{"id":739942,"date":"2026-06-16T10:29:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:29:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739942\/"},"modified":"2026-06-16T10:29:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:29:09","slug":"inadequate-nsw-police-criticised-for-not-getting-out-of-cars-after-triple-zero-call-reported-woman-being-bashed-australian-police-and-policing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/739942\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Inadequate\u2019: NSW police criticised for not getting out of cars after triple zero call reported woman being bashed | Australian police and policing"},"content":{"rendered":"

At 7pm on 3 January 2023, New South Wales<\/a> police received a triple zero call reporting that a woman was \u201cbeing bashed\u201d behind the Salvation Army building in Ballina.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m just letting you know, there\u2019s a woman getting bashed behind Salvation Army in Ballina and that\u2019s all I got to say I don\u2019t want to be reported or anything,\u201d the caller said.<\/p>\n

Almost six hours later, the woman\u2019s partner of five years, who would later be convicted over her death, walked into the Ballina police station. He said he thought his partner, Lindy Lucena, was dead. He then led the police to a covered area at the side of the Salvation Army building, where they found her body.<\/p>\n

What happened in the hours between that first call being made and Robert Huber leading police to 64-year-old Lucena\u2019s body was investigated by the independent police watchdog, after concerns were raised by her family and Greens MP Sue Higginson.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (Lecc) handed down its final report. It made no findings of misconduct but found there was an inadequate police response after two officers attended the scene, but did not get out of their respective cars, while Lucena was lying nearby, either dying or dead.<\/p>\n

The Lecc report found systemic issues may have contributed to the delayed response.<\/p>\n

Delayed response<\/p>\n

Three minutes after the emergency call was made, it was logged in the police dispatch system as a priority 2 job.<\/p>\n

Police procedures require all \u201creasonable efforts\u201d to be made to broadcast a priority 2 job within 90 seconds, the report stated. But the first broadcast was made seven minutes after the call was logged, at 7.10pm, due to a mistake by a dispatch assistant.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

The job was broadcast a second time at 7.24pm and a third time at 7.34pm, despite it being required that a reasonable effort be made to re-broadcast an unanswered priority 2 job every 60 seconds.<\/p>\n

The commission found that how police prioritised jobs on the evening was \u201cappropriate\u201d, noting the two officers who responded were caught up responding to a minor road accident.<\/p>\n

The report said the officers \u201cwere also influenced by the fact that only one person had called police to report the assault, which led them to presume the assault was not serious or had stopped\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, when the two officers \u2013 who were not named in the report \u2013 responded 45 minutes after the first broadcast, they did not get out of their cars to search the area.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficers C and D attended in separate cars and drove slowly down Holden Lane. Within three and a half minutes, the officers had called back on duty, stating they had seen nothing,\u201d Tuesday\u2019s report stated.<\/p>\n

The watchdog found the failure to get out of the cars amounted to an \u201cinadequate police response\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cOfficers C and D certainly were not aware that Ms Lucena had been seriously assaulted and was perhaps already deceased within metres of their police vehicles, hidden behind the fence,\u201d the report stated.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe decision to drive along the lane but not get out of the car does not give rise to a potential criminal offence, nor does it warrant serious disciplinary action. It did not meet the minimum standards of policing, but nor is it serious misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report concluded: \u201cIt is not open to the commission to find that had the officers left their cars, they might have saved Ms Lucena\u2019s life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Officer C said during the investigation that, although he wished he had gotten out of the car, he didn\u2019t think there was anything procedurally he should have done differently. The other responding officer, D, refuted the suggestion that they should have walked around the building.<\/p>\n

Huber, 69, was acquitted of murder but convicted of Lucena\u2019s manslaughter in July 2025. He was sentenced to almost 13 years in prison.<\/p>\n

Justice Stephen Rothman found Lucena likely died \u201cat or about 7.20pm\u201d or \u201cjust after 9.30pm\u201d from a combination of factors and not just the wounds from the beating.<\/p>\n

The police watchdog found that the acting assistant commissioner Tracy Chapman and other senior officers seriously considered declaring Lucena\u2019s death a critical incident investigation \u2013 typically declared when a person is seriously injured or dies during a police operation.<\/p>\n

A critical incident investigation was not declared, and Chapman did not document her decision on what\u2019s known as a P1179 form. The watchdog found this did not amount to serious misconduct, although it did note that the force gave a \u201cmisleading\u201d response after it requested to see the P1179 form and was told it had \u201cno obligation to do so\u201d \u2013 rather than revealing there wasn\u2019t one.<\/p>\n

In February, legal counsel for the police commissioner, Mal Lanyon, made a submission to the Lecc inquiry.<\/p>\n

It warned the watchdog against subjecting officers to an \u201cunfair public attack\u201d and stated that officers had done their best under \u201ctrying circumstances\u201d.<\/p>\n

Barrister Tim Smartt dismissed preliminary recommendations by the commission, writing that the cost of implementation outweighed \u201cany benefit\u201d. He argued the Lecc should \u201cvindicate the conduct of police\u201d in the \u201ckind of terms\u201d used by counsel assisting the commission, Emma Sullivan.<\/p>\n

Sullivan had noted during the investigation\u2019s hearings that the night of Lucena\u2019s death had been particularly busy for officers who responded to a large number of call-outs. She described the officers as hard-working, professional and having undertaken their jobs to the best of their abilities under significant pressure.<\/p>\n

Smartt warned the commission to be careful in its language so as not to give the public the impression that different actions by police would have saved Lucena\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s report stated that the police submission was \u201cmisconceived\u201d and \u201cthe fact that the investigation found no serious misconduct on the part of officers does not mean that the investigation was not justified\u201d.<\/p>\n

NSW police said in a statement on Tuesday that it would consider the report and final recommendations.<\/p>\n

The watchdog\u2019s recommendations included an urgent review of radio room operations and critical incident guidelines. <\/p>\n

Commissioner Anina Johnson said in a statement after the report was released: \u201cOne of the challenges of policing is that any one job may mean the difference between life and death. But for police on the ground, it may not be clear which job that will be. All jobs need to be done diligently.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis investigation showed the difficulty of police work and also provides an opportunity to strengthen how police respond to future events,\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At 7pm on 3 January 2023, New South Wales police received a triple zero call reporting that a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739943,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-739942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}