Source : Perth Now news
There’s a “unanimous” push to change “confusing” legislation that could have reintegrated the “floridly psychotic” Bondi killer Joel Cauchi into the mental health system months before the fatal rampage.
Six people were killed and 10 others were injured in the attack at Westfield Bondi Junction on April 13, 2024.
Dawn Singleton, Yixuan Cheng, Faraz Ahmed Tahir, Ashlee Good, Jade Young and Pikria Darchia died in the incident.
Cauchi, 40, had gone on a rampage through the palatial shopping centre with a WWII knife purchased at a camping store before being gunned down by NSW Police Inspector Amy Scott.
A five-week coronial inquest into the deadly stabbing began last Monday, with the first week revealing never-before-heard details about the incident.
Cauchi was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was 17. He was medicated for more than a decade to treat the condition until he stopped taking all psychotropic medication in June 2019.
He has been described as being “floridly psychotic” on the day of the fatal attack.
Police were called to Cauchi’s parents’ home in January 2023 after he claimed his father had stolen his knives.
His father had given them to a friend over concerns for Cauchi’s mental health, the court was told on Monday.
Cauchi had also pushed his father after the knives were confiscated.
However because he was not deemed a risk to himself, the attending officers told the court they had no powers to take Cauchi for an emergency assessment, as per changes to the Emergency Examination Authority (EEA) criteria in 2017.
Changes to criteria in the Emergency Examination Authority mean only those who have an “immediate threat to self” can be taken for emergency assessment, and cites the example of “a person is threatening to commit suicide”.
Before 2017 it referred to those who were an immediate threat to themselves or somebody else.
An email was sent to an officer acting as one of the force’s mental health intervention coordinators (MHIC) requesting a follow up on the Cauchi family, however the email was missed.
“Unfortunately it was an oversight and I did not manage to follow up,” the relieving intervention officer told the court on Monday.
He also accepted the incident was a “missed opportunity”, and agreed it had been difficult for him to process that he had something to do with this missed opportunity.
A better system for follow up has since been put in place.
However the officer, who typically works in the MHIC role, told the court there may have been a way to force Cauchi to undergo an emergency assessment.
“In my capacity with my expanded knowledge base…there would’ve been a possibility to expand on serious harm beyond harm to self to collateral harm,” she told the court.
“There may have been an opportunity for an emergency examination authority based on my skill set.”
She emphasised that she has a completely different knowledge base to general duties officers, and that she can see why officers would read the legislation as being restrictive to someone needing to pose serious harm to themselves including by way of threats of suicide.
She supported a proposed legislation change to “remove that ambiguity” to expand the risk of harm to unintentional harm to self and harm to others.
Counsel assisting the coroner Peggy Dwyer SC said this was shaping up to be a “significant recommendation in this inquest given there’s such unanimous support for that”.
She agreed the relieving MHIC’s oversight was “devastating”, and agreed she would have followed up on the email had she been there.
However she also noted it was the type of email she would receive daily in her role.
“As I said before I can guarantee it was an unintentional oversight,” she told the court.
She said the MHIC role was “fast becoming an overwhelming role” and even said there was no one to fill her role while she was in Sydney for the inquest.
The number of mental health call outs are also increasing, with the court told calls for service increased by 51 per cent between 2016 and 2020 in Queensland.
The MHIC said in a “perfect world” she’d also like to have three extra staff, as at the moment it is just her working 6.30am-2.30pm responding to calls to service related to mental health, dementia, those with intellectual disabilities, and other cases that fall outside the scope of a general police response.
“Through that, because there’s so much of it effectively at times I have to triage my follow up, I have to risk asses who is repeatedly coming into contact with police…who is a risk to themselves and the community,” she told the court.
“Ideally I’d love to engage with every person (the day after a call out)… it’s just not possible.”
The QPS Manager of the Vulnerable Persons Group also agreed the EEA terminology was confusing.
“It’s very specific in its terminology, and as police we are bound by the laws…that govern what actions we can take in partic circumstances,” he told the court.
“The law needs to be interpreted…if the example provided is a person threatening to commit suicide that sets a principle that is when police have to intervene.”
Ms Dwyer said it sounded like some police may interpret the legislation more broadly, but it can be restrictive, to which he agreed some may take it “literally”.
He said “it is confusing…it is a very high threshold that needs to be met” based on what the EEA says “on paper”, and that some feedback on this has already been provided.
There’s been a resounding push from officers during the inquest for the need for other ways to respond to mental health incidents outside of Queensland Police.
“It shouldn’t be police responding..it should be a health-led response,” he said.
mental health support
