Leading Senior Constable Shane Flynn might be your classic old-school country police officer, but he has seen more than his fair share of action.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
Including firing his gun to break up a ‘footbrawl’ and being fired at by a man while doing his best to hide behind a house wall that was definitely not bulletproof.
Leading Sen Constable Flynn has been on the front line for the better part of 50 years, recently ending a career that started as a teenager in Werribee who simply knew he wanted to help people.
He spent the early 1980s at postings from Russell St to Footscray and the western suburbs including Werribee, but he really came into his own with a shift to Macedon and discovered his true niche: country copper.
Last month, his years of work were celebrated at a packed Gunbower Bowling Club where just about every local had turned out to say thanks, and goodbye.
When you ask a man about finding himself being the thin blue line between community and crisis more often than he might otherwise have cared, his answer is simple and straightforward: “All I ever wanted to do was keep people safe.”
“Which is why I would like to think my 11 years in Gunbower will be remembered as a time when, for example, we never had a fatality on local roads, and especially on the Murray Valley Hwy,” Leading Sen Constable Flynn said.
“For me, Gunbower has been an excellent home, and an excellent place to work. It’s a fantastic community, with people of all ages and people who look after each other.”
Gunbower wasn’t just a new home, but a place to catch up with old mates, such as Gunbower café owner Brendan Betts.
Leading Sen Constable Flynn walked into the café one day and saw Mr Betts, whom he had known in Macedon when he ran the Macedon Family Hotel.
“I asked him what the hell he was doing here, and he looked at me and said, ‘I was just going to ask you the same thing,’’’ he said.
“Obviously in my career there has been a lot of change — I remember us starting out on manual typewriter to do reports and paperwork.
‘’Now we have all this digital stuff but so much more paperwork — too much paperwork.
“The same way, communities grow and change too, even places such as Gunbower.
‘’But wherever you are, and whatever your position in that community, when there’s a problem, everyone calls 000.”
Leading Sen Constable Flynn laughs now looking back at some hairier moments in his career, such as that footbrawl.
He and a partner were coming off a late shift and got diverted to a match where they found “literally hundreds of people” having at it among terrified mums and dads and their families.
“I couldn’t see how just two of us were going to break that up; so I drew my weapon and fired into their air,” he said.
“That sorted things out in a hurry, we had people running everywhere and the troublemakers simply took off...’’
In another incident during a posting in Kyabram, police received panicked calls from an ambulance crew attending a house call.
No sooner had they arrived that a woman with a car full of kids arrived and she asked if they had taken her husband’s guns.
How many guns was she talking about? Lots, she said.
“No sooner had I taken a very circumspect sidestep when the barrel of a shotgun appeared from the door alongside my leg and as I leapt one way a shot was fired the other way,” the retiring officer said.
He ducked around the corner as more shots were fired, bullets went through the police car behind which his partner was hiding, and he kept hissing at people to stop calling him in case the shooter realised there was just a bit of corrugated iron between him and safety.
The gunman did finally surrender.
Apart from his policing, and ducking bullets, Leading Sen Constable Flynn’s farewell was a chance to acknowledge his quiet contribution to the Gunbower community.
Delivering the community’s thank you, state Member for Murray Plains Peter Walsh spoke of Leading Sen Constable Flynn’s unseen occasions when he would help out mowing someone’s lawn or doing odd jobs around the house, as well as enforcing the law.
His emerging handyman skills have also helped lay the foundation for his ‘retirement career’, with plans to extend his home renovation interests to keep himself busy.
He is planning to do this in Kyabram, where he has purchased his retirement home — hopefully, things have calmed down since he was last there.
One of his signature traits in Gunbower was parking his car in the main street when he was at lunch and even on days off.
“A visible police presence is fundamental, and there isn’t enough of that today. It’s a reassurance people want,” he said.
And a final word from Leading Sen Constable Flynn: “I found the best job, and the best rank — being in a single member station in a country town.”