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This Will Be Hard To Justify · The Slippery Slope

• 0:03
  Hi, Jay Fallon and thanks for listening.
• 0:05
  So listen, I, I did an episode just regarding some shooting,
• 0:11
  some incidents that happened here in Queensland over the last
• 0:15
  couple of days. So one, obviously an officer got
• 0:17
  shot in Maryborough. So everything seems fine there,
• 0:22
  as in he's going to survive. But yeah, unfortunately an
• 0:25
  officer was shot and that that person then took his own life
• 0:31
  later on. So but everything's wrapped up
• 0:34
  with that. But then we had another incident
• 0:36
  in Cairns where police have shot an individual.
• 0:40
  I felt like I gave them the benefit of the doubt.
• 0:43
  They're going, they're responding to a responding to an
• 0:46
  incident where a man is running around armed with a knife.
• 0:50
  Now, at that time, I couldn't find much.
• 0:52
  I, I had received some messages. I'd received a message from
• 0:55
  someone saying, hey, an innocent bystander was shot and I'd be
• 0:59
  looking around. I couldn't find anything about
• 1:02
  it at the time when I was looking for all this yesterday,
• 1:07
  however. So now we've got more
• 1:10
  informations being released, plus some footage of what's
• 1:13
  going on. And Oh my goodness, this is
• 1:17
  pretty wild what's going on here.
• 1:20
  Listen, it's, it's hard. I don't know how looking at the
• 1:25
  footage now, we're going to look at this together.
• 1:28
  I think the Queensland Police Service is going to find it hard
• 1:33
  to judge, to justify. They're going to find it very
• 1:37
  difficult to justify the use of force that was done here.
• 1:41
  They will come out and say, you know, use of knife, all this
• 1:46
  imminent danger. Lives are a threat.
• 1:51
  Not not every time. Just because someone's carrying
• 1:55
  a knife doesn't mean there is definitely imminent danger.
• 1:59
  Lies are at threat right at that point.
• 2:03
  Let's look at the footage. And I think This is why the This
• 2:09
  is why the officer later on in the interview with the with the
• 2:12
  news gives such a measured response.
• 2:15
  And I think the officers who fired the shots, they're going
• 2:19
  to have to answer. And this poor lady who innocent
• 2:23
  bystander who got shot. Anyhow, let's check out the
• 2:25
  footage together. Get my straight
• 2:38
  OK, so this is this is coming from 7 news, so check out.
• 2:42
  So I've just got this on pause at the moment.
• 2:44
  So this everything's lined up and you'll you're going to see a
• 2:48
  black, black vehicle. So black police vehicle come
• 2:51
  through over here. So obviously Rd going there, Rd
• 2:56
  in behind him. He's in a park area in the
• 2:58
  middle of this. I think that's a roundabout just
• 3:00
  over where I've got the arrow and the mouse going there.
• 3:04
  You're going to see a vehicle come over and hit the gentleman
• 3:07
  and he's going to start running, running around and take notice
• 3:11
  when they opened fire. I'm going to hit pause hopefully
• 3:14
  as we go along. There he is.
• 3:18
  He's got a big knife. Police confront an armed man on
• 3:21
  a canned St. It's tense and unpredictable.
• 3:24
  OK, black vehicle lights. Gentleman's there.
• 3:27
  They just. Hit him with the car he's
• 3:29
  running down. Running down, refusing.
• 3:31
  To back down. Hear that?
• 3:33
  There's shots going. I think the gentleman over here
• 3:36
  coming out of there, they've shot there are vehicles,
• 3:40
  vehicles coming up to this intersection as they're
• 3:44
  shooting. Firing roughly a dozen shots.
• 3:50
  Hear that shooting going on? He's running vehicles going by
• 3:55
  in the background. I don't know about you, but when
• 3:59
  I was first trained on use of firearms, you need to check your
• 4:03
  your surrounding and someone running away.
• 4:09
  Look at this. He got hit in the backside.
• 4:11
  He got hit in the bum. Apparently he's running, running
• 4:17
  away. Can we just go back a couple of
• 4:18
  seconds here firing? Roughly a dust.
• 4:22
  He's carrying down now I'm not saying that he's not a threat.
• 4:26
  I'm not saying that Yep, he's not He's not holding knives and
• 4:30
  people aren't possibly in danger.
• 4:33
  He's not a danger to the public. I'm not saying that, but let's
• 4:36
  go back a little. He's just seen his body car the
• 4:40
  shooting. Well, this is go back to the car
• 4:46
  he's just been. By the car.
