Sergeant Geoffrey Bernard William Little (Retired)

A career in service

• 1962
  Joined the NSW Police Cadet Corps
  13 August 1962 — the centenary year of the NSW Police Force.
• 1965
  Sworn in as Probationary Constable
  8 June 1965 — his nineteenth birthday.
• 1960s – 70s
  General Duties, Divisional Cyclist & Traffic Branch
  A public-facing era of uniformed city policing, traffic-point duty, and early community work.
• 1979
  Appointed UNA Ambassador of Goodwill
  United Nations Association, for the International Year of the Child.
• 1982
  Promoted to Sergeant
  14 February 1982 — Sergeant, Third Class.
• 1980s – 90s
  Prosecuting Branch · Community-Based Policing · School Lecturing · COPS unit
  Specialist postings across the Force's modernisation, including the roll-out of the Computerised Operational Policing System.
• 1990s
  Harbourside Local Area Command, North Sydney
  Supervised Community Safety, Schools & Youth Liaison, Student Work Experience and Domestic Violence programs for the LAC.
• 2001
  Retired — 8 June 2001
  Closing a career of approximately thirty-nine years in NSW Police service, on his fifty-fifth birthday.

Thirty-nine years of uniform

Geoffrey Little's career spanned the full arc of modern Australian policing. He entered a Force that still relied on paper gazettes, divisional cyclists and traffic-point duty at city intersections; he left a Service reshaped by Local Area Commands, computerised records, and a national conversation about community-based policing. He served through the centenary of the Force, the renaming to the Police Service in 1990, the Wood Royal Commission, and the post-commission reforms of the late 1990s.

Across those decades he moved between General Duties, the Traffic Branch, the Prosecuting Branch — where officers of the Crown presented the Police case in the Local Courts — Community-Based Policing and School Lecturing, specialist computerisation work, and finally supervisory community safety roles at North Sydney. Alongside his Police duties, he served as a Captain — Officer of Cadets — in the Australian Army Cadet Corps, attached to North Sydney Boys' High School and Eastern Command Military District Headquarters, Paddington.

"He has received numerous commendations and ought to be regarded as having been a hardworking and dedicated officer." — Full Bench, Industrial Relations Commission of NSW · 2002

Honours & appointments

Beyond the Force

Retirement from the NSW Police did not mean retirement from service. Geoffrey moved into the private security industry as a Master Licence holder, Security Risk Management Consultant and Workplace Trainer, before taking a full-time casual officer role with the Court Security Unit of the NSW Department of Corrective Services — continuing the same work of presence, calm and public safety that had defined the four decades before it.

Rotarian, mentor, and quiet internationalist, he has remained active in the community into recent years — his contribution formally recognised again in 2024 by a NSW Police Commendation from the Commissioner.

For the family and friends who know the stories behind every posting, every transfer and every ordinary good day: this page is a quiet room in which to keep them.