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An earlier piecePolice response an utter failure, coroner finds
Paul Bibby
October 14, 2011 - 12:00PM
Salter's father: No to armed police
The father of Adam Salter, a man shot dead by police in 2009, is calling for NSW police to put their guns away.
There is strong evidence that a policewoman who shot a mentally disturbed man in the back in 2009 accidentally used her gun instead of her Taser, a coroner has found.
Adam Salter was shot and killed in the kitchen of his Lakemba home in November 2009 after police responded to a call that the 36-year-old was stabbing himself with a knife.
The shooter, Sergeant Sheree Bissett, and NSW Police claimed that Mr Salter was threatening another officer with a knife and that lethal force was her only option.
But the inquest into Mr Salter's death learnt that Sergeant Bissett shouted "Taser, Taser, Taser" before firing her gun, and Deputy State Coroner Scott Mitchell has found that it was more than likely Sergeant Bissett had made a terrible mistake.
Describing the police response as "an utter failure", Mr Mitchell said: "There is a very strong flavour of confusion and mistake and, given her cry of 'Taser, Taser Taser', I think it is more likely than not that Sergeant Bissett mistakenly chose her Glock, having intended to employ her Taser.
"Police killed the person they were supposed to be helping.
"They forgot to remove or to secure the knife from the sink.
"They removed from the kitchen the very person, his father, most likely to be able to contain him.
"They left Adam Salter in the care of a young and inexperienced and ... ineffective and unresponsive officer."
Mr Mitchell told the Coroners Court in Glebe it was more than likely that, far from representing a threat to police, Mr Salter posed a threat only to himself.
Despite this, "without any proper warning or challenge, Sergeant Bissett fired the fatal shot".
Mr Mitchell also slammed the internal police investigation that followed the shooting.
He said the critical incident investigation report, written by Detective Inspector Russell Oxford of the NSW Homicide Squad, was "seriously flawed".
He said the investigation report "provided the commissioner with a very unreliable view of the circumstance of Adam Salter's death and will have failed to persuade the community that the circumstances surrounding Adam Salter’s death were investigated scrupulously and fairly".
Mr Mitchell did not make any recommendations and said he would not refer the matter to the Police Integrity Commission (PIC).
However, he left this option open for the family.
Outside the court Mr Salter's father, Adrian Salter, said the family were still considering whether or not they would pursue the matter with the PIC.
"What’s important to us is that Adam's life was taken unexpectedly, tragically and unnecessarily," he told reporters.
"I think that what happened was a tragic mistake and wouldn't have happened had the police not been carrying guns."
LinkStark differences in accounts of killing
October 2, 2011
"Gentle and fun-loving" ... shooting victim Adam Salter with his sister Zarin.
Questions remain over whether a distressed man was the victim of a police operation that went tragically wrong, writes Paul Bibby.
THE death of Adam Salter from a police bullet on November 18, 2009, was big news.
Within hours of the 36-year-old victim being taken from his father's Lakemba home in an ambulance carry sheet, NSW Police had organised a press conference metres from the front verandah.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Stuart Wilkins told the waiting media that police had arrived with paramedics to find Mr Salter suffering from wounds inflicted on himself with a kitchen knife.
''During this time the male, who has got up from a lying position, we believe has grabbed a knife from the kitchen and confronted police,'' he said.
''During that confrontation that male has been shot, once, by police. A further struggle has ensued. The male has committed self harm again. Police have wrestled the knife from that male person.''
Radio stations gave the incident blanket coverage, and television stations re-enacted the events on their nightly news bulletins.
Few outside Mr Salter's family considered the possibility that, rather than being dangerous, he was a highly distressed man trying to harm himself.
But last week the coronial inquest into Mr Salter's death heard evidence that, when he sprang from the ground to grab the kitchen knife, he did not threaten police.
The court also heard that several police officers subsequently misled the public and senior police command about certain crucial aspects of what happened.
Questions were raised about the objectivity of the internal police investigation into the shooting - an investigation that exonerated the officers and recommended they be formally commended.
The inquest heard a police radio call from the scene of the shooting, and the initial police report, both falsely stated that Mr Salter came at police with the knife before he was shot.
The officer who made the radio call, Constable Emily Metcalfe, admitted during the inquest that she had been wrong, saying she did not know where the information had come from and that ''I can only suggest that I was in shock''.
The inquest heard that, following these initial reports, situation reports extending up the chain of command contained further misrepresentations about the shooting.
This included the claim that police had assisted paramedics in trying to restrain Mr Salter as he went for the knife, and they had ''challenged'' him to drop the knife several times before he was shot.
Detective Inspector Russell Oxford, from the NSW Homicide Squad, who wrote one of the situation reports, said that he had mistakenly cut and pasted an erroneous section of another report into his document.
He denied a suggestion by the lawyer representing Mr Salter's family that he had been part of a ''complete whitewash'' by police.
The reported misrepresentations by police are crucial, because they go to the question of whether the officer who shot Mr Salter, Sergeant Sheree Bissett, was justified in using lethal force.
The Deputy State Coroner Scott Mitchell has the power to recommend that Sergeant Bissett face criminal charges or other disciplinary action if he believes lethal force was not justified.
The critical incident investigation, led by Inspector Oxford, found that Sergeant Bissett's actions were appropriate because she believed the life of her colleague, Constable Aaron Abela, was in danger.
In a video walk-through interview that formed part of the investigation, Sergeant Bissett said: ''When he turned I thought he was going to stab [Constable Abela] and kill him.
''So, I've just drawn my gun and gone 'Taser, taser, taser' and … I shot him.'' (Because, you normally shout that before shooting someone? - Korto- )
The contrast between the police version of events given to the Deputy State Coroner and that from the both the paramedics and Mr Salter's father, was stark. The paramedics and Mr Salter's father say that, far from being in danger, Constable Abela watched as the disturbed and bleeding man stabbed himself in the neck.
The critical incident investigation by police and subsequent review by the force's Professional Services Command completely rejected this evidence and accepted the police version of events.
Mr Salter's family say he was a friendly, generous man under extreme mental stress.
Mr Mitchell will hand down his findings in coming weeks.
Hey, what's the problem? Police are allowed to use deadly force in a situation where someone is threatening deadly violence, and this guy was stabbing someone with a knife! Repeatedly!
More seriously, my reading.
The guy is out of control and committing dangerous self-harm, so the officer decides to taser him (sensible enough, any risk of the taser is far less than the knife). In the excitement, accidentally pulls her handgun instead, shooting him dead. Ooops.
Then the cops think "Well, that's sad, but why compound a bad deal by ruining the officer's life as well?" and launch into cover-up mode. Unfortunately for them, there were also paramedice present giving a different version, instead of just the father who could be easily dismissed due to understandable bias.
