Robert "Bob" Armstrong (1948 – 19 December 2012) was an Australian policeman regarded as the "pre-eminent bikie gang expert" with the Victoria Police.
Police career
Armstrong was born on a dairy farm in the Gippsland region close to the Victoria–New South Wales border. After finishing high school, Armstrong worked as a lumberjack and as a farm laborer. Armstrong told the Canadian journalists Julian Sher and William Marsden about why he joined the Victoria Police: "Then in 1967 I was putting down a couple of beers with a mate and said, 'Let's join the cops'. People always ask you 'why did you join the cops?' No real reason". After working as a constable, Armstrong was promoted up to detective in 1975. Sher and Marsden wrote: "There's nothing particularly imposing about Bob Armstrong. He's of medium height and reasonably muscular, but nothing over the top. He has a round, ruddy face and a slightly mischievous, boyish smile. People claim he looks like the comedian Benny Hill. There's a bit of Benny in him, no doubt, but not much. His eyes are too direct and too tough".
Against the Hells Angels
In the early 1970s, Armstrong took part in a raid on the home of Roger "Rebel" Pexa, the treasurer of the Hells Angels Melbourne chapter and was impressed with Pexa's gun collection as he had a huge number of illegal handguns that were all .38, .45 and .357 pistols, each with its own name. Armstrong recalled thinking: "They're into drugs, they're into guns – who are this mob?"
Armstrong made a point of raiding the homes of the Hells Angels Melbourne chapter, where he discovered guns, stolen jewelry, forged drivers' licenses, marijuana, some crude amphetamine labs, and a pamphlet from the United States entitled Speed Made Easy: How to manufacture amphetamines. In 1975, Armstrong gave a television conference where he accused the Melbourne Hells Angels chapter of being engaged in gun-running and selling amphetamine. Peter John Hill, the chapter president, sued Armstrong for defamation on behalf of his entire chapter as he claimed that Armstrong's press conference had damaged the good reputation of all the chapter members. Hill's lawsuit was dismissed by a judge who ruled that the Melbourne chapter was so infamous that its members had no good reputation for Armstrong to damage. Armstrong recalled that Hill's slander suit was the beginning of a feud as he stated: "That got up my nose. That's where it started". Armstrong was relentlessly in pursuing the Hells Angels despite frequently receiving death threats. Armstrong said of the threats: "There had been numerous threats. They ranged from 'We're going to land a plane on your station; we're going to drop a bomb' to 'we're gonna kill Bob Armstrong and his team of bloody detectives'...If you let them get to you it'll drive you mad. So you just got to learn to deal with it. You carry a gun and you learn to handle it". From 1977 onward, Armstrong was dedicated entirely to pursuing the Hells Angels' Melbourne chapter and its president, Hill. Cases involving the Hells Angels are very difficult to solve, and many of Armstrong's friends advised him to stop investigating the Hells Angels as the amount of work and stress involved in Hells Angels-related cases were having an adverse effect on him. Armstrong admitted that the obnoxious behavior of the Hells Angels with their constant death threats against him and his family, their arrogant sense of entitlement and the general unpleasantness of the Angels did impose much strain on him.
Armstrong served with the Bureau of Criminal Intelligence. Armstrong had set up an alert system on his personal computer under which his computer would be alerted every time a police officer ran a search on the license plate of a Hells Angel. In December 1981, an elderly woman, Mrs. Brown, reported a number of suspicious vehicles at the Greenslopes farm outside of Wattle Glen. A police constable ran a computer search on the license plate of the automobile which belonged to a Hells Angel, which alerted Armstrong. Curious as why a Hells Angel would be out in a remote rural area, Armstrong drove out to Greenslopes and discovered the largest amphetamine lab in Australia up to that point. He had Greenslopes bugged and listened in as Hill along with the Hells Angels Roger Biddlestone, Ray Hamment and John Madden went about manufacturing amphetamine. Armstrong headed a special unit known as Omega whose sole purpose to take down the Melbourne chapter of the Hells Angels.