The senior officer, Amy Scott, was conducting routine duties nearby when she was directed to head to Westfield shopping centre following reports a man was using a “massive” knife to stab shoppers.
Within minutes, the officer was inside the centre and began chasing the offender.
“This all happened very, very quickly,” the deputy commissioner of police, Tony Cooke, said.
“The officer was in the near vicinity, attended on her own, was guided to the location of the offender by people who were in the centre and she took the actions that she did, saving a range of people’s lives.”
Albanese thanked the officer, other police, first responders and the “everyday people” who reacted to help victims.
Usually we see posts about the police being “evil” or “bastards” and unnecessary no one seems to want to argue that here. Interesting…
“No, but you see, since all cops are part of a systemic issue, all of them are bastards, even if they have the best intentions and aren’t complicit in the problems I have with police”
There is probably a lot of overlap with people who think all white people are racist, or all men are rapists.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes.
A lot of the anti cop sentiments come from the US where cops are much worse. It seems some australians dont understand that police are trained here for much longer, training is of higher quality and they dont need to worry about the constant threat of handguns or rifles. They just read reddit and facebook and follow the yanks blindly with no critical thought whatsoever, just an angry fantasy.
Okay, I’ll bite. I think she did her job well here. I don’t think her job should exist. I guarantee, whether intentionally or not, that she has wielded her power to make a minority’s day shittier during her career, when they didn’t deserve it. Giving that sort of power to a person, giving them that control over other people, almost always leads to corruption. A few people shining through is the exception, not the rule. Victoria police ran a scare campaign in the media last year about the decriminalisation of public intoxication. How it would cause an outbreak of other crimes, and make their job harder. But no such thing has happened. Even if you don’t believe the police should stop existing, it’s undeniable that they’ve systematically lobbied for more and more powers, which disproportionately affect minorities and the poor. Reducing those powers and shrinking the force has more benefits than not doing so or allowing their power and sizes to continue to balloon.
Edit: To be clear, the decriminalisation was directly off the back of the Royal Commission into an indigenous woman, Aunty Tanya Day’s death in custody. She was arrested for public intoxication after she fell asleep drunk on a train. Think of all the drunk footy fans you’ve seen snoozing on a train home before.
I’ve no doubt that the prejudices of individual officers affects their policing and in some cases may be racist or anti-minority. I think the way around this is more accountability for police officers: they must have bodycams when doing their jobs which are publicly available (we live in a Democracy do we not?) and officers can be removed due random reviews. There is no internal process, it is done by an independent commision. In incidents like this or when in a dodgy area I wouldn’t feel very comfortable with a low police presence. I’m not sure what the alternative to police would be, something like the second amendment in the US?
I wouldn’t feel very comfortable with a low police presence.
Are you Indigenous Australian? A person of colour? LGBTQ? Homeless? A drug addict?
Because from my experiences, these groups tend to feel most comfortable when there’s a lower police presence. And I think their experiences should be considered as just as important as yours.
I’m not sure what the alternative to police would be, something like the second amendment in the US?
You’ve got to be joking, right? Personally, I’d rather not start seeing local school shootings on the evening news. It’s hard enough hearing about the ones in the States. Let alone how much more trigger-happy their cops are due to fearing that any person they interact with may have a concealed gun on them.
I’d go the opposite direction. Take guns off regular uniformed police. That’s how it is in London. De-escalate the threat of violence and bad people are likely to do the same. Wouldn’t you pick a bigger knife if you knew the people showing up in response would have guns?
I think the solutions needed are social ones. Victoria built, and is building, sobering up centres. They are staffed by nurses and social workers, and have drug and alcohol counselling available as well as being able to do referrals to other services. Increasing these sorts of services and improving social safety nets and public housing all have negative effects on the crime rate.
I mostly agree with what you have said. I’m not denying that the problem is societal:
I’m not sure what the alternative to police would be, something like the second amendment in the US?
What I meant by that statement was what do we do to prevent crimes (especially of the violent kind) when societal change fails to prevent it? My solution would be a much, much smaller police force that can run more efficiently with much higher standards of training and accountabilty
me:
Reducing those powers and shrinking the force has more benefits than not doing so or allowing their power and sizes to continue to balloon.
you:
I wouldn’t feel very comfortable with a low police presence.
me:
Because from my experiences, these groups tend to feel most comfortable when there’s a lower police presence.
you:
My solution would be a much, much smaller police force
I literally already said that but alright mate.
Sure grab some quotes, don’t engage with the whole comment. I can change my mind on things. I don’t know why this needs to be about trying to hurt me rather than have a reasonable debate
Mate it was because you said “My solution” and then basically repeated what I had suggested 3 comments earlier as if it was your own idea. Rather than admitting on any level that I may have been right earlier. That’s not a debate, that’s just bad faith.
There were a couple on some of the r/Australia threads.
It’s just such an echo chamber on these sites. Whatever is popular gets upvotes and goes to the top, whatever isn’t popular receives downvotes and sinks to the bottom. People feel peer pressured to vote similarly to others on comments, the cycle continues.
