On 3 October, 2013, 49-year-old Michael Allan Jacobs was sent to prison for life for the murder of Constable David Rixon who he shot and killed in Tamworth in March 2012 after Constable Rixon had pulled Jacobs over to undergo a roadside breath analysis test.

It was the first time that a cop killer had been sentenced under the new 2011 NSW law requiring a mandatory life term without ever the possibility of parole for anyone who murders a police officer in the course of carrying out their duty.

Of all that is sacred to the police force, killing one of their own is the cardinal sin. The call of ‘officer down’ is what every police officer dreads as apart from the fact that it is a fellow officer it could also be a work colleague or friend who has been slain.

So in the 1970s when an evil little gunman named Edward ‘Jockey’ Smith specialised in attempting to murder police officers in the course of their duties, it was only a matter of time before he would be caught or killed. Preferably killed.

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