Veteran Inspector Bernie Rankin is not one of them.

After four decades in some of the toughest jobs the police force has to offer Rankin is leaving later this month without rancour, rage or regret. "One day I just decided I'd had enough and that I wanted to do something else with my life."

He doesn't want to take work calls after hours, deal with the worst we have to offer and see colleagues buckle under the weight of unrealistic expectations. But that doesn't mean he has lost respect for a job that can be character building or soul destroying.

"I've had a great 42 years but I know it's time to go," he says.

Not bad for a bloke who "bombed out" of his RMIT business management course due to what he admits was the habit of "partying too hard and studying too little".

After working at a desk job for 12 months he decided to give policing a crack – joining on April Fools Day, 1974.

It was a very different police force back then. His squad was exclusively male, Anglo Saxon and the training was largely physical. Drugs were an annoyance rather than an epidemic, ethnic sensitivity was ordering garlic bread with your spaghetti bolognaise and a hot rod was a fast car driven by a hoon, not a stolen gun brandished by a loon.

Rankin found himself stationed at St Kilda – one of the great training grounds for police. "It was the only place in Melbourne at the time where the lights never went out," he says.

St Kilda created a unique heat that forged the careers of many young cops. Some of the best and worst worked at the station with some attaining high office and others graduating to jail cells. A select few managed both.

"It could be seedy and a tough town to work. It was a station with hard men."

Christopher Dale Flannery being led handcuffed into the City Watch House in 1981. Rankin says he had 'killer's eyes'.

Rankin says he had a succession of mentors who taught him the lessons of the street and he also came in contact with heavy crime figures – such as underworld hitman Christopher Dale "Rentakill" Flannery.

Flannery could be found on the door of the notorious Mickey's Disco – the first nightclub with a Saturday Night Fever style flashing dance floor that drew revellers from around Melbourne who were unaware murders were plotted in the back room.

If looks could kill Rentakill would have been even more dangerous. "Flannery had eyes that stared straight through you. He had killer's eyes," says Rankin.

He may have had a mean glare but he couldn't see the bleeding obvious – that he was being set up. He was murdered in Sydney in 1985 and his body was never found.

Rankin always wanted to be a detective and in 1979 was promoted to the Breaking Squad a crew that hunted safe breakers, professional burglars and the receivers who moved commercial quantities of stolen property.

This was a time before the widespread use of credit cards and when pubs and restaurants kept nightly takings in safes. And there were safe crackers – none better than the Magnetic Drill Gang.

First they would set off the alarms in the days before the ultimate raids so that if they were tripped during the robbery authorities would assume it was a false alarm. They would use electro-magnets to precisely hold a diamond-tipped drill to access the lock tumblers. Then using a doctor's cystoscope they could look into the safe to manipulate the combination.

Graham Allan Kinniburgh, who was murdered in Kew in 2003, was one of the 'smartest crims' Rankin dealt with. Photo: Andrew De La Rue

One of the key members of the gang was Graham "The Munster" Kinniburgh who made a handsome living and was rarely arrested.

Police say the team grabbed $1.7 million from a Murwillumbah bank, a huge jewellery haul from a Lonsdale Street office, valuables from safety deposit boxes in Melbourne and gold bullion in Queensland. None were ever caught. "I worked on one off and on for three years and didn't get near him."

"Kinniburgh was one of the smartest crims I ever dealt with. He kept his own counsel and had a tight circle of friends," says Rankin.

And even when he was caught The Munster found wriggle room.

When Rankin and his team raided Kinniburgh's home they found $4500 in a drawer and a rare pendant stolen in a burglary on a business tycoon's Toorak home.

Kinniburgh nonchalantly told the police to trouser the cash and call it all square. He was immediately charged with attempted bribery as well as burglary. At court The Munster employed a professional photographer to take pictures of the pendant then turned up at the trial with an exact replica, destroying the argument the seized item must have come from the tycoon's home.

He beat the theft but went down on the attempted burglary – proving there is more than one way to skin a cat burglar. But he soon used up his nine lives and was murdered outside his Kew home in December 2003.

Rankin saw firsthand how policing changed from cat and mouse pursuits (the "Breakers" were the last crew to convict Mick Gatto for a serious offence – a safe robbery on a golf club) to virtual street warfare.

A scene from the Russell Street bombing in 1986.

He was in Adelaide on holidays when on March 27, 1986 a car bomb exploded outside the Russell Street police station, killing Constable Angela Taylor and injuring 21.

He says only the bombers lack of experience stopped a mass-murder. The stolen Holden was packed with gelignite and deliberately detonated in a place where the offenders expected to kill large numbers of police.

"About 50 of the sticks of gelignite didn't detonate. If they had put the bomb together correctly it would have been twice as powerful and there would have been dreadful consequences.

They planned to put the bomb car in the quadrangle inside Russell Street. It would have brought the building down."

But who they were was still unknown although a thief called Peter Reed was nominated in the first few days as a person of interest because of his hatred for the Stolen Motor Vehicle Squad based in Russell Street.

Rankin says Reed was originally discounted because he was under surveillance on the morning of the bombing as a suspected member of a violent armed robbery gang.

Later, when the bomb car was reconstructed, there was evidence to implicate Reed in the theft of the Holden.

When police went to arrest Reed on Anzac Day at his Kallista home he opened fire seriously wounding Detective Sergeant Mark Wylie.

It soon became apparent the bomb had been planted by armed robbers connected to Reed.

Convicted Russell Street bomber Craig Minogue will be eligible for parole this year.

"We found a fingerprint match to Craig Minogue on the toilet door at Reed's house and some gelignite wrapped in the Albury Border Mail newspaper with a fingerprint that was a match to his brother Rod."

The taskforce found the Minogues were connected to an older crook known as "Stan the Man."

In the days before computerised police data one detective sifted through manual records looking for a match. He found it with career armed robber Stan Taylor.

A further check showed that Taylor's driver's licence was registered to the Minogue's parents' home.

Eventually Taylor and Craig Minogue were found guilty with both sentenced to life although Minogue was given a minimum of 30 years. Which means he will be eligible for parole this year.

Russell Street was not an isolated incident but the first in a sequence of events that changed the nature of policing. There was the Turkish Embassy Bombing (November 1986), Hoddle Street (seven dead, August 1987) the Queens Street Massacre (nine dead, December 1987), and Walsh Street (two police ambushed and shot dead, October 1988).

Police learned they could be random targets and the risks have only become worse with ongoing terrorism threats.

Rankin says, "The challenges are much greater now. A routine call can flare up and you could be fighting for your life. Young police are regularly dealing with people who have pathological anger, drug and mental health issues.

"It is so different today and our people are paying the price. They just wear out."

He says the level of external scrutiny is another stress. "You are second guessed by people who weren't there. They have hours and hours to analyse what you did in seconds. They have the time that you didn't."

"But I believe if you make decisions in good faith they will be justified later."

After a stint as homicide chief he moved to launching criminal prosecutions against reckless drivers who cause road trauma.

At first he trained road police and now heads the Major Collision Investigation Unit that targets the sort of fatal collisions that simply should never have happened.

Too many so-called "accidents", he says, are avoidable tragedies caused by the stupid, selfish and wantonly dangerous.

"What is the difference between attacking someone with a baseball bat in a bar or roaring off at 160 KMH when you are full of ice?

"Both actions show a reckless disregard for human life and should be punished accordingly."

His investigators have to calmly reconstruct events that take lives and destroy families, which leaves them at risk of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders.

"The work they do – some pay a price. We must look after our own people."