You don’t hate the media enough. It’s been said time and time again.

And yet somehow the media keep giving us more examples of how that is true. The most recent example is Channel 7 and other commercial networks selectively editing comments from a senior police officer stating plain as day that it was left-wing interest groups, single issue groups that were the cause of the violence that we saw in Melbourne during the protests over the weekend. I wanted to get an insider’s perspective, so I’ve asked Crystal Mitchell, former Victoria police officer, to join me here on the Topher project. Crystal, thank you so much for coming on.

[From video] Thanks for having me, Topher. [End video]

Now, Crystal, you spent 15 years in the police force across a wide range of roles. It must be said not all of it was frontline policing, but some of it most certainly was. You’ve seen everything from the inside and also from the out. I’m very very curious to get your perspective on what does it take for a senior police officer to to come out publicly in front of the media and to say what he said, which is a break from the narrative. It is a break from what we’ve heard and seen in the past from Victoria Police. What does it take for him to reach the point where he’s done that? And do you think there’s going to be repercussions for him professionally?

[From video]

It’s a good question. I think that what it’s taken is a persistent period of time where police have been injured or been drawn away from their critical police responsibilities to come and deal with violent protests in the city. I don’t think that this would be occurring if the police were just dealing with the safety aspect of protests marching through the streets and blocking traffic so that they could do that and organizing their assembly areas and things like that. Just the very normal things that police would do during a protest. [End video]

I’m sorry to interrupt my interview with Crystal Mitchell. We’ll get back to her in just a moment. But first, my name is Topher Field. This is the Topher Project and this is what I do. Where I help busy people like you to make sense of the nonsense, to cut through the crap, and to understand the world as it changes around us. And certainly, things seem to be escalating and changing in Victoria. So, I brought Crystal on to keep my finger on the pulse. You can help me to keep bringing you stories and interviews like this one by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And also, if you haven’t already, you really should check out my books, Good People Break Bad Laws. This is all about the role of civil disobedience in the modern age. Good Christians Break Bad Laws. This is all about the theology of civil disobedience. For those of us who are Christians, then there’s also Battleground Melbourne. Now, you can watch this for free online at battlegroundmelbourne.com. When I directed this, I said then, and it’s still true now, that I had the privilege of telling this story, but this isn’t actually my story. This is the story of amazing people from Melbourne and Victoria who stood tall and did what was right when their government was very, very wrong. And so, you can watch this for free at battleground.com. If you would like to put something on your shelf, you’d like to be able to keep a physical copy just in case anything ever happens to it online, then you can get this as well, this documentary. And you can also get my t-shirts in a range of designs and also in hoodies. And all of that is available from goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. And everything you buy is going to help me to keep the Topher project going. Thank you so much for watching. Let’s get back to Crystal Mitchell.

[From video]

But because consistently police are dealing with such violence and the violence is escalating, I think that that’s why he’s probably reached his line in the sand. Wayne obviously very much cares about frontline police and he, as he said, has had a gutful. [End video]

And it must be said, frontline police need to be viewed separately from the Victoria Police as an organization. Frontline police can be doing the most wonderful work in the world, but if they’re not given the proper support that they need in the form of budget, resourcing personnel, the right assignments, and the right equipping and the right briefing, then they’re simply not going to be able to do the job that the public rightly expects them to do. And the frontline police can find themselves very much in between a rock and a hard place. You’ve had that experience personally where you actually resigned after 15 years in the police in the Victoria Police after really reaching a point where you felt that you could no longer support the organization in the form that it had taken and with the things that it was doing. I know that morale is very very low in Victoria Police. I have current and former police officers in my inbox all the time telling me stories that I unfortunately can’t share publicly. What does it take for Victoria Police to come back from where it is now to restore morale to maybe get some retention and some recruitment going on and get to the point where they can be effective as a police force?

[From video]

I think that the initiatives that the new chief Mike Bush has announced are positive in terms of pulling members out of the office. So, I did 16 years and I did 50/50. 8 years front line and eight years in corporate. If I was still in Victoria Police right now, I would be inspired by Mike Bush’s comments that he’s wanting to bring people back into the front line. That would be fantastic because that’s going to get more members on the street. That will boost morale because knowing that you’ve got extra staff, you’ve got other team members around you to chop, give you a chop out and get the work done, actually respond to the crimes that are occurring and get positive outcomes for victims of crime.

