Lindt siege inquest must ensure Katrina Dawson and Tory Johnson did not die in vain

FOR the Dawson and Johnson families, the terrible loss of their loved ones in the Lindt siege was only compounded by a police command preoccupied with PR over action, writes Miranda Devine.

Katrina Dawson’s parents Alexander and Jane leave the Lindt Cafe Inquest. (Pic: Renee Nowytarger/The Australian).

OF all the cruelties inflicted on Katrina Dawson’s family during the Lindt cafe siege, the final indignity was not being told that she was dead for almost four hours after the siege ended in a blaze of gunfire at 2.14am on December 16, 2014.

No one bothered telling the Dawson family that the 38-year-old barrister and mother-of-three had been fatally shot until a few minutes before 6am, the scheduled time for another showboating press conference by the NSW Premier and his police chiefs.

Nor did anyone mention to the family that Dawson had been killed by ricocheting fragments of police bullets.

Nor did anyone tell the family of hero cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34, that he was dead, until hours after he was executed by Monis with a gunshot to the head at 2.13am.

It was a ruthless oversight, but indifference towards bereaved families befits a hapless police operation that, from the start, was treated more like a public relations exercise than the Islamist terrorist attack that the Coroner most likely will declare it was when he releases his report on Wednesday.

From the official reluctance to declare the siege by Iranian-born ISIS fan Man Monis a terrorist attack, to the political correctness of launching a police operation to combat Islamophobic hate crimes that never occurred, to Burn’s deletion of her text messages, the focus of police command seemed to be on everything but rescuing the 18 hostages held at gunpoint for 17 hours.

Throughout the siege, families of hostages waited in a room at the NSW Supreme Court, just 150 metres down Phillip Street from the cafe, tracking media reports of escaping hostages on their phones. In the end, just six hostages were left with Monis.

The remaining families were close enough that they could hear the first gunshots ring out at 2.03am, as an infuriated Monis fired at the last batch of escapees. There was another shot at 2.09am, another at 2.13am, when Johnson was executed, and then a barrage of gunfire as

Lindt cafe hero Tori Johnson (left) with his partner Thomas Zinn. (Pic: Supplied)

Tactical Operations Unit police finally stormed the cafe and fired 22 rounds at Monis, four of which hit home, and blew half his head off.

Officer A found Katrina Dawson lying facedown in a pool of blood, where she had taken cover under chairs in the northwest corner of the cafe.

“There’s a hostage down,” he radioed.

Dawson still had a pulse but paramedics said she was “unresponsive, pale and having difficulty breathing”. She arrived at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital at 2.35am. Resuscitation efforts ceased at 3.12am.

Yet still her family wasn’t told. They were kept in the dark, foolish hope flickering for almost three hours after she had been pronounced dead.

It wasn’t until well after the sun had risen that they were told the news they had been dreading, just before 6am, when Premier Mike Baird, Commissioner Andrew Scipione and his deputy Cath Burn were good and ready to announce it.

Extraordinarily, all three had left the siege the night before to go home and rest for that 6am press conference, with Baird heading to the nearby Sheraton hotel. Burn clocked off at 10.10pm and Scipione soon afterwards, so neither was on deck when Monis snapped.

The callousness of the delay in informing the families is barely reflected in the language of Counsel Assisting the Coroner, Sophie Callan: “The Dawson and Johnson families effectively deduced that their loved ones had been killed by a process of elimination, as they were the only families remaining,” she told the inquest.

The anger of the families has been a slow burn, and we will hear more this week.

Katrina Dawson, who was killed during the Lindt Cafe siege. Her family, and that of Tori Johnson, were not informed of their deaths until almost four hours had passed. (Pic: Supplied)

The police who risked their lives that terrible morning are to be commended, but they were let down by a chain of command which failed to act decisively.

The job of Coroner Michael Barnes is not to lay blame, but to explain what happened so we can avoid a repeat.

In any case, the major decision-makers are gone, just over two years later. Baird and Scipione resigned this year. Burn was stripped of her role as boss of counter-terrorism by new commissioner Mick Fuller.

The most telling indictment of the command structure was the claim by the two top cops, Scipione and Burn, who took home $1 million salary between them, that they had no operational responsibility on the night. Since when does a general step down when the war begins?

Burn, then commander of counter-terrorism and special tactical operations, said she “took on a different role” that night.

“The role I had been given as media spokesman was a crucial one,” she told the inquest. “It was paramount that my messaging conveyed tolerance so as not to fuel anger which may have led to bias-motivated crime.”

In other words, potential Islamophobia was the priority, and six hours into the siege, Scipione ordered the launch of Operation Hammerhead to combat “bias crime”.

Here were the most senior police fussing around with imaginary crime while a real crime needed attention.

The gravest decision by police command was not to intervene early but to stick to the so-called “contain and negotiate” strategy, standard operating procedure for domestic sieges but, not appropriate for terrorism, expert witnesses said, especially when negotiators never spoke to Monis.

As one former negotiator puts it: “everyone around the world recognised you cannot do that with a terrorist incident. People die. You must consider going in.”

A tacit admission of error can be seen in changes to police training since the Lindt siege. Now NSW police are trained by FBI instructors in “active shooter scenarios” to neutralise offenders immediately, so we will be better prepared in the event of another terrorist attack.

In the end, this is what the families want from the Coroner’s report, to know that their loved ones did not die in vain.