Book Bite: A Woman of Force

The police force can be a tough place for a woman, but Detective Superintendent Deborah Wallace rose to the top with grace, humour and an iconic sense of style. In her incredible 36-year career with NSW Police, Wallace took on murderers and drug suppliers, and dismantled the state's most nefarious gangs.

In Wallace's official biography, A Woman of Force, veteran crime writer MARK MORRI brings to life the jaw-dropping true story of a police trailblazer and woman of force. Read the first chapter in this exclusive online extract.

It was just another day for Detective Superintendent Deborah Wallace. The boss of the NSW gang squad dressed for work as normal, in a bright yellow dress and cream high heels.

Today would see the culmination of months of work and weeks of planning. If everything went as expected, today would see the end of the violent street bikie gang known as the Nomads.

It was mid-2014. Deb had spent the first few months of the year trying to get inside the mindset of the bikie gangs. She had an expert team around her: a tough, handpicked group of young cops called Strike Force Raptor. Raptor was a force to be reckoned with, and was despised by the bikie gangs, many of which had been brought into line by this brutally efficient unit.

Raptor had been formed in response to the growing presence of outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs) in Sydney. A bloody feud the year before between the Hells Angels and the Comancheros had left one gang member dead and resulted in a number of tit-for-tat drive-bys and kneecappings. The bikies were shooting it out all over Sydney, literally, threatening public safety and leaving bodies in the street. It was Raptor’s job to restore order.

While several gangs had already been brought to heel, another prominent bikie gang, the Nomads, were becoming a big problem. Although only small in number, they were becoming increasingly menacing and visible.

When a young man having a drink with his girlfriend was nearly stabbed to death by a known criminal for no apparent reason, and police intelligence said the most likely culprit was a member of the Nomads, Deb Wallace knew it was time to act.

Whether it was luck, good timing or simply being in the right place at the right time, Wallace was handed a new weapon against the bikies: the NSW Consorting Laws.

These laws state that no two people who have been convicted of an indictable offence can consort, or even communicate via phone or Facebook. These new laws, combined with the muscle of Raptor, were to prove a deadly combination for the bikies, and the first fatality was the Nomads.
The Nomads were stirring up trouble. They openly flouted the consorting laws by sitting in groups wearing their colours. They bashed people and were a menace. They intimidated restaurant owners for free meals and protection money, more commonly known as extortion. The Nomads were also particularly fond of obtaining fraudulent bank loans, corrupting real estate agents and solicitors along the way. The money they got from those activities financed the big money-spinner – the distribution of illegal drugs.

At Deb’s disposal were the toughest and perhaps the meanest young cops in town. The guys from Raptor were fit, tough, enthusiastic and armed to the teeth. They had shown time and time again that they would not be intimidated by bikies.

But Deb was looking for a different angle to attack the bikies from. It was a junior officer who had the lightbulb moment: go for their clubhouses, where they have their parties.

It was brilliant and simple. Clubhouses are at the heart of bikie club culture. Members of OMCGs spend hundreds of thousands of dollars fitting them out. They have elaborate bars, pinball machines and often dancing poles for strippers. They attend regular ‘church nights’ in their clubhouses, where members pay $50 or so to drink beer and watch strippers.

Raptor found a 1943 piece of legislation called the Restricted Premises Act, originally aimed at shutting down sly grog shops, and used this to smash the bikies’ clubhouses.Used with the consorting laws, it was a double whammy against the bikies, shutting their clubs and also charging them with consorting at the premises.

Firmly in Raptor’s sights was the Nomads’ brand-new clubhouse at Wetherill Park. The gang had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars doing it up after their other club at Girraween had been shut down. Their motto was emblazoned out the front: ‘Nomads forever, forever Nomads’.

The message was clear: they were going to keep on meeting, no matter what the law said. They didn’t give a stuff about the new laws and naively thought they would get away with continuing on with business as usual.

The arrogance of this only spurred on Deb and her crew. They were out to make a statement and send a message, not just to the Nomads but to all bikies, that the new boss, Deb Wallace, was going after them in ways they had not encountered before.

On 29 January 2015, the Nomads were getting ready for their usual Friday ‘church night’ in their new clubhouse.

Ten kilometres away, Deb Wallace and her trusted advisers were briefing a team of 40. Raptor officers, dog squad and local police all prepared to swarm the clubhouse and arrest the members for consorting, selling booze without a licence, failing to get proper approval from council ... anything they could possibly be charged with.

As the 20-odd bikies got ready to party, Raptor officers pulled on their balaclavas and breached the warehouse. The raid was run along the lines of a military operation. They had to be combat-ready – after all, there were convicted killers in the group, and they were probably armed.

But in the end, faced with guns in their faces, the bikies surrendered meekly. They were all laid down outside the clubhouse on their stomachs, with plastic ties around their wrists.

The raid was filmed and photographed by the NSW police media unit, and the images of those tough bikies being totally dominated by their nemesis became iconic.

Once all was secured, Wallace went over to admire her team’s handiwork, taking great satisfaction in seeing these violent thugs humiliated. The message was clear: Raptor was not going to let them run around intimidating the public any longer.

In many ways, that raid ended the Nomads as a force in the Sydney bikie world. But the Gangbuster, as Deb would come to be known, was just warming up.

Extract from A Woman of Force by Mark Morri, published by Pan Macmillan.