from Crikey …..

Police quick out of the blocks to spin their latest shooting

Greg Barns writes:

The reaction by Victoria Police to the shooting by their officers of a 15-year-old boy in a Melbourne park last night is an appallingly insensitive exercise in self protection and spin.

The Victoria Police media machine has hit the airwaves this morning seeking to justify a case where no less than three of their officers felt it necessary to use firearms on one young man, obviously drug affected or mentally ill or both, wielding two knives.

In among the expressions of sorrow and condolences by the Victoria Police to the family of the young man, are self justifying comments about the conduct of the officers. These comments are clearly designed to defend the name of Victoria Police, before the Coroner or any other investigation has had an opportunity to examine the evidence in the matter.

Assistant Commissioner Tim Cartwright told the media this morning, "We shouldn't lose members of the community this way.” But then he added, "We train our police members, they've foamed him, they talked to him and they've done what they can. It's a dreadful event."

And Cartwright went on: "At some stage the young bloke has approached the police officers. They backed off and fired shots to no effect. He has continued to approach, at which stage three of the four members then fired at the young man, fatally wounding him. He's fallen to the ground and died at the scene a very short time after.''

"If we step through the events and the investigation we've conducted today, the members did everything they could to talk him down ... At the end of the day one of our member's lives was at risk and the three members saw fit to defend that member.  This is not a police failure. It's a dreadful tragedy, it's a failure of the community that we get a young man in these circumstances where the ultimate outcome is he violently approached police and he's shot dead."

How does Cartwright know that this is the truth of what happened to this young man? How can he pre-judge the critical issue of whether or not the officers involved feared reasonably for their safety? He doesn’t and he can't -- he wasn’t there and all he is doing is seeking to influence public opinion about the role of the police in this tragedy.

Cartwright has no business doing this -- it is a matter for independent investigators and the courts, including the Coroner, to determine what happened last night in Northcote.

There are some significant questions that the police need to answer about this case. Firstly are the police trained well enough to deal calmly and compassionately with a person who is drug affected or mentally ill? Second, why is it that in a situation with four police officers against one young man the result is death to the young man?

These are issues that the Coroner and others will need to investigate and find answers to, and the boy’s family and the community have a right to ensure that the Victoria Police do not interfere in that process by continuing to use the media to spin the facts to suit their case.