Three Australian detectives toured D.C.’s cold case squad Monday hoping to learn, and to teach their Yankee counterparts how things are done Down Under.
Victoria Police Detective Sgt. Mick Daly and Detectives Tim Moreland and Russell Sheather were on a three-city tour of the U.S. to examine how Americans handle homicide investigations. The trio came to D.C. because, as Sheather said, “you’ve got a reasonable crime rate.”
The Melbourne detectives all said they were surprised at how much red tape trips up American investigations.
“We can’t understand that there’s a police force for everything,” Sheather said.
Where the U.S. has some 9,000 police agencies, each of the eight Australian states has its own police force that investigates every homicide in its jurisdiction.
“It’s a lot simpler our way,” Moreland said.
It’s also a lighter caseload. Sheather said that there were only about 80 homicides in all of Victoria state last year.
D.C. — with about one-fifth of Victoria’s population — has already seen 117 homicides this year.
“We have a hell of lot less gun deaths,” Daly said.
The group met D.C. Detective Jim Trainum at a symposium in New Orleans last week and decided to follow up with a visit to the capital.
All three Aussies said they were impressed with how committed U.S. agencies were to their specialized case bureaus, like the cold case squad. Victoria State disbanded its cold case squad about three years ago.
“Obviously cold case is something that you’re well and truly ahead of,” Sheather said. “That’s probably one of our big pushes to get them to try and understand that it’s a worthwhile process.”