But separate to that is you when you go through the academy, you’re taught that policing is essentially by consent of the community. So the way in which we get things done is through consent of the community with the expectations of what it is that police can do and cannot do and consistently over the last several years we’ve seen police violate the rights of people especially during Covid and that’s really harmed community agreement and consent because the community doesn’t trust the police necessarily anymore to always do what they think is the right thing especially if they feel that the police are now just the long arm of an intrusive government that is consistently overriding our civil liberties. So there’s a lot to do. [End video]

Sorry.

[From video]

No, that’s okay. I was going to say there’s a lot to do. And I think that there’s two arms to this. There’s the morale within the police that currently exists and making sure that they feel valued and that they actually get to do the job that they signed up to do, which is to help people. And then the community and bridging that gap with the community and how they feel about the current police force. There’s got to be some apologies. There has to be some remediation. And I don’t know that Victoria Police is ever really going to be in a position to be able to say sorry. Yeah [End video]

Well, we know in the past it’s taken literally decades before apologies have been forthcoming for previous actions, particularly I’m mindful in Victoria of the relationship between the police and the gay community was strained because of very specific incidents that took decades for them to ultimately apologize for. And there are other examples as well. But coming back to this most recent weekend and the protests that we saw, we saw the March for Australia protests which were praised in the comments from that senior police officer. The left-wing single issue protests were singled out by that officer as being the ones responsible for bringing violence, bringing it on purpose. They brought projectiles with them. They sought to actively bring violence and to harm Victoria police officers. Obviously, this has a very very big impact at a time when Victoria police are already stretched very thin. There is a huge amount of and growing amount of public frustration about just the sheer level of inability to get police officers when we need them. And again, I’m not singling out frontline police officers, but there are so many people who need police officers due to break-ins or various things and we just do not know that they’re going to be available. One of the solutions that’s been put forward by the police union now is to have a permit system for protests. What are your thoughts on that? As someone who has most certainly seen the police side of that, but also quite famously you resigned in support of the anti-lockdown protests. What are your thoughts on this police union proposal to have a permit system for protests in Victoria?

[From video]

I think that I’ve had a foot in two camps. I’ve swung both ways with the idea of permits and how that could work to better manage people who seek to protest. But I think that when I think about it from a positive perspective, I’m thinking about how it would benefit other Victorians and businesses and the safe passage of protesters throughout the streets on the proviso that everything works together so that the police aren’t refusing people permits, that the state government isn’t interfering, which we know that they would. And I’m thinking about it from a utopia perspective. And Victorians, we don’t live in a utopia. We live in an environment where our civil liberties are eroded every single time Labor brings a new bill to parliament. And we’ve seen that multiple bills in the past. The extended pandemic laws that people were concerned about what the government did to us during Covid, the laws that are now codified are even more terrifying for another pandemic or anytime that they decide to declare a state emergency.

The so-called anti-vilification and social cohesion laws basically they’ve introduced a civil liability issue where if you offend somebody on the basis of their gender you know like I’m offended because you didn’t call me by my name and laughed at the dress that I’m wearing with my hairy legs and mustache you can be sued because the government said that. And then the worst one of all you know was the suppression of conversion practices, which was an absolute horse to allowing or forcing people in fact to only do affirming care, which basically means that if you have a child who thinks that they’re a different gender, you’re not allowed to have a conversation with them about, you know, what’s going on in their body that makes them think that. You have to affirm, okay, you want to be a different child now, and we’re destroying children. That’s a separate issue. But my point is every single time Labor has brought in a law that they claim is for your safety, it actually erodes further civil liberties. And I think that if we in Victoria bring in a permit system, that is exactly what’s going to happen. And people right now, especially, you know, on the right, may say, well, it’s the left that are causing the violence. And they’re not wrong. I mean, I’ve worked protests myself, and I went to a protest that was a far-left, far-right, so-called protest, and it was absolutely the left hellbent, intent on breaking through the ranks to try and have fights that were throwing things at us and the right marched past us and thank us for our service.

