“The long-standing grievance about the injustices to Captain Jim Collins and his flight crew consumed Greg, a man of principle who wanted the truth to be heard.” However, Paul said, it was his deployment to Antarctica as part of the Police team for Operation Overdrive, leading the recovery of bodies and evidence from the Mt Erebus crash site, which led to him “devoting years of his life to fighting for the truth to be told”. Greg’s operational skills were honed during responses to some of the country’s most serious incidents, including the sinking of the Wahine in Wellington Harbour in 1968 and the Sprott House retirement home fire in 1969 in which seven women died. Greg was admired for his honesty, strong sense of right and wrong and his passion for and loyalty to “the band of brothers and sisters who worked for him”, Paul said. The good guys won, and the bad guys were arrested.” He called up a tow truck and instructed the driver to reverse up to and through the fortified fence. The chief was not happy about the lack of respect shown to his staff and the police. “On arrival, the team were warmly welcomed with a barrage of bottles and other projectiles. He shared some of Greg’s favourite stories, including when the TPU was called out to the Sinn Fein motorcycle gang HQ in Upper Hutt. Speaking at the funeral, Inspector Paul Berry noted the respect that “the chief” was given by colleagues because of his strong values and leadership style. He began his career in Wellington in 1965, walking the beat with a whistle and wooden baton, and went on to lead the Team Policing Unit in the capital. Greg, who grew up in Christchurch, was a graduate of the Gordon Hogg Wing 31. When family, friends and colleagues gathered at his funeral, the tributes were not only for his policing career and his family life, but also for the tenacity he showed in fighting for the truth about the 1979 crash on Mt Erebus of an Air New Zealand DC10 sightseeing flight.
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