True blue Dawson rules the state

When Chris Dawson signed up to be a Western Australian police cadet as a fresh-faced teenager in 1976, the unsolved execution-style murder of Perth brothel madam Shirley Finn was casting a shadow over the force he would lead decades later

So strong were rumours of police involvement in the shooting a year earlier, that a royal commission into prostitution – followed by an ombudsman’s inquiry – gave the once over lightly to allegations of vice squad detectives taking bribes.

One officer, Det. Sgt. Bernard Bromilow Johnson, was asked to explain how he could afford to own and maintain a sizeable yacht and several properties.

The superficial line of questioning was a cakewalk for the seasoned copper.

The Finn homicide inquiry hit a brick wall and Mr Dawson was hardly surprised.

“I saw some stuff as a young bloke which made me think we can’t keep going down this track,” Mr Dawson told Business News.

“I am confident it’s a very different police force than when I graduated.”

In one of his final interviews before being sworn in as WA’s 34th governor on July 15, the police commissioner looked back on a 46-year career culminating in his stewardship of the state through a global pandemic.

The defining moment of that unprecedented operation came at precisely 12.45pm on March 15, 2020.

Then emergency services minister Fran Logan signed a document which vested control of WA to Mr Dawson as the State Emergency Coordinator.

“It was the very first time that WA had declared a state of emergency,” Mr Dawson said.

“It had quickly emerged we would need to close borders and create emergency measures under the (Western Australia Emergency Management) Act.

“I didn’t appreciate we’d still be dealing with it more than two years later.”

In the initial months of the pandemic, the team around Mr Dawson, 63, often worked 20-hour days and sometimes slept inside police headquarters.

At times, the commissioner would blow a whistle and insist on leading a quick exercise session.

He was overseeing the most consequential and stressful challenge of his law enforcement life.

His leadership abilities were paramount but they had not always come naturally to him.

“One of the most simple things in leadership that I had to learn out of my own mistakes was about delegating and trusting people,” Mr Dawson said.

“I had a bit of a reputation for being a perfectionist.

"I wanted to finish my briefs exactly right, and I found that I would be doing most of my squad’s work and this wasn’t developing people in the team.

“So, I had to learn how to delegate.”

There were controversies and contradictions along the pandemic management road.

A glaring example came in mid-2020, when notorious bikie gang member Troy Mercanti was granted bail and allowed to fly interstate for an associate’s funeral at a time when families were unable to farewell loved ones.

“I take responsibility for that as police commissioner,” Mr Dawson said at the time. “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Paradoxically, a 28-year-old woman, who hid on a truck to cross the border into WA without an exemption, was jailed for six months soon after the Mercanti incident.

By the end of 2021, 64 people were given prison sentences in WA for failing to comply with quarantine orders.

Whenever a sentence was appealed, the Supreme Court found it to be too excessive.

Mr Dawson believes he and his officers got the balance right during a time of extremities and says the overall success of managing the pandemic came down to common sense rather than full force.

Chris Dawson on the steps of the District Court after the Claremont serial killer was convicted. 

He even drew on the principles of British policing pioneer Sir Robert Peel.

“Policing by consent,” Mr Dawson said.

“The way we applied this during the pandemic was to have the community come with us.

“When we had to implement measures, for example wearing a mask, I said to my officers I’d rather give out a mask rather than give out a fine.

"I’d seen it happen in other parts of the world where the community got offside.”

For example, he and others very deliberately wanted to keep Perth beaches open because they knew closing them down might trigger a loss in community cooperation.

Mr Dawson also credits the persistent messaging, which occurred at daily press conferences, for bringing the public along.

He said people felt invested in the entire pandemic response because every decision affected their way of life. It was no accident, he argued, that WA made it through the worst of this state of emergency.

“I’m ruthlessly apolitical, I have to be,” he said.

“I have worked under Labor, Liberals and Nationals at state and federal levels. I don’t really care what cloth they come from politically. It’s about building productive relationships with people.”

