Terrible Humans by Patrick Alley

Author:Patrick Alley
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Octopus Publishing Group
Published: 2024-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Dave’s 20-year career in UK law enforcement had seen him working for the Metropolitan Police, New Scotland Yard and, after some ‘squad-hopping’ around London, what became the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), tracking down the crème de la crème of organized crime: drug dealers, human traffickers, counterfeiters and other top-level crooks. With his wry sense of humour and strong London accent, he reminds me of Carter, Dennis Waterman’s character in the classic 1970s cop drama The Sweeney.

Following postings in Europe and Afghanistan, Dave took leave in Thailand and it was there that he decided to take a career break. After flirting with a couple of organizations, Dave worked for a while training officials of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the UN agency charged with tackling serious organized crime and terrorism. It was there, in 2015, that he met Steve Carmody.

This hard-bitten Australian cop had joined the Australian Federal Police in 1988 and in his 30-year career had investigated the gamut of sexual assaults, break-ins, rapes, murders and drugs. Then, like Dave, Steve started investigating serious organized-crime networks, particularly Asian organized crime. A stint at Australia’s National Parks and Wildlife Service as a specialist investigator gave him his first insights into the wildlife trade, but he got frustrated at what he felt was a reluctance to go after anyone of substance. Eventually, he returned to his organized crime beat, probing the murky world of outlaw motorcycle gangs, but that wasn’t to last.

‘I was treading ground,’ Steve told me, speaking from his holiday refuge deep in the Australian outback. ‘I was starting to arrest and prosecute the children of the people that I was arresting and prosecuting when I first started […] so I thought it’s time to get out and see what else is out there. And from that, I jumped over to working for UNODC as a trainer.’ Steve spent the next four years with UNODC in and around Southeast Asia, and it was there that he realized that the skills he had picked up during his long career investigating top criminals could have another outlet.

‘It gave me a really good understanding of the landscape there, particularly around wildlife crime, because the last few years was focusing on that: the lack of political will, the openness of the trade, particularly in Vietnam, some of the law-enforcement agencies that are involved, their strengths and weaknesses.’

In the end it was a fluke that tipped Steve into the world of investigating wildlife crime. He was offered the job of director of programmes at the newly created Wildlife Justice Commission (WJC), an organization set up to tackle this branch of organized crime. The work looked interesting, with the bonus that the WJC was based in The Hague so he’d be only a stone’s throw from the First and Second World War battlefields of Western Europe, providing an ideal opportunity for Steve to indulge his interest in military history. He took the job.

By his own admission, Steve was more cop than green.

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