Page 3740 - Week 12 - Wednesday, 29 October 2014
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The reality is that tasers are a very effective tool for trained police when they are confronted by violent individuals who are posing a risk to the community, to the police or to themselves. Looking after community safety is what we are talking about here—whether it is people who are potentially mentally ill or affected by ice or methamphetamines and who are a risk to themselves; people in the community who are at risk because of people who are behaving in a violent fashion; or, and very importantly, the police themselves, the police who, we say, every day and every night go out there into the unknown and confront people who are posing a risk to our community. We must do everything—it is our responsibility to do everything—to make sure that our community and our police are provided with the tools that allow them to protect themselves.
There are clear examples in our community, sadly, where our police and members of the community are put at risk. Let me quote from the Canberra Times of November 2011:
Canberra police are suffering assaults of greater severity and dealing with more hyper-aggressive suspects who are high on the drug ice, according to the Chief Police Officer, Roman Quaedvlieg.
He told a Legislative Assembly committee yesterday that while the annual numbers of police assaults in the capital were holding steady, he believed that the severity of attacks was increasing and that “mobbing assaults” of police were becoming more common.
Mr Quaedvlieg also said he was worried about an increased number of suspects who were high on methamphetamine … confronting Canberra’s frontline police.
You can only imagine the sorts of issues that our police have to deal with, often at very short notice. They turn up to an incident and have to make decisions instantaneously. Things flare up. They are confronted by people and have to make decisions in split seconds. It is very easy for us to sit back here and think, “These are deliberative matters.” In the heat of these incidents, police have to make quick decisions and have to respond for their safety.
It is not just about people high on ice and methamphetamines. Sadly, many of the people that police confront are people suffering a mental illness. We know that there are incidents where people with a mental illness are fatally shot by police. We do not want to see that occurring. It has happened in this town and it happens nationally. When you look at the figures of the total number of people who have been shot by police across Australia, you see that in 42 per cent of those incidents the individual was suffering from some form of mental illness.
We want to make sure that the police not only are safe but, in dealing with these situations, are not in the position where they are forced to draw a firearm and kill people. That is the last thing that the police want it; it is the last thing that we want. Let me quote again from the media, from February 2011:
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