Since 1950, nearly 80 Victorian police officers have died while on duty. While most were accidents involving vehicles, there are a handful who were killed by offenders. Gary Silk and Rodney Miller were two such cases. The two officers were shot and killed on Cochranes Road, Moorabbin, early on August 16, 1998, after intercepting a car that was believed to be linked to a string of hold-ups that had taken place at restaurants and small businesses across Melbourne’s suburbs.
The shooting, which has turned into one of the state’s longest-running legal sagas, took an unexpected turn this week when Jason Roberts, one of two convicted in 2002 for the murder of the two officers, was allowed to walk free after being acquitted by a jury.
Jason Roberts walks out of custody for the first time in more than two decades after being acquitted of murder.Credit:Jason South
Doubts over the case against Roberts began nearly a decade ago, when he told respected homicide detective Ron Iddles that while he was guilty of 10 armed robberies, he was not at the scene of the shooting with Bandali Debs, who was also convicted for the shootings.
Four years later, those doubts were exacerbated by concerns over the way investigators gathered statements from the police officers who spoke with the dying Miller at the scene of the shooting. Those concerns were investigated by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission, which found in 2020 that while it could not substantiate the primary allegation that a statement made by a first responder at the murder scene contained a false account of the events, it did find that some members of the Lorimer taskforce, which was in charge of investigating the shooting, “engaged in a range of improper evidentiary and disclosure practices”.
In essence, IBAC found that police officers were omitting descriptions of offenders from initial witness statements and recording it elsewhere until a suspect had been identified, and it could be
determined whether the witness’s description matched the suspect. It also found that officers were omitting relevant information from a witness statement which they considered to be incorrect or unreliable on the basis of other evidence in the possession of police.
A detective sergeant on the Lorimer taskforce, who was instrumental in compiling the final brief, admitted to IBAC that he had corrected major discrepancies between police witness statements by speaking to the officers involved.
Several months later, that finding led the Court of Appeal to grant Roberts a retrial.
It is not for The Age to question the verdict. But that does not mean it cannot have sympathy for the murdered police officers’ families. Court reporter Adam Cooper described how Miller’s widow, Carmel Arthur, gasped and hung her head when the verdict was read out and Silk’s brother, Peter, wept and held his head in his hands. An emotional police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton said he was gutted by the verdict. At a human level, that is understandable. It was a tragic loss of life for two men doing their job.
It is also true that justice has been served. The IBAC inquiry raised enough doubt over the way police managed the investigation of the shooting to give Roberts a second chance at proving his innocence. In an interim response to the IBAC report, Victoria Police committed last year to “addressing policy and training, and resetting the expectations on statement taking and disclosure”. It also made clear “that failure to act in accordance with the expectations is likely to result in misconduct or corruption allegations”.
The murder of two police officers is a crime of the highest order. Protecting those who protect us must be one of society’s highest priorities. But it can never come at the cost of compromising how we investigate and prosecute those who are accused of such terrible crimes.
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