He found the team of bureaucrats and politicians on the frontline of the pandemic to be consistent and highly professional.

“From the premier down, politically, you can have straight conversations,” Mr Dawson said.

“You can ask and be asked probing questions.

"I mean the gloves were off. It was a robust environment to work in, but there was a trusted relationship where we knew each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”

At the time of writing, the pandemic had resulted in almost a million cases of COVID-19 in WA and about 400 people had died with the virus.

By comparison, Victoria has experienced 2.1 million positive cases, but the number of deaths is nearing 4,000.

Mr Dawson said the need to keep WA’s mining sector operating through COVID influenced the state’s strict approach to keeping the virus out.

“There were a whole range of competing pressures,” he said.

“We had to provide ways and means of keeping the economy running while balancing the tragic personal situations in a manner that permitted.

“I had to do it within the boundaries of the public health advice saying if you have more than 10 people at a funeral, you’ll run the risk of a super spreader event.”

He then posed his own question.

“Do I have any regrets about the way we managed it? Honestly, I can’t think of any regrets,” he said.

As a way of playing devil’s advocate, Business News asked whether the amount of effort which went into allowing interstate football games to continue, despite blanket rules preventing people visiting or saying goodbye to dying friends and relatives, bothered him?

“This is not an excuse, but I and others around the table had to rely on the public health advice,” Mr Dawson said.

“I can’t override a medical practitioner and say just let these people through.

“We were dealing with a highly infectious virus.”

Path to the force

Becoming a policeman was a spur of the moment decision for the commissioner.

He wanted to do something dynamic and interesting as soon as he finished high school.

He was not following in his father’s footsteps, but unbeknown to the young constable walking the beat, being a copper was in his blood.

“I didn’t know back then my great, great grandfathers were some of the original police officers of the state,” the commissioner said.

In 1830, Elijah Dawson arrived in WA with Captain John Molloy, after the pair had fought together in the Battle of Waterloo.

A young senior constable, Chris Dawson became a policeman for the variety and challenges.

Sworn in as a constable at Augusta, Elijah served until 1848.

He even survived an Aboriginal spearing before turning his hand to farming a property near Busselton.

That heritage continues through Mr Dawson’s policeman son, who can rely on his father’s lifetime of experience as he now walks the so-called thin blue line.

“The worst situation I encountered as a young officer was the first fatal shooting I was called to,” Mr Dawson said.

“It was, in fact, an officer I’d worked with who had taken his own life. It was graphic, but I had to deal with the family at the time. I was 19.”

Back in the day, having a few beers at the end of a shift was the only accepted method of coping with such a confronting incident.

Mr Dawson saw so many colleagues self-medicating with alcohol.

“I just found that to be the rough and tumble of policing,” he said.

“That’s obviously been proven as not a good way of dealing with it.”

But it’s not always about the dark side and grim outcomes.

In the early hours of November 3 last year, Mr Dawson received an astonishing late night phone call. Four-year-old Cleo Smith – snatched from her campsite tent north of Carnarvon 18 days earlier – had been located alive.

The word miracle has been used many times since and a number of WA police officers, including their boss, shed a tear that day.

“You wouldn’t be human if after 18 days you thought that beautiful little girl will be found alive and rescued in the manner she was,” he said.

“You’re pretty well a robot if you’re not going to be affected by that.”

He paid tribute to the first officers to attend the scene.

One was a recent police academy graduate and, together with other officers, they made a quick decision to treat the campsite as a protected forensic area rather than just assume Cleo had wandered off in the night.

He also revealed he knew kidnapper Terence Kelly was a target of the investigation some hours before police stopped the Carnarvon man in his car and raided the house where Cleo had been kept.

“We knew a few hours beforehand and had some intelligence that pointed at the person who ended up pleading guilty,” Mr Dawson said.

“We had very, very good grounds to go and execute a warrant.”

