Robert Clifford GARE

This is a little story that might be of interest to some people out there. When I went through the academy in 1985, a few of our traffic lectures were given by a HWP senior constable whose name escapes me. When he gave us the lecture on drink driving offences he prefaced his talk by saying that most of us joined the police force to fight crime and we saw ourselves out there busting crims and arresting bad guys, but he added that the reality was that for most of us, our first pinch would be a “pissie,” which I guess was a new term to most of us as trainees back then.

I went to Eastwood (17 Division) from the academy ( Redfern ), where I did my six-week field training with an old senior constable called Max Blundell. Max taught me a lot of useful stuff, but as things turned out it was towards the end of my buddy training and we had not yet been called on to make an arrest. We were out in 17/1 on a day shift and we were sent by VKG to a location at West Ryde, where two men had been seen in a 1969 Holden sedan, counting a large amount of coined money and acting suspiciously.

We were backed up by a second car with another veteran senior constable named Bob Gare, (whom I found out recently is sadly now deceased), and a constable named Karen Vesper, and when we arrived we found the car. Inside there were two men as described and we spoke to them, and Max told me to get their names and details in my notebook. One guy gave his correct name of Tony Henry Winoweicki, (I guess you wouldn’t make up a name like that), but the second guy told me his name was Charles Smith. Being an eager, young probationer, I asked him if Smith was spelt the usual way, (just trying to be thorough, like I’d been taught!), and he said, “Spell it any way you like,” which I took to mean, “We both know I’ve given you a bodgy name but that’s all I’m going to give you so be satisfied with that.” The back seat of the Kingswood was almost full of coins in bags, and we arrested them and took them back to the station. This was my first pinch, but of course we had to hand them over to the detectives, who took over, interviewed them, and followed it up from there. The detectives found that they were both had lengthy histories, and in addition to breaking into a registered club earlier that day, they both had outstanding warrants, plus the guy who told me his name was Charles Smith was actually Richard Owen Lynott, who was wanted for escaping from Maitland Gaol.

We all got a good policemanship report from the boss, Inspector Ron Stephens, over that arrest, and considering it was my first ever pinch, I was always kind of pleased with the fact that it was a couple of good crims, and not a pissie. I have to admit it was more a matter of being in the right place than exceptional police work, (plus two geniuses doing a bust and then counting the proceeds in a car in a public place). A few years back I saw an article in the Sunday paper about some of the old identities in the Sydney criminal world, and Lynott got a mention. I remember thinking, “Hey, he was my first arrest.”