Bourke St inquest: Cops ‘confused’ before Bourke St rampage
A detective admitted there were “clearly” problems with communication between police as they tried to find James Gargasoulas hours before he unleashed his violent massacre on Bourke St.
Law & Order
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Crucial information about where an out-of-control James Gargasoulas was hiding wasn’t acted on in the hours before he went on a fatal CBD rampage because police were confused about their roles on the day.
A detective on Thursday admitted there were “clearly” problems with communication between officers as they tried to find Gargasoulas in the aftermath of the near-fatal stabbing of his brother in the early hours of January 20, 2019.
Police zeroed in on his approximate location using “pings” from his mobile phone to a street in Carnegie - but no plan was made to arrest him, the inquest into the Bourke St massacre deaths heard.
Counsel assisting the coroner Paul Lawrie asked Detective Sergeant Nathan Toey “what would be the purpose of going to that effort if not to locate the offender in order to arrest him?”
Sgt Toey said he believed Sergeant Frank Caridi “took the role upon himself to try and locate the offender”.
“I’ve got no doubt his whole role to locate him was to arrest him but what I’ve told you in my evidence is that at no stage was I party to any arrest plan,” Sgt Toey said.
That was despite him being in charge of the operation.
Mr Lawrie asked: “Can you see that there might be a problem that comes about through the confusion of roles that the uniform branch are looking to the CIU [Criminal Investigation Unit] for leadership and the CIU are expecting the uniform branch to kind of be of and making the decisions themselves?”
Sgt Toey said “in hindsight, it probably clearly was”, although uniform staff were capable of locating and arresting an offender.
“Did you know that they weren’t being acted upon though, that the information wasn’t being used in a meaningful way,” Mr Lawrie asked.
“Not to my knowledge, no,” the sergeant replied.
He was pressed further about what a previous police witness said was Sgt Toey’s refusal to act on the pings.
“Because he’s saying to you, ‘we need to start turning our minds to locating and apprehending the offender...and you dissuade him?”
Sgt Toey said he was saying no to that officer - but conceded he didn’t “make any further inquiries” to check on if the uniformed branch were actually carrying out the searches.
A review into the police response had a “clear lack of effective leadership, ownership, thought and planning given to locate Gargasoulas...police efforts in that regard were uncoordinated and fragmented.”
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Sgt Toey said he disagreed.
“Inquiries were being made, there were three crime scenes being processed and keeping in mind, when we turned up to this incident, nobody knew what happened and who was involved.”
He said the criticism lacked context of what was happening at the time.