COURTING DISASTER

I ask you: Who’d be a cop? Why would you want to pull on a uniform and a badge and go out there day after day to protect a community that increasingly shows you no respect. And then you get mugged by the courts as well. You family don’t even know if you are going to make it home safely each night. Think I’m exaggerating? Try this one on for size. Put yourself in this policeman’s shoes.

You are out on patrol one night near a park on Lygon Street, North Carlton. You are confronted by a man, a druggie with a violent criminal history and a hatred of Police. He is armed with two Samurai swords. His name is Gregory Biggs.

 Your partner drives the Police car towards him and Biggs smashes the rear window with one of the swords. You get out of the car to confront an obviously dangerous man.

He advances on you with one sword held above his head and other thrusting forward at you. You repeatedly tell him to drop the weapons. He doesn’t and keeps coming. You shoot him. Once.  He manages to stagger away and is later found dead in the park.

You are alive. Your partner is safe. No other member of the community is hurt. You’re a hero. Right ? Wrong.

It gets to the Coroner, who not only criticizes  Sergeant Samuel Cahir  for  relying too heavily on ‘bravado and spontaneity’ but leaves him open to criminal charges and puts his career under a cloud.

Coroner Audrey Jamieson, from the academic safety of her judicial bench, said Sergeant Cahir failed to take reasonable care for his own health and safety and that of his partner Leading Senior Constable John Hawkins.

Scuse me. A violent, drug-addicted, knife-wielding crim  is dead. That’s true. But Sergeant Cahir, a 13-year veteran, did take care of his safety and his partner’s safety. They are both still alive. And nobody else got hurt in Biggs’ Samurai assault.

Coroner Jamieson at least conceded that Cahir had no choice but to use his firearm but only, she said, because he had removed all other possible choices. He’d already told the man to stop. Told him to drop his weapons. He’d already had his Police car window shattered.

What was he supposed to do? Pull out a training manual and look up the chapter on ‘how to deal with berserk mad man with swords without using my gun’.

And listen to these words of pompous coronial wisdom: ‘ Sergeant Cahir’s deviation from operational safety principles put himself and his junior officer at risk and he created  the scenario which led to Mr Biggs’ death’.

Yeah. It was all the copper’s fault. The drug addict’s decision to arm himself with two swords, go out in public, smash up a Police car and threaten an officer  had nothing to do with the scenario at all.

As I said: Who’d be a cop?

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009