• 4:48
  And refusing to back down. So they've just started shooting
• 4:52
  now and he's running. He is not, doesn't look like
• 4:57
  he's running at them, but he's running and he's he's armed.
• 5:00
  OK. I'm just trying to give them the
• 5:03
  benefit of the doubt here. This is This is not good.
• 5:07
  Firing you. Hear that?
• 5:09
  They're shooting. He is running away from them and
• 5:12
  they're shooting. There's a chap over here, over
• 5:17
  in this section here. There you go.
• 5:21
  I don't know whether he's shooting from that name, but
• 5:22
  he's got his gun out, he's aiming and you've got people in
• 5:25
  front of him, other officers in front of him, a car there.
• 5:30
  Roughly a dozen shots running struck.
• 5:34
  They're still shooting. They were still shooting and
• 5:37
  there were cars outside. Look at this.
• 5:41
  They're shooting. He's here, Yeah.
• 5:43
  Car's there. Car's there.
• 5:45
  Struck twice in the elbow and leg, he finally falls to the
• 5:49
  ground. The officers have felt the level
• 5:52
  of that threat required them to discharge their firearms.
• 5:55
  It wasn't just Richard Allen Tom who felt the force.
• 5:59
  An innocent woman was also struck by a stray bullet at her
• 6:02
  doorstep. At her doorstep.
• 6:07
  What is is no one checking their surroundings and looking going
• 6:10
  well, OK, we've got vehicles driving around.
• 6:15
  We're any very busy intersection.
• 6:17
  For some reason they haven't shut off the street.
• 6:21
  You've got all these coppers standing around.
• 6:23
  Why the heck didn't they stop traffic?
• 6:29
  What what's going on? All those police standing
• 6:31
  around, but none of them have no one stood and said, hey,
• 6:34
  everyone should be, we should have vehicles back and stopping,
• 6:38
  preventing traffic from flowing while we sort this out.
• 6:43
  Traffic flows. You've got it's a residential
• 6:47
  area. He's running away.
• 6:51
  OK, he's armed, but he's running away it.
• 6:54
  Was like a war zone and I didn't know if to drop and roll.
• 6:57
  Both suffered serious injuries. Police.
• 7:00
  Yeah, like a war zone. Unfortunately, the man with the
• 7:04
  knife probably isn't the warrior.
• 7:08
  It's the he's, he's not the real.
• 7:10
  The real danger here is actually the police shooting into a
• 7:15
  residential neighbourhood, shooting while vehicles are
• 7:19
  driving past and no one has thought, hey, we should stop the
• 7:23
  flow of traffic. Hey, maybe we shouldn't run.
• 7:27
  We shouldn't shoot at the man who's running.
• 7:30
  He's running. It's hard to hit a moving
• 7:32
  target. He's running.
• 7:33
  And there are this. Oh.
• 7:36
  My Ledge This is Tom just minutes earlier, shirtless and
• 7:40
  fast on his feet, breaking into nearby homes.
• 7:44
  He just come charging down the corridor.
• 7:46
  I've jumped up and told him to get out of the house.
• 7:49
  Who the heck are you? Leslie and Dennis say the 28
• 7:52
  year old demanded they hand over car keys before he stole two
• 7:56
  knives. He had the knife right up.
• 7:58
  I thought he was gonna kill. Him suddenly he just turned and
• 8:00
  ran out. I ran after him and slammed the.
• 8:02
  Door and I was just thinking, oh thank God.
• 8:04
  Tom running off before he allegedly tried to force his way
• 8:07
  into a second home. It's really.
• 8:09
  Scary like, especially with young kids.
• 8:11
  The shooting was also witnessed by families.
• 8:15
  The police service won't say whether the officers in involved
• 8:18
  will be stood down or have their firearms access suspended.
• 8:23
  They won't say, right. I think I said in the other the
• 8:27
  other episode I did that. You know, it's funny, the story
• 8:30
  that came out of Maryborough where unfortunately an officer
• 8:33
  got shot and the bravery of other police who went to put
• 8:38
  their head up while they were being fired at and still went to
• 8:42
  the aid of the officer who had been shot, dragged him 100
• 8:45
  metres. That is, you know, while they're
• 8:47
  being shot at. That is some serious bravery
• 8:49
  there you got mate. Just unbelievable and great.
• 8:53
  He survived and they gave all the details.
• 8:56
  They are straight out all the details.
