‘An axe, a failed Taser and a lecture from the sidelines’: SA Police Association
Wade Burns slams a former ombudsman’s call for an independent inquiry after police shot dead a woman in Firle.
There’s something strange about a former police watchdog questioning the wisdom of supporting police officers who’ve just confronted a deadly threat, while disregarding the very circumstances that led to the confrontation.
In his InDaily opinion piece, former Acting Police Ombudsman Michael Grant asks whether shooting a woman wielding an axe was the “best way of dealing with” her.
It was a remarkably convenient way to describe what occurred at Firle last week.
According to the publicly available police account, officers responded to reports of a woman armed with an axe attempting to break into a property. She allegedly threatened officers, refused repeated directions to drop the weapon, and continued to advance the confrontation despite attempts at de-escalation.
A Taser was deployed. But Tasers are far from infallible, failing to incapacitate in a significant proportion of cases. This was one of them.
The woman continued threatening officers at close range and struck one of them in the leg with the axe.
These details are central to understanding why an officer was forced to make a potentially life-or-death decision.
Yet Mr Grant’s commentary manages to omit the failed Taser, the attempts to de-escalate and the physical attack on an officer.
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That is a profoundly misleading framing of an extraordinarily dangerous situation.
The death of this woman is unquestionably tragic. Her family deserves compassion, and the circumstances of her death deserve examination.
But that doesn’t require us to disregard the life and death situation that confronted police. An axe is a potentially lethal weapon, regardless of the age or sex of the person wielding it. And police officers facing an immediate threat to their lives can’t be expected to consider an endless catalogue of hypothetical alternatives before defending themselves and the public.
It’s remarkably easy to second-guess a split-second decision from the safety of an office, several days after the event.
It’s much more difficult when someone is attacking you with an axe at two o’clock in the morning.
Mr Grant is also critical of SAPOL, and presumably, the Police Association, for publicly expressing confidence in the officers’ actions after reviewing body-worn camera footage.
Apparently, even an assessment grounded in actual footage is too much reassurance for police officers to receive from their leaders.
Neither SAPOL nor PASA has declared the investigation complete. Both have expressed a preliminary assessment based on evidence we have personally examined.
That distinction should not be difficult for a former police watchdog to understand.
Indeed, there is an extraordinary irony in Mr Grant’s own declaration that “we already know the result” of the investigation.
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He is effectively suggesting that the investigative process is incapable of reaching an independent conclusion.
He offers no evidence that any investigator has been improperly influenced. Yet readers are invited to regard the process with suspicion before it has even run its course.
Who, exactly, is prejudging whom?
What message does that send to the officers we ask to confront violent offenders on our behalf?
That they must make instantaneous decisions to protect human life, knowing their department and their union might be expected to withhold support until months or years of investigations have concluded?
We have already seen the real-world consequences of that flawed mentality.
The disastrous rhetoric of the “Defund the Police” movement provides a worldwide lesson in what follows when political and community leaders abandon police officers and ideology is allowed to masquerade as public safety policy.
That movement’s advocates demanded that police be stripped of resources and authority. But even more insidious was the culture of intimidation that accompanied it. Standing behind police became something to fear, rather than a fundamental responsibility of leadership.
Reality eventually exposed the breathtaking stupidity and cowardice of that rhetoric. The consequences for law and order, and police retention, were devastating.
That movement has now rightly been wiped from existence. Those who supported it, now pretend they never did.
Ultimately, a community can’t demand police risk their lives in an environment in which officers fear they’ll be abandoned for acting decisively, and according to their training.
As president of the Police Association, I make zero apologies for supporting our members.
We should all be profoundly grateful there are brave officers prepared to confront those dangers.
And when the available evidence indicates they have acted appropriately, community leaders and politicians should have the courage to stand behind them.
Wade Burns is the president of the Police Association of South Australia
Former Acting Police Ombudsman Michael Grant argued for an independent review of the incident, you can read his opinion here.
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