When anyone says goodbye to their loved ones to go to work and then don't come home it is beyond sad. Recently, that fate has befallen police officers in Tasmania and Victoria.
Constable Keith Smith a 57-year-old Tasmanian officer, and a 25-year veteran walked up a quiet rural driveway in North Motton and never made it to the front door of the house on that property. Constable Smith was serving what police described as a routine warrant when he was fatally shot. The randomness of his death is what unsettles most. His task was one many police have done before, and since. A walk up a driveway, a knock on a door.
The shock of his death was sharpened by what happened in Porepunkah, Victoria, in 2025, when two officers were killed and another seriously injured while attending a rural property to serve a warrant. Alleged gunman Dezi Freeman fled into bushland after the incident. In North Motton, there was no prolonged stand-off, no drawn-out escalation, just officers doing their jobs. These events, connected by circumstance, highlight a difficult truth: the most everyday police work can quickly become the most dangerous.
Police serving a routine warrant in Tasmania last week for firearms offences prompted reflection on how, despite these tragedies, officers continue to carry out the same duties. The mental strain must be considerable. In Northern Tasmania, police conduct these sorts of compliance checks regularly, and they rarely attract attention. But if you lay out the task it seems inherently dangerous. Serving a warrant or doing a firearms compliance check requires officers to walk onto private land, assess risk in real time, and trust that the interaction would remain uneventful. That police continue to do these tasks, so soon after losing colleagues, speaks to professionalism, but also highlights the quiet burden, the mental anguish, that would surely be carried into every similar job.
Standard operating procedures dictate that uniformed officers make first contact. The approach is designed to reduce tension and preserve normality. It makes sense. Having a team of well-armed and specialist tactical units on your property would immediately escalate a situation. Having them remain nearby, ready but not overt, seems like a sound tactic. Yet rural isolation, known firearms ownership, and long approaches to homes complicate that model. The moment between leaving a vehicle and reaching a front door is often the most exposed, and, as recent events show, the most perilous.
Are there ways to reduce that exposure without over-militarising everyday policing? Could drones provide reconnaissance before officers advance? Could police initiate contact without physical proximity, and engage before anyone steps forward? Have these recent events caused police to use more detailed intelligence on firearms licensing, prior threats, behavioural flags which could elevate some "routine" tasks into higher-risk categories requiring modified tactics? The answer is yes. Tasmania Police has expanded its fleet of drones to gather intelligence without immediate physical proximity and has increased intelligence sharing and stricter licensing requirements to mitigate risk.
Tasmanian Police will continue to attend properties because the law requires it. Courage is not in question. But courage should be matched with evolving practice. Routine policing will always carry risk, but it does not have to carry avoidable risk.
Craig Thomson is the editor of The Examiner.