Policing Australia’s wild and often unpredictable regional areas comes with unique challenges, and officers need to be resourceful when backup is hours away.
Mark Tregellas is one of Victoria’s most experienced regional police officers. He spent decades tackling intense criminal situations in remote areas without backup.
Ex-cop Tregellas recounts violent regional scenarios and how he overcame them on the Crime Insiders podcast:
Crime Insiders: Detectives host Brent Sanders said, “I can’t imagine what it’s like to be on your own and backup is an hour to three hours, because that’s basically not backup at all, is it?”
To compensate for a lack of support and specialist teams, Tregellas said police would carry extra equipment in the back of their four-wheel drives.
“We would have ration packs, cooking gear, camping gear, because there’s a possibility that you may go out on a job and suddenly you’re there for the night,” he said.
When Tregellas worked in coastal regions, he would take another bag with a face mask, wetsuit and fins.
“We would carry better first aid kits and hiking gear. At some stages I was actually carrying ropes and rappelling equipment”.
Tregellas drew from his military training to use specialist equipment and in some scenarios, “without having it, I wouldn’t have been able to have done the job,” he said.
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