Detective Inspector Bryson Anderson, who died yesterday after becoming embroiled in a violent neighbourhood dispute on the outskirts of Sydney, was the kind of police officer other cops try to emulate.
I spoke to him several times last year while working on a story about Catherine Smith, a woman who endured 30 years of violent abuse from her husband and who alleged much of her agony was the result of police inaction.
Detective Inspector Anderson was the man charged with investigating Catherine’s claims. He later apologised to her on behalf of the NSW police force.
He was a man who took his work to heart. He once told me that Catherine Smith was the one of the bravest and strongest women he’d ever met who deserved the greatest respect for her integrity and endurance.
She saw him in the same light. “After years of being fobbed off and ignored, Bryson was the man who listened to me and took me seriously,” she once told me. “He always did what he promised and that meant a lot to me. He’s probably the only policeman I ever trusted.”
A big bloke with a gentle manner, Bryson Anderson’s death is a tragedy.
A man and a woman have been charged with his murder.
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