete seat and the stainless-steel sink and dunny, and panicked. After I calmed down, a delayed response set in. I trembled with terror. In the blink of an eye, my world had turned upside down. I was supposed to lock up crooks, not be locked up.

And despite a long history of locking up crooks, my work with them stopped when their cell doors shut. I had no idea about the other side. Now I was finding out.

 

When I was arrested, my first thought was that I needed Nicola Gobbo – I wanted the best. She handled most of the big drug cases, and I’d been charged with conspiracy to traffic large quantities of drugs – one of the most serious drug charges on the books and one that carried a maximum sentence of life in prison. I rang her from the ESD offices.

As well as Nicola Gobbo, I had access to lawyer Tony Hargreaves, who had the contract with the Police Association; he’d been the preferred police lawyer for twenty years. As much as I knew I needed Nicola Gobbo, I also needed the Police Association to fund my legal case, and Tony Hargreaves had a terrific reputation. I had to try to get bail and get myself out of this situation.

Nicola and Tony met me at the custody centre. Their legal advice was not to make a premature bail application. They said that if bail was refused, it could take months to get another hearing, which meant months in jail. They said we should wait and see what the police case against me was, and then counter it.

Here was I, incarcerated, and the two people I trusted most in the world with my freedom were Nicola and Tony. As difficult as it was, I took their advice, and was remanded into custody at Port Phillip Prison.

The first visitor I had was Nicola, who came as my lawyer. I couldn’t have any other visitors until my visitor list was approved. For the uninitiated, a visitor list has to be compiled and okayed. The prison does a background check on each person on the list, then contacts the police and the people on the list to get their okay as well. The whole process takes time, but a lawyer doesn’t have to go through the process and can come any time. Nicola was a sight for sore eyes in those early days.

She told me that she wanted to represent me. She understood that the Police Association was funding Tony Hargreaves’s work, but that she’d do it pro bono. We both knew that my case was going to be high-profile, and I think Nicola wanted to be a part of that. She offered to work together with Tony Hargreaves as the solicitor, and she’d act as my barrister. Her offer was generous, but it placed me in a dilemma, because I knew that Nicola wasn’t exactly on the Victoria Police Christmas card list on account of her getting bail for all the drug bigwigs. I didn’t know if the Police Association would allow me to use both Tony and Nicola.

As we talked in the prison visitors’ room, Nicola made notes about my bail application to take back to Tony Hargreaves.

 

Ten days in a cell felt like a lifetime.

I was in the Charlotte Unit – Port Phillip’s equivalent of Barwon Prison’s high-security Acacia Unit.

Twenty-three hours a day down. Sitting in a cell with the only light of day coming through a tiny reinforced window that faced a brick wall. I am a physical person. I go to the gym most days. To lock someone like that in a shoebox where you can barely move… You can’t speak to anyone. You can’t go anywhere. Your food is passed through a slot in the door. Your anxiety levels go through the roof. No family. No human contact.

No nothing.

Except walls.

And a boiling kettle. A couple of years earlier, I’d investigated a murder in this very unit. A guard had left a door open, and an inmate had been bashed to death. I knew this kind of thing happened, hence the constant boiling water. If that door opened unexpectedly, I wouldn’t hesitate to throw boiling water at the person who walked through. Permanent fight-or-flight mode. Always on guard. Watching the door. You can’t eat. You can’t sleep. A constant adrenaline rush gives you the jitters. You are hyper-vigilant all the time. I lost ten kilos in those ten days.

You hear other inmates screaming for your blood, threatening to hurt you, threatening to kill you.

‘Dale? Dale?’

‘You’re a fuckin’ dog!’

‘We’re gonna kill you.’

‘Dale? Dale?’

I never answered.

 

When I was granted bail on 15 December 2003, Tony Hargreaves presented me with a $10,000 bill for his services. I paid with money I’d borrowed from Mum and Dad. I’d be reimbursed if the Police Association took on my case.

That’s why I decided not to use Nicola Gobbo as my only lawyer. The Police Association didn’t take on just any member’s case. There’s a whole set of criteria that need to be filled before you make an application. You have to appear before a panel of Police Association executives. You have to sign a waiver and promise to be candid in your responses. The panel examines the case against you, questions you, and then makes a decision if the case against you has merit.

So in other words, if they thought you were guilty, they wouldn’t fund your case.

I followed this process and the Police Association agreed to fund my case. Their decision was a huge lift to me – it meant that a jury of my police peers had read the brief and come to the same conclusion: that the case against me had no merit.

Though I made the decision to go with the Police Association and use Tony Hargreaves and whatever barrister he chose, I explained to Tony that I’d continue to seek Nicola Gobbo’s legal advice. He was fine with that, and Nicola was happy too.

So began my formal representation with Tony and my informal, but equally valued, legal representation with Nicola Gobbo. The biggest difference between the two was that Tony was always official and businesslike. My relationship with Nicola was very different. We’d catch up for a chat and she was always available for advice. That was the way she operated.

Navigating the minefield of legalese was made easier by having Nicola as an interpreter. She was happy to sit at a cafe over coffee and give me examples of other cases that might have a bearing on mine. I found her counsel incredibly valuable. She’d also prove valuable as a sounding board after all the hearings that I’d eventually attend. Another thing she did was discuss the legal ramification of what was being said about me in the press.

Right from the start, the media picked up on the corrupt cop story, and they never let it go. What I found unbelievable was that the media could create an impression of guilt so easily with the phrases they chose: disgraced ex-detective; allegedly corrupt policeman; Detective X; former detective Paul Dale, accused of…

Nicola feared her office was bugged, so she never met any of her clients there. Because we always met at restaurants and coffee shops, the police would later put a spin on our relationship, saying that it wasn’t a legal one because of the places we met, but Nicola met all her clients like that. We never caught up just for social reasons; there was always a legal reason for our meetings, although in time we became friends, and part of our conversations would be informal.

Later, I’d be charged with talking to her about the Australian Crime Commission hearings, on the grounds that she wasn’t my lawyer, but I was certainly under the impression that she was acting as my lawyer. I’d been seeking her legal advice pro bono from the day I was arrested.