John Taylor says being little has its advantages when you’re a cop. You can be ‘pushed through small windows’

Slight, and now retired, you wouldn’t give John Taylor a second look if you walked past him on the street. But Taylor never needed bulk or conspicuous ferocity to be effective as a Special Operations Group (the tactical group of the Victoria police) member.

Taylor was first to the 2014 stand-off in Derrinallum, Victoria, with troubled “genius” Glenn Sanders – a meth user with an explosives licence that allowed him to stockpile a military quantity of homemade bombs.

In 1992, he was one of 52 police at Melbourne Airport waiting to arrest three armed robbers. Taylor ended up deliberately crashing his car into the getaway vehicle, to stop a high-speed chase.

Taylor, who became the longest-serving bomb disposal expert in the special operations group (SOG), led a professional life of chasing crooks at full throttle, defusing bombs, and navigating deadly sieges.

This is all after a very delayed start. Taylor served at SOG for 33 years despite being refused entry straight out of school for being too short. Ten years later, when the Victorian police dropped height requirements, Taylor signed up and was part of a new breed of recruit.

In the 1980s, the SOG was full of ‘big units’.

“We were the little guys they’d throw through the small windows, where the big guys couldn’t get through,” Taylor tells Naked City podcast host John Silvester.

In this episode of Naked City, Taylor talks about the life and perilous times of the elite police squad, and what he does for fun outside of work, including climbing six of the seven major summits.

John Silvester is a columnist for The Age. He has covered Melbourne’s crime beat and justice system since the 1970s, winning numerous accolades, including three Walkley Awards and six Melbourne Press Club Quill Awards. He has written or co-authored more than 30 books, including the Underbelly series, which was made into a TV series.

John Silvester lifts the lid on Australia’s criminal underworld. Subscribers can sign up to receive his Naked City newsletter every Thursday.