• 8:58
  Should these officers have their permission to use firearms be
• 9:03
  revoked at the time? While the investigation plays
• 9:07
  out. 100% Let's go back and say that again.
• 9:11
  Harms Access suspended while the investigation plays out.
• 9:15
  Should they have their firearms access suspended while it's
• 9:18
  being while the investigation gets played out?
• 9:22
  Was an incredibly dynamic situation.
• 9:24
  One the police union insists should never have happened.
• 9:28
  Frankly, this person should have been in a mental health facility
• 9:31
  to start with. They should have been out in the
• 9:32
  community. Revealing Tom had been released
• 9:35
  from prison on Friday and just hours.
• 9:37
  Later, the man was apprehended in Cairns Central after being
• 9:41
  found naked and jumping on vehicles.
• 9:43
  It took six officers to restrain that male person.
• 9:46
  He was then taken to Cairns Hospital for a mental health
• 9:49
  assessment. What happened next would leave a
• 9:52
  lasting impact, including on a woman mistakenly caught in the
• 9:58
  line of fire. Well, I'm really, I'm, I'm
• 10:10
  flabbergasted. I'm not sure what to say about
• 10:12
  that situation. I feel bad.
• 10:16
  I honestly, I feel bad for the officers.
• 10:18
  I feel bad for the officers because they've been placed in
• 10:20
  that position where they're chasing, chasing someone around
• 10:24
  who shouldn't have, shouldn't have been out.
• 10:28
  That's what it seems like. OK, so there's many failures
• 10:31
  here. There's a lot of government
• 10:33
  failures, the failures of the system.
• 10:37
  He's just been released. He shouldn't have been released.
• 10:39
  Why was he released in the 1st place?
• 10:42
  He gets released and he goes straight out and he is a danger
• 10:46
  to the public straight away. He's threatening.
• 10:50
  He threatened the couple, put a knife to that man's throat, put
• 10:54
  a knife to his throat. He is definitely a danger to the
• 10:59
  public. However, that being said,
• 11:03
  everything being said, you look at that situation right there,
• 11:08
  and I'm not saying he shouldn't have there.
• 11:15
  There are so many failures. There are way too many failures.
• 11:18
  Who was actually in control? Who was calling the shots other
• 11:22
  than the people who actually took the shots?
• 11:27
  Why wasn't traffic stopped? If he is in that park, why
• 11:31
  wasn't that whole area shut down?
• 11:34
  All those police officers standing around, all those
• 11:37
  vehicles there, but why wasn't there a senior officer directing
• 11:42
  everything, saying, OK, we need to cut traffic, we need to stop
• 11:46
  traffic, pulling your gun. He's done all this stuff
• 11:53
  previously. OK.
• 11:54
  They would have had a certain amount of information.
• 11:57
  Not sure whether they would have known that.
• 12:00
  Definitely. This is the same guy.
• 12:02
  Is, is this the same guy? Let's say that they knew.
• 12:04
  OK, this is the same guy. He's been running around.
• 12:06
  He's already threatened someone. But right then and there, you
• 12:11
  have to be looking at the threat that is right in front of your
• 12:13
  face when you're going to pull a weapon.
• 12:17
  What is the threat right now? He's running around with the
• 12:20
  weapon. At the same time you're
• 12:23
  assessing the situation. I, I, he's, he's got a knife.
• 12:28
  He's a danger. He's in danger to societies and
• 12:34
  danger to other people, but we've got him semi contained,
• 12:38
  not properly contained in this park area, but he's got a knife.
• 12:44
  Should we be pulling out a gun and shooting?
• 12:47
  The problem is with shooting in an area like that is bullets
• 12:51
  don't stop. For good people, bullets don't
• 12:55
  stop, you know, because there's a car going past and get, this
• 12:59
  isn't the movies where it's just, you know, you're sitting
• 13:02
  there and it just hits the bit of metal beside you and then
• 13:04
  just magically disappears or just shatters the glass in your
• 13:08
  car and then there's no bullet anymore.
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  They just keep going. A lot of the time they'll keep
• 13:13
  going through the door. There's cars driving past
• 13:17
  residential area, obviously in the background because someone
• 13:20
  got shot at their doorstep. There is no way, there is no
• 13:26
  way, no way in my mind that you can be there assessing the
• 13:32
  situation and think, yes, I need to pull my gun and shoot at him.
• 13:37
  He is running around. He's not running.
• 13:39
  He was trying to get away from the car.
