February 18, 2012 AD
A Call to the Youth Liaison Sergeant
When sixteen-year-old Kain Jeffries was picked up drunk at a summer concert on the Queens Domain, his mother rang the one police officer whose number she had kept. Louise Jeffries did not ask Karl Jenkins to make the matter go away, only to tell her what would happen. He told her, and then made a phone call he had no reason to make. Kain went home with an informal caution. Karl sat with Louise in the station foyer while it was delivered.
Kain Jeffries was sixteen when he was stopped by uniformed police inside the grounds of the Summer on the Domain concert in Hobart's Queens Domain, late on a Saturday afternoon. He was with three school friends, carrying a bottle of rum decanted into a soft-drink bottle, and visibly drunk. There had been no fight, no damage and no complaint against him. He was taken out of the crowd, his details were recorded, and he was driven to Hobart Police Station to be collected by a parent.
Thomas Jeffries was in Sydney on company business. The call reached Louise at Jeffries Manor shortly after six. Before she left for the city, she rang Detective Karl Jenkins on the mobile number printed on the card he had given her more than three years earlier, at the end of an interview about her father-in-law's disappearance. They had seen each other since only in passing, at charity functions where both had been present for different reasons.
She told Karl plainly what had happened and said she was not ringing to ask for any favour. She wanted to know what her son was facing and what she should expect when she arrived. Karl explained the youth justice process: a first offence of that kind, with no aggravating features, was ordinarily dealt with by an informal caution, without a charge or a court appearance. More serious handling was possible but unlikely. He told her what Kain would be asked and what he should say.
That was as far as his involvement needed to go. Karl was a detective in Organised Crime Division and had no role in youth matters. After the call ended, he rang the youth liaison sergeant on duty that evening, Sergeant Wendy Prosser, whom he knew from a training course, and asked her to make sure the Jeffries boy's matter was dealt with on its merits. He said nothing more than that. Prosser understood him, and made no comment on whether she minded being asked.
Kain received an informal caution from a constable in Prosser's presence a little after eight. He was told that a second offence would be handled formally and that the caution would be remembered. He was sullen through most of it and apologised to his mother afterwards, in the car park, where he thought the officers could not see.
Karl was not required at the station, and came anyway. He was in the foyer when Louise arrived, and he sat with her on the bench by the front counter for the forty minutes it took to process her son. They said little. She thanked him once and he told her there had been nothing to thank him for, which they both knew was not entirely true. Neither of them mentioned the call to Prosser.
When Kain was brought out, Karl stood, nodded to him, and left before Louise could introduce them.
