Ben Harvey: Why new Federal police assistant commissioner Pryce Scanlan is as hard-nosed as they come

Cops working for State police forces have always been contemptuous of the Australian Federal Police. WA Police are particularly dismissive of the shiny bums headquartered in Canberra. The local cops argue, correctly, that AFP officers usually don’t have the on-the-street experience that is forced upon a WAPOL constable. State detectives spend years walking the beat, working snitches and kicking doors before they are allowed to put on a suit and tie and solve big-ticket crimes. The argument goes that time in the gutter is invaluable because it lets you get inside the heads of crims and understand what makes them tick. The Feds spend far less time on the street before they begin their detective work so don’t have that understanding. That doesn’t make them cream puffs, mind. I saw the AFP riot squad in action on Christmas Island about 10 years ago when asylum seekers had overrun the detention centre. It wasn’t cream puffs firing tear gas and storming the gates on those nights in the jungles. Having said that, it’s fair to say most AFP officers haven’t been spat on at 3am while breaking up a drunken fight in places such as Northbridge and King’s Cross and so I get where the State cops are coming from. The bloke just put in charge of the AFP’s western region is neither a shiny bum nor a cream puff. He was so good at locking up crooks they put a $50,000 bounty on his head. More on that later. I first met Pryce Scanlan more than 20 years ago when he was a detective in Fremantle. I knew of him because he was one of the infamous “Drug Squad Six” that dominated headlines in the late 1990s. Scanlan and five other detectives were stood down in June 1998 after an investigation by the Anti-Corruption Commission, which was the forerunner of today’s Corruption and Crime Commission. The ACC reckoned drug squad officers stole money during an April 1997 raid on the Nollamara home of two drug addicts. The claim was based on evidence of the drug addicts, who were, not surprisingly, found to be less than credible witnesses (a National Crime Authority analyst later described their evidence as the most remarkable example of inconsistent and unreliable testimony he had ever seen). That didn’t stop the ACC finding Scanlan and three others guilty of criminal conduct, serious improper conduct and improper conduct. Nor did it stop Police Commissioner Bob Falconer standing the detectives down under the Schedule 8 process (which is the formal way of saying “we think you’re dodgy but we can’t prove it”). Long story short, the cops got their jobs back and in most cases were instantly promoted, with Scanlan’s career in particular going from strength to strength. Sidenote: In a classic example of “three degrees of Perth” Scanlan’s lawyers were John Quigley (now WA Attorney-General) and Malcolm McCusker (former WA Governor) while the Director of Public Prosecutions who decided not to take the case to court was John McKechnie (now CCC commissioner). Pryce was made officer-in-charge of the Fremantle tactical investigation group. Each police district had a TIG squad back then. They were all about “proactive” detective work. Instead of waiting for the crime to happen and then trying to solve it, the TIG units would go out and make their own trouble. If you have watched the crime drama The Wire, think of Jimmy McNulty’s detective team. By the end of the 1990s Fremantle wasn’t quite Baltimore but between the Rebels bikie gang, the local chapter of the Coffin Cheaters and the Italian mafia (yes, it did and still does operate over here) there was enough crime to keep Scanlan and his crew very busy. “When I was there you had organised crime groups meeting on the Cappucino Strip. People knew who they were. There were always rumours about the types of activities these people were involved in but nobody had a real good look at them”. Operation Gucci targeted the Rebels, who had quietly become a dominant underworld force in Freo. “They took over Metropolis nightclub. You walked in and they had a corner and established themselves in it. I think they believed they owned Fremantle and could do whatever they liked.” In 2001 Rebels WA boss Rick Roberts and bikies Shane Lehman, Errol Munro, Simon Jones and Karl Labrook were arrested and sent to jail. A year later Operation Vendetta saw gangsters Dominic Urbano and Santo Mantegna put away and over the course of 2003 and 2004 Operation Kiwi successfully targeted Paolo Sinagra-Brisca and courier Mario Noto. “We knew we were going to upset people because they had been left alone for so long.” Some people were clearly more upset than others because there was soon a $50,000 contract on Scanlan’s head. The West Australian reported that news on the front page but never named the officer or revealed details of who was after him. “Police consider the death threat to be real and that at least one hitman has agreed to carry out the killing,” the report stated. “I first found out from a knock on my door from a senior officer who said, ‘You’ve got to get out of your house’. It came from the Italian side. They took offence at being pulled over all the time. A lot of them don’t go hands-on but there are times when they need to so they need to be lucky every day of their life. We just need to be in a position that day to be able stop and search and find the product in the car.” Scanlan was State Crime Commander — one of the most senior ranks at WA Police — when the AFP sounded him out about becoming Assistant Commissioner Western Command. He had a running start thanks to his experience running WA Police’s counterterrorism unit — a role that required extensive collaboration with Australian Border Force, Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission and the AFP. The crimes he is targeting are drugs and child abuse and he reckons the key to the success lies across the oceans. “I see the work that’s being done offshore. Nobody sees that. We should be doing everything we possibly can in respect of information sharing and building capacity offshore to make sure those law enforcement partners have access to the very best technology to support us in the first instance.” He’s no cream puff and no shiny bum.