leading advocates calling for change<\/a> in how police respond to mental health call-outs. She told the court she was foregoing legal aid and would represent herself, imploring that any recommendations from the inquest are listened to.<\/p>\nThe counsel assisting the coroner, Donna Ward SC, walked through the chronology of police actions leading up to Deacon\u2019s death. In her opening statement, Ward said three police officers responded to the welfare callout, which was described in their dispatch service as a self-harm incident involving \u201ccut wrists\u201d.<\/p>\n
There was also a later warning that the person who lived at the address had HIV, which the court heard was incorrect, and could assault police \u201cwithout provocation\u201d.<\/p>\n
Ward said that at at 11.56pm police knocked at Deacon\u2019s door and said: \u201cHello mate, just the police, can you open the door please.\u201d<\/p>\n
At 11.57pm the officers kicked open the door, and then Deacon came out with a \u201clarge knife in hand\u201d and an officer deployed a Taser, which failed. Less than a second later another officer fatally shot him.<\/p>\n
Ward told the court the police\u2019s system did not include warnings about his mental health challenges.<\/p>\n
The police officer in charge of the investigation into his death, Glenn Browne, was the first witness to give evidence on Monday. In response to a question from O\u2019Neil, he said he was surprised there wasn\u2019t a warning that Deacon suffered from mental ill-health given his prior history.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe purpose of warning is to convey the most important information to police when responding to incident,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he presumed there was an HIV warning because Deacon told an officer he was HIV positive during a prior arrest, despite it being a delusion.<\/p>\n
Judy Deacon outside the NSW coroner\u2019s court on Monday. She is calling for change after her son, who lived with schizophrenia, was fatally shot. Photograph: Steven Markham\/AAP<\/p>\n
During Judy Deacon\u2019s questioning of Browne, she asked what he thought could be done to prevent people dying like her son.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not completely sure, Mrs Deacon, I wish things could be done better, I wish there were better ways,\u201d Browne responded.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe reality is they deal with thousands of different types of incidents every day in their work and it\u2019s very difficult to train them up to a high standard in respect of everything they attend.\u201d<\/p>\n
He later said: \u201cWhere there is a risk to personal safety, I doubt we will ever reach a point where ambulance officers will attend instead of us, I doubt there will ever be funding for experts to be there and help guide us through those incidents.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ward told the court Deacon was stuck in a \u201ccyclical pattern\u201d that included periods of hospitalisation and then eventual improvement which would lead him to being discharged into the community with a community treatment order and support plans in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut eventually there would be deterioration in his mental health and or increase in drug use where he reached a point of crisis which led to another period of containment or custody sometimes following episodes of violence,\u201d Ward said.<\/p>\n
Ward listed a number of incidents during which Deacon posed a risk to himself and assaulted other people, including strangers and medical staff. She said these facts weren\u2019t being raised to engage in \u201cvictim blaming\u201d, saying Deacon did \u201cnot cause his own death\u201d but \u201cwe can\u2019t understand the dreadful circumstances of Jesse\u2019s death without confronting the difficulties he confronted in life\u201d.<\/p>\n
Judy was joined in court by a number of family members of other victims who have died during interactions with police. They included Lisa Topic, whose daughter Courtney was fatally shot by police<\/a> while she was experiencing a severe episode of psychosis in 2015.<\/p>\n\u201cI\u2019m hoping with the way I intend to question people, which is not to lay blame \u2026 but to bring out things to help your honour to put forward recommendations that are not only adhered to but are followed up and sustained into the future,\u201d Judy said.<\/p>\n
The inquest continues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New South Wales police fatally shot a man who was self-harming in a Sydney public housing estate within…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":812787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-812786","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\/812786","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=812786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/812786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=812786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=812786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=812786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}