Victoria Police respond to Bourke St tragedy with new intelligence unit
EXCLUSIVE: A NEW police unit is being planned to shut down more than 185 potential lone attackers and dangerous stalkers each year in the wake of the Bourke St tragedy.
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A NEW intelligence unit is being planned to shut down more than 185 potential lone attackers and dangerous psychotic stalkers each year in the wake of the Bourke St tragedy.
The highly specialised response unit of Victoria Police officers and mental health experts is being examined as a way to identify potential lone attackers, regarded a far bigger risk to the community than terrorists.
The Herald Sun understands it is one of a number of measures in response to the Bourke St carnage and claims of missed warning signs related to the alleged offender, Dimitrious Gargasoulas.
Fears systemic failings also caused threats posed by killers including Sean Price, Steven Hunter and Ronald Watson to be overlooked are contained in a damning secret report to the Andrews government.
As revealed by the Herald Sun last month, a crisis in Victoria’s mental health services has led to 10 homicides a year being committed by offenders rejected from crucial mental health care.
By combining intelligence-gathering specialists from Victoria Police and mental health experts, the new unit is hoped to identify fixated people on a path way to violence.
The members would then co-ordinate health and social support to prevent and disrupt violence, including placing high-concern people as involuntary patients for treatment.
Operating out of Victoria Police, the centre would cost less than $2 million and could be running later this year.
Government spokeswoman Hayley McNaughton would not comment about the threat assessment centre, but confirmed measures to make Victoria’s streets safer were being considered including more support for people with mental illness.
The Victorian unit is based on the Queensland Fixated Threat Assessment Centre, which identifies and deals with an average of 150 serious threats each year.
Speaking at the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists annual conference in Brisbane, QFTAV founder Michele Pathe said about 5 per cent of those who became fixated on a person or cause went on to commit violent attacks.
Half of those identified as potential threats in Queensland were deemed so mentally ill they were committed as involuntary patients, while measures were taken in the other cases to prevent attacks.
“A lot of work may go into even just one individual, but you may well be preventing something much worse that effects a lot of people,” Dr Pathe said. “If there is no mental illness we don’t stop there. It is not primarily about mental illness as much as it is about trying to address the risk.
“If they have guns we get the guns removed, if they need more supports in the community we put structure around them and support.”
Concerns have been raised in Victoria that initiative could create stigma around people with a mental illness or lead to the surveillance of those with unusual beliefs, however the Queensland model has largely managed those fears.
“These are the sorts of behaviours which, if you don’t have a system in place to identify what is going on and intervene ... bad things can happen — and they have historically,” Dr Pathe said. “Lone-actor attacks are not necessarily terrorists but ... hate killers, mass murders, school shooters and that sort of thing.”