On the beat: Superintendent Scott Tanner takes Fairfax Media on the road in New England

His entire career as a police officer has been on the beat, manning the trucks, as a general duties officer.

Thousands of domestics, car accidents, police chases, street patrols – you name it, he’s lost count of the number of times he’s done it.

“Every shift of my entire life has been in general duties,” he says as we hit the New England Highway from Armidale to Glen Innes.

“My whole philosophy is ‘what can I do as a commander to support the service delivery, those car crews who are the frontline officers, the first response, the first on the scene’.

“But I love it, just the diversity. Every job is different, and you have the ability to make a difference, and that is an important job.”

And despite taking on the top job of New England, he’s still on the beat. Whether it’s responding to an emergency, a dangerous driving complaint or leading the manhunt to catch wanted men. 

He knows he hasn’t seen it all. Like in the first few weeks in the job in Moree, dealing with some of the associated issues fuelling crime he came across a six-year-old boy who had learnt to roll his own cigarettes.

“It managed his stress,” he says, still flabberghasted.

“You know, we have to do something to help that child, he’s six and people think that is ok because ‘it manages his stress’, well I’m sorry, that is not ok.”

Tanner has four passions in the job, four areas that he wants to focus on – areas that he said will make a difference in every aspect of policing. 

Domestic violence, road trauma, drug supply and of course property crime – all issues he says have devastating impacts on communities and loves ones, and incidents that tear families apart.

“Locking people up doesn’t fix the situation, I’m the first to say it,” he says.

“Police are here to prevent and disrupt crime, prevention and disruption, and whether it’s intervention on a family level or with government departments and police, we have to get to the root causes of the issues to stop the offending otherwise people just get back out and re-offend.

“If there is an order that we can use to to restrict that behaviour, then we will use it to make them comply, or we’ll put them before the court.”

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He first joined the force in 1993 as a 19-year-old, heading straight to the Goulburn academy and graduated later that year.

His first posting was in Newcastle and Wallsend before deployments up the coast to Grafton and Nymbodia, including as a lock-up keeper – or the town’s only officer – and something that said taught him leadership and confidence in the job. A job he said “where there is no escaping work, because the community own’s you”.

In 2001, he went bush, crossing the Great Dividing Range where he has remained ever since.

He spent two years in Manilla before becoming a sergeant in 2003 in Gunnedah. From 2008 to 2014 he was based in Coonabarabran and was promoted to Inspector while he was there before moving to Dubbo.

It was in Dubbo that he was made an acting Superintendent for almost two years before the rank was made permanent and he was asked by the NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller to take up the reins of New England – a phonecall he says he won’t forget.

In the command – or district as its known after a re-engineering process last year – there are just over 250 officers, covering about 53,500 hectares – an area bigger than Switzerland and Norway.

Under the police district, he oversees 22 police stations stretching from Uralla, north to the Queensland border and west to Mungindi, taking in towns like Bingara, Warialda, Boggabilla, Moree, Glen Innes, Tenterfield and Inverell.

And, after 17 years on the bush beat, Tanner wouldn’t have it any other way.

“We’re going to start a recruitment drive,” he said.

“Places like Moree have been hard to attract police previously but the re-engineering model puts officers-in-charge of communities, the places where they live, so they’re part of that town.

“And this re-engineering will allow that because with it comes new resources like the Domestic Violence High-Risk Team as well as the Region Enforcement Squads (RES).

“I really think that is a game-changer for country policing because in the past you've had to rely on those squads and now we've got those extra resources to use.

“I don’t want a FIFO – fly-in-fly-out – mentality, I want to see it an attractive place for everyone to live.

“We have a real country type-of-feel in our smaller communities here. And our police are a part of these communities now. You only have to look at Garah. The officer out there is leaving and the town is throwing his a farewell party.

“I live here now, I want to make it a safe place for my family, for the police family, for their families, for the people down the road, or in the next town, so that they can go home and know their house hasn’t been broken into.”

In the first two to three months, Tanner visited every police station in the district to “get a feel” of the communities he was overseeing. He clocked 12,000km in the first two months.

“Most of my career has been in country towns,” he said.

“And no matter how small they are, they deserve the same policing response as the big cities.

“And while the tyranny of distance will always be a challenge, this new way of policing gets those officers back on the local beats, not propping up the bigger centres.”

The day I tag along, he’s adding a few more hundred kilometres on the odometre of New England 1 – the commander’s vehicle.

First off he meets with staff. There is a meeting with senior officers and a hook-up with police from across the district so that he can be briefed on the ongoing crime or overnight incidents or any concerns officers have. It’s also a meeting that could decide where patrols are focused or what crews will pro-actively target.

Next up is a Community Safety Precinct Committee meeting in Armidale with representatives from the Armidale Regional and Uralla councils, the business chamber, the UNE and liquor accord.

He then does the same meeting, this time with Inverell, Glen Innes and Tenterfield councils and community representatives after we arrive in Tenterfield.

“You go through different stages in your career, whether it’s locking up druggies, stopping violent offenders, the tactical stuff or that high-adrenaline stuff where you’re chasing crooks,” he said.

“Then in senior management, you mentor younger police, you help them to do that work to make those arrests and you know the decisions you make in those roles make a difference. 

“And the community involvement, talking to those community members, walking the streets, I love that stuff.”