Um, so yes, they’re causing lots of violence, but we have laws in place right now that could deal with that. We should be allowing our police to deal with those protesters that are causing violence efficiently and quickly. We saw how well police were able to deal with protesters during lockdown. You know, they were having these arrest teams that would come out through, break through the ranks, grab someone, drag them back behind the lines. We saw hundreds of people being arrested and fined. I’m just curious why Victoria Police isn’t adopting that methodology with actual criminal offenses which are occurring at violent protests. So permits I don’t think will work and I don’t think that they will used in the right way because we live in an environment where the government enjoys encroaching on civil liberties and that’s exactly what they will do if they bring in a permit in Victoria. [End video]

Well, there’s the old sort of political adage that you shouldn’t be adding more laws if you’re not enforcing the ones you already have. And so I think your point’s a great one. If we’re not actually using the laws and the powers and the techniques that the Victoria Police already have, we know they have. We’ve seen them use them before. If they’re not even doing that, then how does adding more laws on top solve that particular problem? While I’ve got you, Crystal, I do just want to come across to crime as a more general topic. We’ve just had the front page news yesterday out of The Age saying that there are now going to be private security guards in the western suburbs who will be armed with firearms. According to that front page article, they’ll have guns before the end of this year. Those patrols have been ongoing for over 3 years now, but they’ve had batons up to this point in time. So we know now that there are private security with guns will be patrolling the streets of some western suburbs and probably other parts of Melbourne soon as well. We also saw a brothel just just over a week ago, a brothel worker very effectively use pepper spray to protect herself and her co-workers against a man who’d become violent and aggressive within that particular brothel. As of the time of this recording, unless you’ve got other information for me, Crystal, I’m not aware that that brothel worker has been charged with prohibited weapons offenses. As best as I’m aware, no charges against her have been laid. Is there a sea change happening? Are we beginning to see perhaps not overtly but somewhat quietly at a government level a recognition that the current policy settings and laws aren’t working that more security is needed? That perhaps people ought to be allowed to defend themselves?

[From video]

No, I don’t think so, Topher. I think that what we’re dealing with is a overworked police force that doesn’t have the time to deal with what they would call a not in the public interest offenses. So, it’s not in the public interest to charge the brothel worker for defending herself. It would just reflect poorly on Victoria Police, not the government. So, they’re moving on and they’re going after bigger fish. I don’t think that the government is remotely interested in the average good law-abiding taxpaying citizen protecting themselves or their property because if they were, they would be championing for castle law. And they’re not doing that. So, no. Sorry. I’m not that optimistic. [End video]

It’s not the answer I was looking for, but I do appreciate this is why I bring on guests like yourself. You’ve got the experience and the perspective to be able to set me straight when maybe I get a little bit too rose-colored glasses. Well, Crystal, thank you so much for coming on the Topher project. I appreciate your insights and your political commentary. As you do, let people know where can they find you if they wanted to follow your work specifically.

[From video]

I’m mostly on X. So my X handle is just Crystal_M. It’s not very fancy, but it’s just Crystal Mitchell. So, that’s what I do. [End video]

You’ve made it difficult, haven’t you? Well, I will make sure that people can find you, and thank you so much for joining me today on the Topher project.

[From video] Thank you, Topher. [End video]

Well, thank you for watching that interview with Crystal Mitchell. Sadly, she’s not quite as optimistic as what I was allowing myself to be regarding what might be happening down in Victoria, but we’ll wait and see. I might be right. Who knows? I have been wrong before, though. And Crystal does know what she’s talking about, so she’s probably right. Anyway, thank you so much for watching all the way to this point in this video. My name’s Topher Field. This is the Topher Project. You can help me to keep producing videos and content like this by buying me a coffee via the button at topherfield.net. And also, if you haven’t already, do check out my books, my DVD, and my merch. All available at goodpeoplebreakbadlaws.com. Everything you buy is going to help me to keep bringing you interviews and stories like this one.

Thank you for watching all the way to the end. The algorithm loves you and so do I. Please like, comment your thoughts. Do you think that Victoria is changing? Do you think that public pressure is getting to the premier? Do you think that we’re going to see Victorians being allowed to defend themselves properly anytime soon? Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

And as always, think free.