Like Dezi Freeman’s victims, I made life and death decisions daily. They never leave you

April 3, 2026 — 8:30am

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Until very recently, I was a police officer. I served on the frontline at busy stations in central Melbourne and the northern suburbs. It is an incredible job. On any given day, you have no idea what you might be confronted with. As I was told on my first day at the academy, you have a front-row seat for the greatest show on earth – humanity itself. When something goes wrong, it’s police we call on. And the variety of things that go wrong in our world is staggering.

Life or death decisions are part of the job. For Vadim and Neal, the officers who attended Dezi Freeman’s address at Porepunkah last August, a “routine” task led to their own deaths and each officer knows that could happen at any time. I confronted my own mortality the day I chose to engage a man who had shot at and then stabbed his partner. I feared he would finish the job and kill her, so I decided to move towards him rather than wait for negotiators. I convinced him to drop his weapons, and managed to rescue her. The victim thanking me for saving her life will be with me forever.

It can be the best job in the world, and the worst job, sometimes in one day. Unfortunately, this life can take a severe toll on those of us who have chosen it.

At its worst, the stress of the job left me overwhelmed by nightmares. For some, their nightmares relive the same incident over and over. In my case, each nightmare was unique. They were incredibly realistic, and in most I was........

© Brisbane Times