"Good luck, Gaga. AFP One out".
And with those final words broadcast over the police radio, the longest-serving chief police officer in the ACT, Neil "Gaga" Gaughan was gone.
Traffic was halted on Belconnen Way and the bagpipes played as a ceremonial farewell at Winchester Police Centre sent the Deputy Commissioner on his way to retirement with hugs, salutes, handshakes and a few tears.
"I was there at his attestation and now I'm there as he leaves the police," said Neil Gaughan's mother, Judy.
"It's certainly a big day".
The straight-talking 40-year veteran of the federal police has been fondly remembered for his adroit handling of several major challenges during his stint as CPO, but nothing quite prepared him for a national COVID border lockdown.
As he began to clear his desk ahead of his official retirement as a Deputy Commissioner in charge of the ACT, chief police officer Gaughan recalled how the rapid shift to a lockdown kicked off one of the most challenging periods of his 40-year career.
"There was no rulebook to follow on all that; it just didn't exist," he said.
"We were continually changing our processes and procedures because as the health direction was changing, so we had to change with it.
"I know it's a line from a movie but we had to improvise, adapt and overcome all the time."
While that unofficial motto of the US Marine Corps did not appear in the operational procedure handbook written from scratch by Commander Jo Cameron, on the street that was how it played out.
At the height of the pandemic, all but essential travel was banned, shops and businesses shuttered their premises, events were cancelled and even the army was call in to help keep "hotspot" visitors out as Canberrans stayed home and logged on, and the Civic nightclub district went quieter than the Norwood cemetery.
One of the toughest tasks for police was keeping their operational staff protected from infection when some of the territory's criminals needed to be physically manhandled during arrest and some even deliberately spat at officers, hoping to infect them.
Although some crimes like assaults fell - mostly because people were prevented from going out and becoming drunken fools - there were always miscreants and COVID-deniers looking to take advantage.
There were 53 people in the ACT arrested for breaches in the first three months of the pandemic lockdown; 814 were given move-on orders and 483 were told to leave the ACT.
At one stage there were nearly 900 people in quarantine and a police taskforce was required to spot-check for compliance, leading to weird scenes of officers directing masked people to stand at their lounge room windows and wave proof of identity.
"The reality was that back in those days, if anyone on your [police] team got COVID, everyone went home," Deputy Commissioner Gaughan said.
"In my time as CPO, that was the most challenging time.
"As time went on, it became more of an education thing because people were generally complying [with COVID orders]. I only came out when we saw things probably going not where they were [supposed to]."
The chief police officer and chief health officer Kerryn Coleman became co-territory controllers at the height of the alarm, and fronted the media - on a daily basis at times - to calm a nervous population.
As the country's only contracted police service in which the ACT government pays $205 million to the AFP every year, the chief police pfficer always has to serve two "masters" - AFP Commissioner Reece Kershaw - the most senior ranking officer in the federal police command structure - and the government that pays the monthly invoice.
Striking that balance has been easier for some more than others.
Like many of his predecessors, Deputy Commissioner Gaughan will depart with fond memories.
"I'm lucky that [AFP Commissioner] Reece [Kershaw] has given me a fair amount of autonomy and I've had a very good relationship with the police minister," he said.
He also praised the "resilience and character" of his rank-and-file officers.
"We're very lucky in Canberra that we have very committed men and women that look after our community tirelessly; they come to work, they put up with a lot of shit, the infrastructure's not the best, but they always come to work with smile on their face," he said.
"They [officers] are seeing volumes of stuff like family violence and mental health that I rarely saw as a constable. They see 10 times - even more - of these incidents than we did."
