The next day I was present in the back of Smith's Sports Store when the manager, the late Les Crisp, replaced every pin in the mechanism of an Armalite rifle and proceeded to fire a full magazine to demonstrate that the demo of the previous day was a con job.
There were reporters from various newspapers there but not one word was ever written about this demo.

What the detectives had done was bend/severely dent the second round in the magazine and so the rifle jammed; simple, but it fooled the press. This took a lot of pressure off Norman Allan.

A few days later I was in the Sergeant's Mess, at Moorebank, when some of the police who had been at the Siege dropped in for a drink (the Mess was a regular watering hole for the local police) a couple of them said that after Norman had left, they were subjected to some heavy fire from the house and that as WW II vets they had a fair idea of what was being fired at them.

Good afternoon to you IS MISE...

Of course I wasn't there, but you can imagine the gossip, it went through every jolly Station in NSW I reckon ! We'd all speculated that the offending 'gun' had been 'doctored' in some way, nevertheless such an action from a serving police commissioner, well it really raised some eyebrows, throughout the Western World I would've thought ?

Personally I didn't have a great deal of time for him, not that I ever met him, at our graduation from Redfern Barracks we had the OIC at the Pass-Out, the inimitable Supt. John (Jack) SLIGAR, a taciturn but a really great bloke, according to those who knew him well.

In my memory, I don't think I can recall a more embarrassing event ever to happen, while I was in the job. Imagine if someone was hurt ?
You're right you know IS MISE, most of the detectives called into the local Sgt's Mess at any base for a cold one, if the 'radio' was quite. The thing is, whenever you're on a military establishment, you're not going to meet up with some boof-headed 'cockroach' who wants to prove himself, when they're full of 'piss and bad manners' ?

You reflect back on some great times there IS MISE. We often called into the Mess at the RAAF section of Bankstown Airport, and by gee they'd look after us too !

One wonders if the young mother recently violently murdered in Parramatta would have benefited from being allowed some form of self defence?

She had her phone and could hav called 000, I wonder if that would have helped?

Do you have any ideas, Suse?