Police
![Sergeant Tracker Alexander ‘Alec’ Riley wearing his police uniform](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/zl9du87e/staging/92e8deb95e9d0497e4d992b2166fd5c2851d3fc6-1600x1884.jpg?fit=max&auto=format)
Alexander Riley, legendary Aboriginal police tracker
The remarkable talents of Aboriginal trackers who worked for NSW Police in the 20th century are featured in a display at the Justice & Police Museum
![DES17_FP07_0026_004detail.jpg](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/cdad812fcb264f66a02ef2666dfca1c1.jpg)
Underworld
Behind the scenes: How to read a ‘special’
Around the world, police forces followed established conventions when taking mugshots. But Sydney police in the 1920s did things differently
![Gold painted plaster bust of William John Mackay, Commissioner of Police](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2023/07/df4c38d79be147d7a29fe645d44d57b1.jpg)
Underworld
Big Bill MacKay
William John MacKay (1885–1948), known as Bill, was a Scottish-born police officer who played a major role in policing Sydney’s underworld during the 1920s
![William John Mackay, NSW Police Commissioner](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2023/07/5a4fe4b115524793b7c7ef807e8d062c.jpg)
Underworld
Central Police Station – a policeman’s critique
Most of the Special photographs were taken in the yards at Sydney’s Central Police Station, located in the central business district next to the Central court complex
![Black and white mugshot of man against wall, left hand side image closeup without hat, right hand side image full standing shot with hat on, leaning on chair.](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/3d3aa3f8102c4aeabdca93fb6c18402b.jpg)
Crooks like us
Imagine the human face as a theatre stage, across which stagger thoughts, feelings, moods and memories
![](https://images.mhnsw.au/fotoweb/embed/2024/07/dc51288db80f4897ba56ec0810b46f6f.jpg)
On This Day
First police force in NSW
On 8 August 1789 Governor Phillip established a night-watch of eight of the best-behaved convicts in the Colony. It was the first police force in the country
![Black and white image of a sandstone building. A man can be seen in the foreground.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/zl9du87e/staging/73b9a81b9c80c302bd1d758acb7347003848cf31-2296x1648.jpg?fit=max&auto=format)
Museum stories
Gritty business
Immerse yourself in Sydney's chilling criminal past in this unique water-front museum of policing, law and disorder – with its grizzly collection of underworld weapons along with tales of mayhem and lawlessness, aptly described as an educational resource befitting a 'professor in crime'
![DES_JP88_1191a.jpg](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2023/04/a2e9252b4e954856a89a8ea90bdebcc2.jpg)
Keeping time
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries watches were designed to carried on the person, attached to a waist hook, looped over a belt or as part of a chatelaine in the case of women