Dirty Work

Glen McNamara was brought up in the southern suburbs of Sydney as a real Aussie boy. His dad served in the army, and with his grandfather the two worked on the Snowy Mountains Scheme. At 17 Glen joined the NSW Police Force and was sworn in as a constable at 19. A career as a detective beckoned and soon Glen was working with the best. This was Sydney in the 1980s, when the notorious Warren Lanfranchi was dealing drugs with Neddy Smith, and corrupt cop Roger Rogerson was making deals in Redfern.

Glen’s life is turned upside down when he is posted to the inner city police stations of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst. Free lunches, intimidation and the lack of arrests and criminal investigation rings warning bells in Glen’s mind, as he walks the streets tripping over heroin deals, drug overdose cases and out of control drug usage.

It wasn’t for nothing that the Darlinghurst station was nicknamed Goldenhurst for the amount of drugs that were passing through it. For the police officers were into the dealing as much as the crooks, and Glen decides to go undercover as a corrupt policeman, to investigate his own kind.

Glen makes sure he becomes part of the in crowd at the station, and from there he is confronted by the shocking and appalling reality of what is going on. Glen uncovers a protection racket that is saving the notorious pedophiles Dolly Dunn and Colin Fisk from charges as long as they supplied enough drugs for the trade. But the stench of corruption doesn’t stop there. Members of the police bureaucracy and the legal profession in Sydney are also involved.

As Glen digs deeper his double life is betrayed and his own life is threatened. He flees to the United States, his life in tatters, his career in ruins and his wife increasingly suffering from the stress. Fed up with hiding in hotels, Glen makes the brave decision to return to Sydney to confront the corruption head on.

Entrusting his information and in the confidentiality of the Internal Police Security Unit, Glen bares his well-documented evidence, including tapes and written evidence, to the head of the unit. What happens next is every policeman’s worst nightmare. Betrayed by the unit and spurned by the legal system, Glen’s evidence is treated with contempt. He refuses to give up, turning to politicians to try and get heard. In the end his hard work to fight for justice for the victims of the pedophiles is reduced to minimal sentences and in some cases criminals released to live in other countries overseas.

Glen’s story is a tale of hard-hitting truth and guts, and the fight for justice by one lone policeman in a sea of corruption and money making. On top of the mix swims lecherous and dangerous pedophiles, running the drug trade. Glen fails to give in, and clings to what’s right. In bravely sharing his story Glen takes a potential tragedy and turns it into an inspirational lesson of courage and strength.

'All crime revolves around the financial powerhouse that is the drug trade. And drugs and pedophilia go together like a hand in a glove.'

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