Fighting back against online predators

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Clyde Sampson decided to become a cop while playing American football - not because of the game, but because of his teammates.

It was April 1991, and four men accused of murdering police officers Damian Eyre and Steven Tynan in Walsh Street in 1988 had just been acquitted.

Some of Sampson's teammates were police officers. He sensed their anger forged in solidarity. "I could feel their pain, and I decided to join," he says.

He graduated in 1992, aged 24, with a plan to join search and rescue, but a back injury closed that path.

He worked his way to becoming a detective, before joining the e-crime squad, not necessarily to pursue techno-tycoons but for a pragmatic reason. A mate was in the squad, and he saw how he could catch serious crooks while maintaining a family life. "I had just become a parent and I wanted a job without night shift," Sampson says.