12

'Jockey' Smith – Cop Hater

Of all that is sacred to the police, killing one of their own is the cardinal sin. So when an evil little gunman named ‘Jockey’ Smith specialised in attempting to murder police officers in the course of their duties, it was only a matter of time before he would die by the sword.

Born in rural Victoria in 1942, all James Edward Smith wanted to do was become a jockey and as a teenager he became an apprentice to a local trainer. Although still a diminutive man, it wasn’t long before Smith was too heavy and the rides were few. With a passion for horses and the racecourse, Jockey, as he was now known, turned to crime to fund his gambling. And, somewhere along the way, he picked up a seething hatred of police officers.

As a juvenile, Smith chalked up a formidable police record and, by age 19, he was doing his first stretch in ‘big prison’ for shop breaking. It was in Pentridge that he met Ronald Ryan, who would later become infamous as the last person to be hanged in Australia. On the outside Ryan and Smith teamed up and committed burglaries until one night they were caught red-handed; Smith produced an old gun that jammed when he aimed it at police and pulled the trigger.

In 1973 Smith was again saved from murdering a police officer by a faulty gun when he came up from behind on a St Kilda constable who had stopped him and was searching the boot of his car. Smith aimed the gun at the back of the policeman’s head and pulled the trigger but, again, it failed to go off.

Smith fled to Sydney but was soon charged with a series of armed robberies. Miraculously he got bail and was re-arrested in Melbourne two months later on a public beach. This time there was no bail and he was locked up back in Pentridge, pending extradition back to New South Wales to face the armed robbery charges. Smith was in Pentridge less than two days before he used a visitor’s pass to walk out of maximum security unchallenged.

Rather than lay low, Smith decided that he would like to carry out his lifelong ambition of becoming a horse trainer so, under the name of Tom Cummings, as in Tommy Smith and Bart Cummings, he settled in Nowra on the New South Wales south coast and somehow – though it is not clear how – forged a new identity and life for himself as a rural horse trainer.

Incredibly, it was so brazen that it worked. For three years he trained his horses on a small farm and raced them at country meetings, occasionally going to Sydney with an entry in a minor race. But Blind Freddie could tell you that it couldn’t last and, in 1976, he was eventually recognised by a police officer. When confronted, Smith produced a gun and wounded Constable Jerry Ambrose before making off.

In 1977 police alleged that it was Smith who broke into bookmaker Les Tidmarsh’s home and, when interrupted in the middle of the burglary, shot Mr Tidmarsh dead and escaped. When confronted in a phone box in Nowra, Smith held a gun at close range on the arresting officer, Detective Bob Godden, but the officer saved his life by jamming the gun’s firing mechanism by sticking his thumb between the hammer and the breech. At last they had their man.

Smith was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of the bookmaker Tidmarsh and wounding Constable Ambrose. Both of the convictions were thrown out on appeal when Smith’s counsel alleged that police fabricated Smith’s confessions.

Smith was then tried for attempting to murder Detective Godden and was sent to jail for 14 years. But someone had a long memory and the day after he was released from Long Bay in February 1992, as he was returning to his flat near Bondi Beach after taking a stroll with his wife, someone opened up on him with a shotgun at close range in the stairwell of the building, hitting him full blast in the chest, stomach and leg. Miraculously, Jockey survived and within a month was back on the streets.

Not long out of hospital, Jockey Smith was caught shoplifting a steam iron and some cutlery from Grace Brothers at Erina. When confronted in the car park he pulled a gun on the store detective and forced a terrified couple to drive him away at gunpoint. Once safe he fled the car and disappeared. But police knew it would only be a matter of time before he surfaced.

In December 1992, near Daylesford in rural Victoria, local constable Ian Harris noticed a white Ford panel van being driven unnecessarily slowly in an 80kph-limit stretch of highway and checked out the registration. Sure enough, it had been stolen. Constable Harris followed the van until it stopped at the front of the Farmers Arms Hotel in Creswick, where drinkers in the public bar watched as the drama unfolded.

Jockey got out of the van and walked back to where the policeman was sitting in his marked vehicle, talking on the radio. After a quick chat, Harris asked for proof of ownership of the vehicle; Jockey walked over to the van and returned with a pistol and a can of mace, then shoved the gun in the policeman’s stomach.

Smith ordered Constable Harris to hand over his gun but the policeman refused. Smith fired a shot into the ground and screamed at the officer to give him his gun, get out of the car and lay on the bonnet or he would blow him away. Instead, the policeman called to the drinkers in the pub to ring the police for help.

A passing motorist saw what was happening. He pulled up and pushed Smith away from the officer. Smith responded by again shooting into the ground to let them know he wasn’t fooling around. To the cheers of the drinkers in the pub, the motorist jumped back in his car and, with his two little boys sitting in the back, amid a hail of bullets, gunned the car straight at Smith and knocked him down.

Jockey Smith struggled to his feet and pointed the gun point- blank at the brave motorist’s head. the policeman seized the opportunity and pulled his service revolver and emptied it into his chest. Jockey Smith fell to the ground dead.

If you’re ever down Creswick way call in for a cold beer and hear all about the shoot-out at the Farmers Arms Hotel.