BEN HARVEY: Wesley Lockyer, Clinton Lockyer and Wylie Oscar all disappeared within 10 days of each other

The police would have done things differently if they were white.

Variations of that racially charged observation have been constants in the 25 years I have reported on crimes against people of colour.

Up until quite recently the accusation held water. Cops did treat certain crimes against certain people differently.

As a cub police reporter working the night shift I would regularly be persuaded to play down an assault, regardless of how savage, because “it was just a domestic”.

Dead body found on the street? “Don’t get too excited,” the duty inspector would say. “It’s an Aboriginal.”

The more “woke” cops in the late 1990s (if there were any) would shy away from being so blatant in their dismissiveness.

“He was killed in a feud,” they would tell me, knowing I would get the thinly disguised hint.

It’s to my industry’s eternal shame that I didn’t need much coaxing to drop such stories; editors had little appetite for tales about women getting beaten by their spouses or Aboriginal men dying during fights with family members.

The media has been trying to make up for decades of contemptuous journalism applied to crime victims consigned to anonymity because they weren’t white.

So-called gendered violence is now regularly front page news.

Journos have come a long way.

So have the cops.

But before we get too carried away patting ourselves on the back, let’s first have a chat about Wesley Lockyer, his relative Clinton Lockyer and Wylie Oscar.

The three men vanished within 10 days of each other in 2022.

Wesley was last seen around 6am on October 24, 2022, as he left his home in the Jinparinya Aboriginal Community, about 30km from Port Hedland.

Police believe he was under the influence of drugs and had perished after wandering off but his family thinks that is unlikely because the 31-year-old was an experienced bush ranger.

Clinton, 30, was last seen in the early hours of November 1 in the Pilbara town of Roebourne.

Three days after that, Wylie’s Toyota Landcruiser was found with two flat tyres north of Fitzroy Crossing.

The experienced bushman, 22, had been in Broome visiting family and has not been seen since.

Three sudden and quite mysterious disappearances within a bit over a week.

What’s more worrying is they were neither the first nor the last men to vanish around that time.

A year before Wesley disappeared, 27-year-old Jeremiah Rivers went missing.

Jayo, as he was known, hasn’t been seen or heard from since October 18, 2021.

Originally from the east Kimberley community of Warmun, Jayo was last seen at a campsite in Wippo Creek, near the Queensland town of Noccundra.

A coronial inquest into his disappearance was told the hunting and fishing trip with a group of mates was actually a drug mission.

The court heard evidence that he was killed when he realised the true nature of the trip — to sell cannabis in Top End Indigenous communities — but the coroner was unable to substantiate the claim.

The subsequent disappearances of Wesley, Clinton and Wylie were followed 18 months later by the case of Zane Stevens.

The 21-year-old was last seen in Broome about 3am on April 27 of this year.

His vehicle was found bogged in mud flats at Coconut Wells, a short drive north of the tourist town.

Five days after Zane vanished, 37-year-old Brenton Shar went missing.

Brenton lived further south than the other men, in Geraldton in WA’s Mid West.

He was last seen at the town’s marina and a police search later uncovered a pair of shorts believed to belong to him at a nearby beach.

That’s six men who vanished in about three years.

Police are adamant there is no evidence of criminality in any of the cases.

When I was in my early twenties the cops would have said the men “went walkabout” but today police say they “wandered off”.

The families believe otherwise.

Followers of the cases have pointed to an entrenched drug syndicate that underpins the North West’s booming meth and cannabis trade. Many of the missing men had common associates linked to the cartel.

The detectives investigating the disappearances did so knowing full well that at some point someone would say “police would have done things differently if they were white” so the searches were exhaustive.

I don’t think it’s entirely fair to suggest the cases remain unsolved because of race; it’s more about geography.

If six men had disappeared from a metropolitan area there would be wall-to-wall coverage, regardless of their ethnicity.

When people vanish in cities it’s a fair bet they were the victims of foul play. That’s not automatically the case in the country.

But half-a-dozen open cases suggests we still have a way to go.