What  Ross Guenther didn't know at the time was he would soon be given the task of stopping similar attacks in his home state of Victoria.

A couple of months ago he was appointed the first Assistant Commissioner (Counter-terrorism) which is a public acknowledgment of the blindingly obvious. That the risk of a local  terrorist attack is real and will not fade in the forseeable future.

And just this week Premier Daniel Andrews pledged nearly $50 million to boost the police's counter-terrorism resources.

Guenther and his wife, Lisa, learned of the January attacks while in Paris about to catch the train to their house in the south of France (most cops are happy with a break anywhere south of Frankston but Guenther is a different sort of cat. More of that later).

He says the raw emotion and the sense of solidarity on the march left a lasting impression. "It was amazing."

But Ross "The Boss" Guenther and his counter-terrorism team can't run on emotion. For this is the main weapon of those on the other side. Those who will kill in the name of their god, their flag or their particular dogma.

He says while terrorists initially want to kill and disrupt, the long-term game is to promote fear and hate until we turn on each other.

"To isolate sections of the community is exactly what they want," he says.

Which is why senior police are so disappointed at the violent clashes between the ultra-right loonbags who think Australia was discovered by Jimmy Barnes (James Reyne was navigator) and the far left who think Karl Marx was Harpo's brother and Vladimir Lenin wrote Back in the USSR before marrying Yoko Ono.

Every violent image and every Islamic terrorist event makes many in the Australian Muslim community feel as if they are strangers in their own country.

Around the time that bogans with slogans were protesting at Melton (the last time they stared at the Southern Cross it was on their tattooist's hairy chest) there was a more civilised gathering at Melbourne's French Festival.

Ross Guenther was there to show support (and probably to get a feed of garlic snails). A local patisserie owner told him a French girl employed at the shop rang on the Monday after the Paris attack asking if she was welcome at work. The girl is Muslim.

After a terrorist incident two years ago a local office went ahead with their planned pre-grand final barbecue on the Yarra. All staff turned up except two who cancelled at the last minute – the only Muslims on staff.

Guenther points out there isn't one Muslim community just as there isn't one Christian community. Those who believe in Christ include Catholics, Protestants, Methodists and members of the Ku Klux Klan (who hide their pointy heads behind masks just like our homegrown demonstrators).

Policing, itself, is a broad church and there are many roads to the police academy (which, after all, is a former Catholic seminary) and the one Guenther chose is unique indeed.

His mother was a professional opera singer and accomplished pianist and Guenther followed her into the music business as a top-notch saxophone player, leaving his Monash economics law degree to take to the road.

He worked in Hobart, Perth, Alice Springs and Launceston, often playing in casino show bands. He backed international acts including Jerry Lewis, Shirley Bassey and Barry White, (although Barry was peeved when the sax player took a solo, drowning out the big man's warbling lyrics).

But when he went to buy his first home the bank wouldn't give him a mortgage because his income was not consistent enough.

His brother was in the job and so he decided to join not so much to catch crooks but because he figured that while working shifts he could still groove away in the music business. It is a fair bet he is the only serving policeman to moonlight as a member of the Channel Nine band.

So while he was chasing cat burglars and car thieves as a cop, once a week he was backing Frankie J. Holden on In Melbourne Tonight.

Back in his days at Prahran, Guenther was on standby to move on to nightshift to replace a young constable who had shot an armed suspect attempting to rob a TAB.

But the keen young man said he would be right and would see out his roster.

The policeman was Steven Tynan and during that nightshift he was shot dead with Damian Eyre when they were ambushed in Walsh Street on October 12, 1988.

That was an act of terrorism by a group of armed robbers bent on revenge against any police they could find. And that is exactly the threat today from disaffected Muslim men who can be radicalised in a matter of months.

In October, a 15-year-old boy shot dead Curtis Cheng, an unarmed civilian employed by the NSW police department, outside the Parramatta State Crime Command before being shot and killed himself.

In September the previous year, an 18-year-old man was shot dead after he stabbed two police officers  outside the Endeavour Hills station.

These two attacks show how terrorism has changed in just two years. Before Endeavour Hills, the main threat was of a big ticket attack at events such as an AFL final or the Melbourne Cup.

But the very nature of the plots required multiple offenders and detailed planning. This gives police more time to uncover the groups and intervene.

Now it is the so called lone wolf or a small wolf pack that is the threat – young men, Guenther says, whose brains have yet to fully mature and who remain susceptible to a line of propaganda peddled online or by radical locals.

Police have identified more than 200 potential terrorists (the risk ranging from slight to extreme) in Victoria aged from their early teens to their early 30s.

And then there is the law of unintended consequences.

The Paris attacks and the downing of a Russian plane has galvanised a host of countries to increase military action against Islamic State in Syria.

Guenther says this means some Australians fighting for ISIS may wish to return as the risks on the front increase, and each will be a potential terrorist.

In the past few months the passports of several Melbourne radical Muslims suspected of planning to fight in Syria have been cancelled.

Our prisons are also another recruiting ground. Some convicted terrorists have become influential inside while some "traditional" crooks, including a notorious armed robber, are said to have embraced Islam.

The alliance gives the violent an excuse while young radicals can learn of police methods from these older crooks.

(Although it can be used to advantage. One long-term crook was put between two Muslim convicts who chose to pray loudly and regularly. Eventually the older inmate agreed to make a statement on an unsolved crime in exchange for quieter lodgings.)

As the shape of terrorism changes so does the police response, which will draw inevitable criticism.

Police usually quietly gather evidence and when they are ready to lay charges, make their move. But when dealing with potential opportunistic attacks there will be no time. The first aim will be to disrupt and the second to prosecute.

Sometimes this will lead to a quiet intervention where community leaders will have told of individuals losing their way. And at other times there will be armed raids on Muslim homes that will feed concerns of discrimination. Guenther wants to work with the community but says the first duty will always be to prevent crime.

And all police need to grasp that many trusted methods of law enforcement are now redundant. They are trained in safety-first tactics, to cordon and contain in a siege with the view that the longer you talk to a gunman the more likely it is there will be a successful outcome.

Now senior members of all Australian police forces accept that if it is a terrorism incident there will be no negotiations and speed is the key.

There is no shoot-to-kill policy, officially at least. In a "normal" siege the first response, general duties police secure the area and wait for the experts – negotiators, snipers and rescue teams. That is now out the window. The first there will have to make the life and death decisions.

Guenther says while the home-grown threats can be kids radicalised largely through social media, it is wrong to consider them unsophisticated.

Increasingly, would-be terrorists "go dark", communicating in secret through the dark web and using military-style encrypted communications.

"We will need to use specialists in this area," says the Assistant Commissioner. Read into that counter-intelligence experts from the Australian Defence Forces. And with the government promising 88 more staff, expect some to be spooks in suits.

Guenther says we need to see terrorists for what they are and not what they pretend to be. "They are criminals and should be treated as such. In Paris they murdered more than a hundred innocent people.

"They are murderers and there is no nobility in that."