It appears Victoria’s highest-ranking police officer isn’t afraid to get back on the tools when the situation calls for it.
Chief Commissioner Mike Bush was walking down Queen Street near Flinders Lane in Melbourne CBD just after 6am on Wednesday, when he came across several officers trying to subdue a man believed to be armed with a knife.
Police said the man had run away as officers arrived on the scene, and remained a safety risk even after officers tasered him.
It was at this point Bush arrived on the scene, flanked by his security detail.
“The man was eventually taken to the ground by officers including Chief Commissioner Mike Bush and his security detail who happened to be travelling past,” police said in a statement.
“The male was searched, and a chisel was located. He was transported to hospital for assessment. No one was injured during the incident.”
Police did not say whether the arrested man had been charged.
They also did not answer questions from The Age as to how many members make up Bush’s security detail and what he was doing in the CBD at that early hour.
Bush is yet to comment publicly on the incident.
Bush is far from the first high-ranking officer to lend a hand to officers on the beat.
In January, the head of Victoria’s Homicide Squad, Detective Inspector Dean Thomas, joined an unsworn police officer and a bystander in arresting a teenager who allegedly attacked an elderly man on Lonsdale Street, near the Police headquarters.
He told 3AW he’d been walking back to his office to eat his lunch when he noticed the disturbance.
“We’re on the footpath and I’ve got my rice paper rolls in their cardboard box trying to restrain this fellow. At that stage, I was assisted by some other police who were fortunately walking along the footpath doing the same as me, getting some lunch,” he said in January.
Meanwhile in late June, Ambulance Victoria CEO Jordan Emery helped to deliver a baby girl in Wangaratta, northeast Victoria.
Having arrived to visit the ambulance station which was damaged by fire, Emery joined paramedics when they were called out to a mother in labour, stepping in when he learned neither of the two paramedics had delivered a child before.
Bush recently notched up one year in the chief commissioner role, having arrived from New Zealand to take over a police force emerging from a bruising pay dispute and challenged by longstanding staff shortages.
Bush has attempted to address these issues while also dealing with the aftermath of the death of two officers in a shooting in Porepunkah last August.
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