It was not the first time Mr Dawson had been close to an emotion-charged and high-profile child abduction case. In 2011, he was deputy police commissioner when WA officers played a major role in a sting operation to trap and arrest the murderer of 13-year-old Queensland boy Daniel Morecombe.

Undercover police created a scenario where the man suspected of killing Daniel in 2003, Brett Peter Cowan, believed he was being recruited into an organised crime gang run from WA by a Mr Big.

In order to win the boss’ approval, Cowan had to reveal any outstanding crimes.

He had long been a suspect in the teenager’s disappearance, so the gang demanded Cowan confess, and he did.

The hapless killer even led the gang to Daniel’s remains believing they would get rid of the evidence for good.

“Brett Cowan, the evil murderer that he is, was basically hosted by us in that very elaborate operation,” Mr Dawson said.

“When the team rang from Queensland to say he’s confessed and led us to the spot where he left Daniel, I unashamedly say that brought a tear to my eye.”

Being able to stand on the steps of the District Court building in 2020, to address the media the day Claremont serial killer Bradley Robert Edwards was finally brought to justice, is another moment in time the commissioner will hold dear.

“That Macro investigation was a culmination of 500 or 600 officers over a 20-year period all doing their bit,” he said.

“I’ve got great confidence that the WA Police Force is well positioned to tackle these sorts of crimes again.

“There are footprints and methodologies which get left behind now and we didn’t have those tools available to us 20 years ago.”

He describes being a police officer as a calling which demands you grow up fast.

“You never know what you’re going to do from one day to the next,” he said.

“You see people at their very best and their very worst and everywhere in between.

"I find humour is a pretty good leveller when you’re dealing with some fairly exacting issues.

“If ever there’s a chance to have a bit of a laugh, then do it.”

Before returning to WA as police commissioner in 2017, Mr Dawson spent almost five years running the powerful Australian Crime and Intelligence Commission.

He was the state commander in charge of security and counterterrorism when Perth hosted the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in 2011.

He told Business News he would have considered renewing his contract as commissioner, but when the governor’s position was offered to him, he knew it was the right time to leave.

Next week, Mr Dawson and his wife, Darrilyn, will be finding their way around the corridors of the 159-year-old Government House, where they will put their stamp on the role of the Queen’s representative in WA.

“I know it sounds cliched, but it’s a humbling and privileged opportunity to actually advocate for the state,” Mr Dawson said.

“I’m passionate about WA.”

Given his powerful apology to indigenous peoples in 2018, it would come as no surprise if the new governor leveraged the standing of his office to advocate for even greater support of Aboriginal causes.

“I would like to say sorry to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples for our participation in past wrongful actions that have caused immeasurable pain and suffering,” Mr Dawson said during a NAIDOC week speech.

“As the legislated protectors of Aboriginal people, police played a significant role in contributing to a traumatic history, which continues to reverberate today.”

The historic apology address was recognised by Police Minister Paul Papalia in parliament recently, when thanking the commissioner for his decades of service.

“Commissioner Dawson has remained committed to building and investing in his relationship with Aboriginal people and was instrumental in developing the Aboriginal Police Advisory Forum,” Mr Papalia said.

Mr Dawson said he was preparing for “change of pace” and the unlikelihood of any dramatic 1am telephone calls, which will befall his good friend and replacement, Col Blanch.

“I’m sure I will miss the dynamics of policing,” he said.

“I am privileged to have been in the position I’ve been in at this moment in time.

"Policing was put under the spotlight, and it delivered. I credit this to the team around me.

“Had it not been for that situation I don’t think I am naïve enough to think I would have been considered for the role. Sometimes serendipity visits you.”

Before the interview wound up, Mr Dawson volunteered another anecdote about the Shirley Finn murder case.

He used to keep a framed copy of the reward poster on his police headquarters office wall in the 1990s, before Bob Falconer ended his time as police commissioner.

“He came into my office once and asked me why that was up there,” Mr Dawson said with a glint in his eye.

“I told him I’d put it there as a reminder of the police force I wanted to have.