Sydney siege inquest a 'public witch-hunt', says NSW Police Association

The acting president of the NSW Police Association has criticised the inquest into the Lindt cafe siege as an “extravagant taxpayer-funded show trial” that subjected police to a “public witch-hunt”.

Tony King published his account of the “true story” of the siege on the blogging site Medium on Sunday. The coroner, Michael Barnes, is due to hand down his findings on Wednesday.

King wrote that the officers who stormed the cafe in December 2014 had had their bravery and professionalism undermined in the inquest, which seemed set to write the “story of a botched police operation”.

“The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth,” he says.

Police officers had been unfairly targeted by lawyers in the inquest and “subjected to what can only be described as a media circus”.

“Instead of a sober inquisitorial process it descended into an adversarial attack, and instead of a search for the truth we witnessed taxpayer-funded lawyers on a frolic, cross-examining police officers as if they were on trial.”

King cited the cross-examination of a senior police commander as an example of lawyers “twisting words” and grandstanding to the media.

The commander, who could not be identified, was criticised by Gabrielle Bashir SC, the barrister acting for the Lindt cafe manager, Tori Johnson, after describing the siege as a “high stakes game”. .

“How could a lawyer think so little of a police commander who had the lives of his officers and the general public in his care?” King wrote. “How could the media seriously report this attack as news? How was this allowed to occur?

“Sadly, it was not an isolated incident.”

King also criticised the coroner’s decision to publicly pursue police tactics and methodology when the director of public prosecutions and bail decisions were shielded from public scrutiny.

“The fundamental driver of the deaths, the very fact that Man [Haron] Monis was free, despite serious charges, was never publicly scrutinised by the inquest,” he wrote. “This smacks of a double standard between the treatment of the legal fraternity and police officers.”

The “aggressive” treatment of police could dissuade officers from putting themselves forward for further training or leadership roles, as well as undermine public confidence in authorities’ ability to respond to terrorism.

“Of course, police officers expect to be accountable, but police operations should not be a source of entertainment in such a calculating way,” King wrote.

He called for a review of coronial processes around terrorism incidents, and for special judicial officers to be trained in terrorism powers and legislation. He said the director of public prosecutions processes around bail applications should be reviewed “with a particular focus on the decision not to appeal the Man Monis case”.

King’s post was sent to all 16,500 serving police officers in NSW on Monday morning “in a show of support for all police officers involved”.

Police stormed the cafe early on 16 December 2014 and shot and killed Monis after Monis had shot dead Johnson, 17 hours after the siege began.

The coroner will hand down his findings into those deaths and that of Katrina Dawson on Wednesday. Dawson was killed by fragments of police bullets.

Johnson’s mother, Rosie Connellan, spoke to the ABC’s Four Corners program in a special report on the siege to be broadcast on Monday night. She and other members of Johnson’s family were highly critical of police’s evidence at the inquiry, calling it “horrific”.

“Every day we thought ‘This can’t get worse’, and every day it got worse – what was coming out in evidence,” she said.

Johnson’s partner, Thomas Zinn, said he had lost faith in the police “because of the great level of incompetence that has been revealed”.

Connellan said she was angry at what she saw as fatal delays in the police operation.

“I’ll never be able understand how you can make a calculated decision that you wait for someone to die,” she said. “It’s just beyond me.”