Now dozens of prominent lawyers,legal experts and academics will petition the state government to get mental health clinicians on the front lines with police.
“It’s been horrendous,” Courtney’s mother,Leesa,told theHerald on Wednesday,reflecting on four deaths in four months – Krista Kach near Newcastle,Jesse Deacon in Glebe,Steve Pampalian in North Willoughby and Clare Nowland in Cooma.
“Courtney didn’t deserve it,we didn’t deserve it,these other people didn’t deserve it either,” Leesa said.
“It’s a kick in the guts – or a bullet in the heart again and again and again and again. What’s changed?”
Leesa and husband Ron Topic’s lives were forever broken when Courtney,age 22,was shot in the chest by police in February 2015.
Police had been called after she was spotted in a fast food restaurant car park with a knife,in the grips of psychosis. An officer opened fire within a minute of confronting Courtney.
“Forty-one seconds. That’s how much her life was worth to them,” Leesa said.
A coronial inquest,in 2018,found the police response was “entirely inappropriate”.
The Topics in June emailed Police Commissioner Karen Webb,Police Minister Yasmin Catley and other politicians seeking to discuss a “reprehensible” void in mental health training for officers.
“We are real people that are forever living the nightmare of losing a loved one. In our case,our beloved child,by those that are supposed to serve and protect,” the Topics’ email said.
Last week a high-ranking officer,who is conducting a three-month review into the police training and responses to mental health,asked to meet with the Topics.
The Topics’ hopes have been buoyed by the police,but the couple say they have not received a response from the politicians.
This week a letter signed by more than 80 of the state’s most respected advocates,obtained by theHerald,will ask Premier Chris Minns to urgently fund mental health workers to join police on the frontline.
Camilla Pandolfini,Redfern Legal Centre CEO and a signatory to the letter,told theHerald “mental health is a health issue that requires health solutions”.
Another signatory,Jonathon Hunyor from the Public Interest Advocacy Centre,said the community could not expect police to be equipped with the skills to de-escalate people experiencing mental health crises.
“Having police arrive during a time of crisis escalates anxiety for those people and puts them at further risk,” Hunyor said.
Acting Commissioner Dave Hudson this month said clinicians were sometimes better placed than police to de-escalate such situations.
The letter follows work only eight hours a day and are not called upon if a person at the centre of a police-led operation has a weapon.
Sources within the police,not permitted to speak publicly,say the force is picking up the slack of a health system struggling to hold and treat people at risk to themselves and others.
This month,the police union said officers were being “ambushed” at coronial inquests while the health system was not being held to account. Officers have told recent inquests of their own psychological torment after being involved in fatal shootings.
NSW Council for Civil Liberties president Josh Pallas told theHerald the council supported an “urgent inquiry” so that “the setting can be recalibrated to avoid further lethal police interactions.
“A health response to crises arising from mental ill health is paramount. Not a violent police response.”
,but would not call for a royal commission.
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