I Catch Killers: Police sniper opens up on decision to shoot someone line of duty
Police sniper Brett Pennell has been forced to take a fatal shot in a siege — but in the return of the I Catch Killers podcast series he reveals to Gary Jubelin the little-known rule that forces cops to fire in those circumstances and that no other officer can order them to do it. Subscribers have first access to Season 2 here.
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Former police sniper Brett Pennell isn’t and has never been a gun nut — but he found himself drawn to tactical policing and especially the role of sniper, in part because of the autonomy and consideration he learnt was applied to every trigger-squeeze.
Through hellish training and specialist weapons courses, he gradually learned to master the firearms aspect of the job, then had to come to grips with the psychological battle: the immense responsibility of being empowered to kill another person, particularly in situations when other officers — often much older and more senior — are looking to you to protect their lives.
EXCLUSIVE: As a subscriber you have early access to Season 2 of I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin. Immediately below are Parts 1 and 2 of his interview with former police sniper Brett Pennell.
Part 1 (above) Brett Pennell relives a lifetime of high-risk work as a tactical officer and sniper, telling Gary Jubelin about his lingering feelings of betrayal, anger and guilt.
Part 2 (above) In this highly charged and emotional episode Brett talks in detail about the moment, as a police sniper, he had to make the ultimate decision when his colleagues came under fire.
A little-known fact about policing in Australia is that no officer — no matter how senior — can direct another to fire his or her weapon; it must be the officer’s decision alone. And it’s a decision which he was forced into during the February 2000 siege in which he fatally shot James “Hank” Hallinan, who had repeatedly fired on Pennell’s fellow officers in the Snowy Mountains.
“The skill of using a firearm is like an apprentice learning to use a power-saw,” Pennell reveals in a gripping new episode of hit podcast I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin.
“A gun’s a gun. I can teach you all the skills in the world, but I actually need you to think about what you’re doing. You’re shooting at a paper target, but in reality (you’re learning) that in the worst-case scenario, you’re going to be shooting at a human.
“You can teach a monkey how to shoot a gun, quite literally. But you can’t teach a monkey how to have that thought process.”
The rule is called “superior order” and, says Pennell, it means “even if you’re the world’s greatest sniper, your boss couldn’t tell you to shoot someone. The police rules and guidelines are very, very clear. Somebody’s life must be in imminent danger, of being killed or seriously injured, and there is no other way to stop that event happening.”
He says “the biggest fear is making a mistake. The peer pressure in tactical policing is so immense; we have this attitude that we do not make mistakes,” he says.
During the sniper course, a particular instructor put a scenario to the trainees: you arrive at a siege that’s been running for six hours and you are the relief sniper. You come in and the crook is making threats. He puts a gun to a victim’s head and you shoot him.
“Is that justified?” the instructor asked.
“We all go: ‘Yeah, 100pc it is’,” Pennell says.
The instructor continues: “So if I tell you that he did the same act five times in the previous six hours with the other sniper, and he didn’t shoot him, how does that work?”
Pennell says learning to justify every action is the hardest part of being a police sniper.
HAUNTED BY TAKING THAT FATAL SHOT
Pennell says the moment he had to shoot a man dead will never leave him.
Every detail of that late summer day is sharp in his mind: the day that ended in the death of a civilian, and then the official investigation with Pennell and his fellow tactical police officers suddenly persons of interest in what was effectively a homicide investigation.
His story is told in gripping detail in the latest episode of hit podcast of I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin.
In February 2000, Hallinan, 57, who lived on a property at Adjungbilly in the Snowy Mountains foothills in NSW, was to be arrested by local police on longstanding warrants for harassing and assaulting police on Tumut’s main street. A warning on the police computer system noted he seemed to have a particular hatred for cops.
When the uniformed officers drove up the track to his bush hut, using a loudhailer to tell him they wanted to speak with him, Hallinan appeared with a rifle in his hand and pointed it at the police.
The cops immediately began reversing the car and fled the property, one officer pointing his service Glock at Hallinan, who went on to repeatedly fire rounds at the officers.
Then began a standoff. Pennell and a tactical team flew to Tumut. He began advancing slowly on the property, fully kitted up in a camouflage gillie suit with a fellow sniper he called “Pop”. As he crawled into a position where he could see the shack, silently pulling his .308 rifle along in a drag bag attached to his ankle, he suddenly saw a snake.
“I just pulled my Glock and I’m laying on the ground scanning: where’s this bloody snake, because it’s perfect tiger snake and brown snake country.” The police negotiators behind Pennell, watching his progress, were baffled.
“They’re thinking ‘what are you doing mate, the crook can see ya,” and I’m thinking: ‘forget the crook’. I’m probably the only sniper in the world that’s absolutely shit-scared of snakes.” The snake was never to be seen again and it was a long two hours before Pennell saw Hallinan moving around outside his hut.
“Pop calls: ‘He’s out with a gun!’ and I knew clearly he was aiming at the negotiators. (The tactical police on the scene) are looking at me, like ‘Help us’. And I’m looking at them like: my smartest thing right now is to sit still and wait him out.”
Suddenly Hallinan fired again, turned on his heels and went back inside. Eventually Hallinan emerged again. Pennell’s fellow sniper had to run across open ground to throw “flashbang” distraction devices in Hallinan’s direction, and suddenly Hallinan began firing again, as another tactical officer returned fire.
“Mate, it was insanely fast,” Pennell tells Jubelin. “I could see Mr Hallinan up with a gun and I heard him shoot. I heard and saw him shoot. I just got the (weakest) of a sight picture — the target in my scope — and I squeezed. And I knew straight away Mr Hallinan was … I just knew I missed because when I squeezed, he ducked from (the other tactical officer) shooting from a different direction.”
Then Pennell’s weapon jammed. He had to go through a ‘stoppage drill’ — a method practised thousands of times until he could do it blindfolded — to reload his rifle.
“I then stood up because I thought that might alleviate the glare coming into my scope. “There’s a fair bit of movement; Mr Hallinan moving around. I could hear Pop calling out: ‘Put the gun down, put the f … ing gun down for Christ’s sake’.” Pennell heard one of the tactical police calling over the radio: “He’s reloading!”
“I could hear Pop swearing and saying ‘Put the f … gun down please mate, please put the gun down’. And (Hallinan) came up in a deliberate stance; a shooting position. And I got the shot and squeezed.”
Hallinan died at the scene and Pennell and his fellow officers were plunged into the normal procedure of a Critical Incident Investigation, run by the Homicide Squad, where officers are questioned separately and every decision scrutinised.
A coronial inquest cleared Pennell and his fellow police of any fault in Hallinan’s death after the 33-hour siege, but the incident has coloured Pennell’s whole life. Hallinan’s family mounted a public campaign for Pennell to be charged over the incident, saying he was mentally ill and should never have been shot.
Pennell says he and the team felt “betrayed by our leadership. We were completely abandoned. To say: well, you selected me, you trained me, you put me in these situations and when I do what’s required, you then abandon me. It was pretty tough to take.”
SUBSCRIBER EXCLUSIVE: LISTEN ABOVE TO THE I CATCH KILLERS PODCAST WITH BRETT PENNELL.
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