Breaking Ranks

An Amazing True Story of a Cop on the Line

The inside story of the Walsh Street Task Force and how a young policeman advanced through Victoria Police in the turbulent 1980s.

Joe Noonan’s 10 years in the Victoria Police culminated in being seconded onto the Investigation Team for the double slaying of two young policemen in Walsh Street South Yarra. The 1980s in Victoria were some of the most tumultuous years in Australia’s policing history.

These stories give a vivid insight into the mind of a most different sort of crime fighter. A straight shooter who doesn’t pull any punches and takes more than his fair share. His humour is at times irreverent and almost always self-deprecating but provides a front seat to some of the most dangerous and confronting stories you have read. His real-life description of both events and those involved create a channel to the past without losing any relevance to the present.

His uniform years are peppered with some of the most hilarious, tragic and confronting stories of his life on the front line. His rapid rise to detective opened up new levels of danger, controversy and unbelievable tales of policing. Being in the thick of numerous police shootings including Jedd Houghton and Gary Abdullah, living through the aftermath of the Graeme Jensen shooting and life within the Walsh Street Task Force into the reprisal shootings of Constable Tynan and Eyre, Joe Noonan tells his story like none before.