Brothers in arms

Southbank Police Station was the scene of a rare twist of fate last month thanks to two of its officers Ben and Tom Rodgers.

24-year-old senior constable Ben Rodgers has been serving our local community since 2015 when the watch house responsible for Southbank was located at St Kilda Rd.

His older brother Tom, 26, who worked as a protective services officer (PSO) for two-and-a-half years before being sworn in as a constable in October last year, has since been working out of Caulfield Police Station.

The result of a completely random stroke of fortune, Victoria Police recently assigned Tom to work at Southbank Police Station on Moray St alongside his brother.

However, with Ben finishing up as a senior constable on June 22 to become a detective specialising in family violence, the pair shared two weeks together before Ben moved to his new role based out of the CBD.

The brothers described the situation as a “complete fluke”.

“It was pure luck,” Ben said. “I’ve been in Southbank for a while now and you don’t get a lot of say in where you get posted early on, so it was very lucky.”

“I think it’s nice working together and you know exactly what they’re like and what to expect from them. You don’t have to be nice when you tell him that he messed up…not that he has!”

While Tom is Ben’s big brother, when it comes to policing, this is a fact that is turned on its head. With Ben having wanted to be a police officer since he was at school, Tom’s journey to joining the force was preceded by a career in personal training and as a professional triathlete.

Despite weighing up a move to become a firefighter, he said it had been his younger brother’s influence that had pushed him towards a career in policing.

“I had thought about being a firefighter but then thought I might give policing a crack,” Tom said. “Ben had told me about it, and I thought why not.”

“He’s helped me heaps. Especially with the paperwork side of things but even when I was a PSO I asked him a lot of questions.”

While Ben might be moving on to bigger and better things as a detective, the Rodgers name is set to remain a feature at Southbank Police Station with Tom now posted at the watch house for the next few years.

And if their two weeks together was anything to go by, one benefit of Ben’s departure will be less confusion around the station!

“Everybody says that we’ve got the same sort of mannerisms and we talk the same,” Ben said. “One of the tricky things is that we keep getting phone calls coming in and they’re after constable Rodgers and people put it through to the wrong Rodgers.”

“We’ve also had members ringing up thinking that they’re talking to me, but it’s actually Tom!”