Joining the force is deadly for this mob

These 19 students appear to have little in common but at times speak the same language: they can pick other Kooris from the gubbas and all want to be gunjibal.

Jarin Baigent, a Koori from Blacktown who grew up in Waterloo, reckons even in a record batch of 975 recruits she can pick other indigenous students.

"The Aboriginal community is so big that regardless of what you look like or where you are, someone's going to know you, or your cousins or someone from where you're from," the 23-year-old said. "We all know someone from someone's else's family."

"When Kooris meet up with each other it's always the same questions: who's your mob? What's your name? Where are you from?" Little things such as hearing a fellow student describe something they like as "deadly" are a giveaway. "We're all aware of it," she said.

NSW Police has been trying to attract indigenous recruits for the past eight years but there are still only 186 sworn Aboriginal policemen and women in a force of more than 14,500.

To see so many Koori students together delights the Police Commissioner, Ken Moroney.

He suspects in the past there have been so few Aboriginal recruits in each class that an already hard career choice has often become unbearable.

"They've found the isolation in Goulburn difficult," he says. "I think that's one of the reasons many have passed through here but not necessarily completed their probationary period."

Ms Baigent knows all about what her new boss calls the "brutal community pressure" Kooris who want to join the police can face.

"I always wanted to be a cop," she said, but as a child never told her family - "No way". In her home in Waterloo, and in Redfern more broadly, police were "gunjibal", "gunji" and lots else.

"They were the enemy … it was difficult for my family to get their heads around it when I was coming here."

A fellow recruit, Greg Hartge, from Blacktown, is a father of four aged eight, six, three and five months. To become a policeman he has put down a paintbrush.

"I always wanted to be a cop since I was at school," the 29-year-old said. "At school it was fine, but with my family, no."

Nina Parsons, who spent the first three decades of her life in Brewarrina, also has four children, aged 21, 20, 15 and 14.

The 43-year-old, who has worked with the Department of Education and the Department of Community Services, has returned to complete training she began three years ago.

"I don't think there's enough Aboriginal police officers out there," she said. "We need not just numbers but people who actually care. I hope I can make a difference."