Naked City

Michael Aston loved being a cop, or more specifically, a road policing officer. He said it was the best job in the world, until it wasn't. Aston is no longer a cop, with his career and mental health disappearing into the quicksand of the legal system where no one is accountable.
It was 2020, and the start of the dark days of COVID, when Aston was policing then-premier Daniel Andrews' lockdown laws that prevented Victorians from travelling outside a five-kilometre radius.
On a road outside of Coldstream, north east of Melbourne, Aston tried to pull over a driver to check his work permit – and encountered a sovereign citizen.
This was years before the name Desmond 'Dezi' Freeman ripped into the public's consciousness for shooting three police officers, two fatally, in the Victorian High Country.
But back in 2020, Aston's run-in with a sovereign citizen changed his life.
Aston and his wife, Deanna, open up to John Silvester in today's special episode of Naked City.

Background reading
John Silvester's full story on Michael Aston.
All of Sly's columns, and stories.
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Former deputy commissioner and counter-terrorism boss Ross Guenther had a unique life before policing, playing in big bands with music greats Jerry Lewis and Barry White.
He was no slouch in his policing career either, heading up the counter-terrorism squad for Victoria Police.
In this episode of Naked City, he talks to John Silvester about a foiled terrorism plot, and how his music career helped him hunt down Tony Mokbel after the drug boss’ infamous escape to Greece.
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Anne Hooker worked as a prison officer for 13 years for Corrections Victoria, and Port Phillip Prison for a further 23 years.She also set up and ran a unit in jail called Penhyn, which housed young men aged 18 to 25.The unit became so highly sought after within the prison system that there was a waiting list to enter it, and as Hooker explained to Naked City host John Silvester, the environment she created in there led to recidivism rates (the times an offender returns to prison) slashed.Anne Hooker is one of a handful of experts who has the practical and academic experience to provide at least some of the answers to the country's – and particularly Victoria's – youth crime epidemic.
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Sol Solomon has investigated some of the country's worst, most high-profile and just plain bizarre homicides.
In part two of his interview with Naked City's John Silvester, the former detective talks about some of the most difficult cases - such as investigating the murders of police officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller. And the best, like hearing a killer confess to a cold case murder of a single mother during an elaborate undercover sting.
He also reveals the strangest case...investigating a real-life cannibal.
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