'Not our job': CIRT leader defends elite police who refused to help arrest Gargasoulas

Only Victoria's elite Special Operations Group stood a chance of stopping James Gargasoulas once he drove into Melbourne's CBD on the day of the Bourke Street rampage, according to the officer who oversees some of the state's most high-risk police operations.

Superintendent Peter Ward, who has spent most of his career working with the state’s specialist police units, told an inquest into the massacre on Monday that stopping a moving vehicle was something only the Special Operations Group was trained to do.

He was speaking in defence of the Critical Incident Response Team which has come under intense scrutiny after it ignored repeated pleas from colleagues to help arrest Gargasoulas almost nine hours before the tragedy.

"I have a lot of ordinary people at the Specialist Operations Group that are able to do extraordinary things. This would have stretched them," Superintendent Ward said.

"I've done in excess 150 tactical intercepts … they are one of the most dangerous tactical arrest options that can be used by Victoria Police."

Superintendent Peter Ward (right) and Assistant Commissioner Michael Grainger arrive at the Coroner's Court on Monday.Credit: AAP

About 4.30am on the morning of January 20, 2017, CIRT was called to help intercept Gargasoulas but refused to become involved until he was tracked to an exact location. CIRT denied a second request about 10 minutes later.

Instead, they monitored police radios to keep abreast of the situation.

Superintendent Ward said it was not CIRT's job to "do drive overs to locate persons of interest".

He said that in 2019, CIRT officers attended 1450 calls and of those 860 were considered to be "critical incidents".

"The action of the CIRT members on the night shift and the morning shift … are reasonable in the circumstances [and] they were committed to assisting our frontline members once the person of interest had been located," he said.

James Gargasoulas did doughnuts outside Flinders Street Station minutes before he murdered six people in the Bourke Street massacre.

Today, officers would have relied upon Victoria Police's new hostile vehicle policy to stop Gargasoulas when he reached the intersection of Flinders and Swanston streets, Superintendent Ward said.

"From the time that the offender commenced doing doughnuts to the time he entered the Bourke Street mall, in that vicinity there, he’s a hostile vehicle threat," he said.

"These are the challenges our good people face … making that split second decision. At what point would you call it?

"Prior to January 2017, we would probably all think in this room if it was ever going to happen. Now, unfortunately the mindset has to be when is it going to happen."

CIRT is a specialised team of heavily armed officers that responds to potentially high-risk incidents involving dangerous or armed offenders considered beyond the capabilities of regular police.

The SOG is a heavily armed, tactical unit which is called in to handle highly dangerous situations involving terrorists, armed suspects and hostages.

The inquest continues.