• 13:42
  I think it's very easy to justify trying to hit him with
• 13:45
  the car. I mean, it's not something
• 13:47
  that's taught at the Academy. It's not something that you
• 13:50
  learn. I don't ever remember when I've
• 13:52
  talked and I've talked to some other police about this
• 13:55
  situation and it's like, OK, no, you never taught to run over
• 13:59
  people, but you can justify it. You can justify that use of
• 14:02
  force. So in my mind, that was actually
• 14:06
  quite a good move. That was some good thinking.
• 14:08
  Yep. Bang.
• 14:10
  However, it didn't work this. So you've got your gun, so why
• 14:17
  wasn't there was there anything else?
• 14:21
  I just don't, I don't see how they're going to be able to
• 14:23
  justify pulling their weapon and shooting it.
• 14:26
  I'm, I'm very surprised another police officer wasn't shot.
• 14:30
  When you see, you could see then the footage that there were
• 14:32
  police standing around. There's one guy at the back and
• 14:35
  he's got his arm and he's facing arm out gun facing in that
• 14:40
  direction with other people in his line of sight.
• 14:46
  I, I don't know how they're going to justify any of this.
• 14:48
  I, I really don't. He was a danger to society.
• 14:51
  He was the danger to that neighbourhood.
• 14:53
  But can you justify pulling your weapon and shooting when you've
• 14:56
  got so many unknown variables getting around traffic still
• 15:01
  flowing. Why wasn't traffic stopped?
• 15:03
  Why wasn't one person there in charge locking down that area,
• 15:08
  shouting out orders, saying this is what what why is what someone
• 15:12
  said to me, it feels like it's, he watched the footage and said
• 15:17
  this looks like it's just the Wild West.
• 15:20
  And that's exactly what it does. It just looks like the Wild
• 15:22
  West. Who was in charge, who was
• 15:25
  making the calls? If that was a cert vehicle,
• 15:27
  which I think it might have been the black one, I don't
• 15:33
  understand why they've just yeah, there's too many
• 15:38
  questions. I, I think they're going to, I
• 15:42
  think QPS are going to find it very hard to actually justify
• 15:46
  when you look at it, when you slow it down, OK, everyone's
• 15:49
  under pressure. This is still a man who was
• 15:53
  surrounded by police. There are police everywhere.
• 15:55
  Other vehicles on the road is. I don't know how they're going
• 16:00
  to justify that use of force, not when there's so many other
• 16:04
  elements, so many other people lives in danger by them.
• 16:09
  He had a knife. He wasn't able to throw the
• 16:11
  knife and hit the vehicles or throw the knife and hit the lady
• 16:15
  who was standing at her doorstep.
• 16:18
  At that very second, it was the police who were the greater
• 16:25
  danger to that neighbourhood. It was the police who were the
• 16:29
  greater danger to the cars driving past right at that
• 16:33
  second, unfortunately. Let me know what you think.
• 16:36
  I don't think they're going to be able to justify it.
• 16:39
  Justify that shooting, not the way they handled it.
• 16:43
  No way they're going to be able to justify it.
• 16:46
  Anyway. Let me know what you think.
• 16:48
  I'm not saying it's it wasn't a dangerous situation.
• 16:50
  I'm not saying it wasn't hard to deal with.
• 16:53
  However, that's what you're supposedly trained for.
• 16:57
  And I think maybe this comes back to what I've been saying
• 17:01
  for a long time, the lack of training, people who were in the
• 17:06
  job who maybe shouldn't be, not able to assess situations, break
• 17:12
  everything down very quickly and assess and see, OK, this is what
• 17:16
  we need to do. Why wasn't there someone there
• 17:18
  calling the shots, locking the street down, yelling out orders.
• 17:22
  This is what we're going to do. There was no actual direction.
• 17:25
  Everyone was just running around making their own decisions,
• 17:28
  banging, you know, the car goes, hits him, everyone's out, bang,
• 17:32
  we're going to shoot. But no one's looking and
• 17:34
  thinking about all the other people getting around and the
• 17:36
  fact that they were putting other people's lives in danger
• 17:41
  and they were of greater danger to society, to that
• 17:44
  neighbourhood than the man with the knife.
• 17:48
  It's going to be very hard for them to justify.
• 17:51
  Let's see how the union president twists this around.
• 17:56
  Let me know what you think. Anyway, I'm Jay Fallon.
• 18:01
  Thanks for listening. They.
• 18:03
  Just feel the desire