One of the reasons why I didn’t want Lemmy to grow any more than it did. Keeping the community small but active allows people to discuss and debate without massive pile-ons occurring.
I wonder if it would be better without votes at all: You have to comment to interact, you can’t be passive. That way mods can deal with spam more effectively. There is no way for me to tell which users are abusing their votes to silence people rather than interact respectfully. I hate it when I comment a legitimate argument (or worse someone else has and I agree with it) and it gets downvoted with no comments at all. It feels like I’ve committed the horrible act of having an opinion.
Downvotes are disabled on my instance and I think it helps a decent amount of what you’re saying. Only seeing how many others agree with someone does still lend a decent amount to the discussion I think. It’s way starker to see someone still on 1 when the person they’re arguing with is on 10 in my opinion.
Only seeing how many others agree with someone does still lend a decent amount to the discussion I think. It’s way starker to see someone still on 1 when the person they’re arguing with is on 10 in my opinion.
I think this is the same problem, though. You are being influenced by how other people interpreted the comments before you’ve even read them properly yourself.
I hear where you’re coming from but I think it’s just s lot different when it’s 1 compared to -9.
I wonder also whether it would be interesting if votes were public like on Facebook for example. Though I don’t think disabling downvotes solves the problem. It makes it easier to agree and harder to disagree. You’ll still be mostly exposed to things that the majority of people agree with, this not challenging the majority opinion. Looking at how most social media work, aiming to keep you on the platform longer to see more ads the votes make sense, see more stuff you agree with, happier you are, longer you stay. I don’t see why we need that here, I’m not currently aware of any for-profit instances (there is threads I guess). It was probably brought over from Reddit without much thought.
Edit: I’ll also point out that the voting system on the Stack Exchange sites is different as those sites generally cover objective topics (it does fall apart in some cases), while here pretty much everything is political.
I haven’t had votes visible since I joined Lemmy and it has definitely been a more enjoyable experience. Whether that means it would be better without them altogether, I can’t really say.
There’s not a lot of point in an event like this when emotions are high and reactionaries are high on the “heroism”.
But “all cops are bastards” remains true.
In capitalist society the role of the police is to protect the private property of the ruling class and to serve their interests.
Since their inception that has been the role of the police force in Australia, beginning with the genocide of aboriginal people in order to secure land for settlers.
In the 80s and 90s we saw how little the role of the police force is in “protecting and serving the people” as they formed gangs to hunt down, murder, then cover up the murder of queer people.
Can you really justify the role police play in keeping workers from striking and making meaningful change in workplace reform, or in housing where the police use violence to evict the poor in order for the rich to buy up all the houses?
We haven’t even touched on mental health. Why in general are the police called when there’s a mental health crisis? Where are the counsellors, psychiatrists and social workers? Why was someone with schizophrenia allowed to get to the point where they became a threat to the public?
The actions of the individual are justified in this situation. Incidentally police do some good actions sometimes by virtue of the fact that they’re currently the ones with the power, weapons, and authority to act in these circumstances.
But there are much better ways of organising a society that don’t create such disparity, and there are much better ways of protecting communities that aren’t primarily centred on using violence against the poor to protect the greed of the rich.
I think hating the police is a distraction from holding politicians who create and protect the laws which the police enforce. For anything to be done politicians need to do it, yet they don’t. Don’t fight the symptoms fight the disease
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A New South Wales police inspector has been hailed as a hero after she shot dead a man who stabbed six people to death in a shopping centre in Bondi Junction.
The senior officer, Amy Scott, was conducting routine duties nearby when she was directed to head to Westfield shopping centre following reports a man was using a “massive” knife to stab shoppers.
Cooke said the officer was walking “quickly” behind the man to catch up with him before he turned towards her with a knife witnesses have described as “massive”.
The NSW police commissioner, Karen Webb, also praised the inspector, calling her “enormously courageous”.
At a press conference on Saturday evening, Webb said police believed the offender is a 40-year-old man, but he was yet to formally identified.
As is standard practice when a police officer is involved with a death, the events have been declared a critical incident and will be investigated, with oversight from the state’s Law Enforcement Conduct Commission.
The original article contains 418 words, the summary contains 163 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
A pity she wasn’t carrying a taser. Why are guns standard issue but not tasers?
If the guy survived we might have discovered he has secretly killed others in the past.
We also might have discovered his motive but I dunno how useful that would be.
I believe in this case it wouldnt have made a difference. The officer would and should have chosen lethal force even if they had a taser. There is a greater chance of a failure with a taser vs a handgun and faced with a murderer with a machete? It would be foolish to take that chance.
He had a machete? I suppose that can be thrown so I accept your point if true.
How accurately does a taser need to be pointed? Can it be easily held in the officer’s weak hand while the gun is held in the dominant hand?
according to google tasers have around a 40% failure rate. They are fairly close range and the prongs need to actually stick into the target to neutralise them. I believe officers are taught to use two hands for firing their gun so they most likely pick a taser or pistol not both.
Thanks for looking it up and summarising.
