When cops go bad

In a big country town cops tend to stick together. They share rented homes, support local sports clubs and drink in the same pubs. They share tragedies and triumphs and in the good districts newbies benefit from the experience of the station elders.

Police union boss says crooks who target cops 'must be trying to kill'

Fleeing suspects who ram occupied police cars or police on foot should be charged with attempted murder, Police Association Secretary Ron Iddles says.

Was Badness Born Bad?

Sadly the true crime shelves in most bookshops are inhabited by paperbacks of dubious quality containing cliche-ridden chapters on reheated topics. I should know as I have written many of them.

When murder acquittal brings peace to no one

How do you tell grieving parents they will never find justice and there will be no last minute miracles? How do you tell the honest and the decent that life is unfair, that logic doesn't always work and prayers can go unanswered?

There is one point where the Pell cheerleaders are right

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Is there a more polarising figure in Australia than Cardinal George Pell?

Naked City's plan to save the world

And so the angry, the nasty, the easily manipulated and the stupid head to foreign suburbs looking for what they think they have been denied.

The mental toll of the road toll

Peter Bellion has saved the lives of hundreds he has never met and observed the death of thousands he couldn't help. Perhaps that is why he fought the signs the job he loved was eating him alive.

Who's who in the criminal zoo

For a time the elite Purana Gangland Taskforce had its own office pet - a mature-age yabby found in a Castlemaine dam and kept in a 25-litre glass receptacle previously used to produce amphetamines.

Mafia v African gangs: And the winner is?

Just a few weeks ago, a group of not-so-sharp African lads armed with blunt weapons pulled over an Italian fellow in a German car. This proved to be a strategic blunder as the gent, one of Melbourne's biggest Mafia figures, responded not with the keys but with a handgun secreted on his person.