Grieving family call for police body cameras
A survey this year found a 38 per cent increase in the number of staff who’d been threatened with a firearm, compared with two years ago.
‘‘There are no other realistic options to deal with an offender with a firearm than with a firearm in the majority of cases,’’ says president Chris Cahill.
But not all of the people police are shooting are armed with guns. An analysis of the 16 deaths ON a wintry evening in July last year, the Armed Offenders Squad raided a Hamilton warehouse and fired eight bullets at Nick Marshall, who greeted them with a shotgun.
A police criminal inquiry and an investigation by the Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) cleared the officers involved but the family – who say Marshall had a heart of gold and wouldn’t want to harm officers – still have plenty of questions.
‘‘Nick’s shooting was justified based on the balance of probabilities – body cameras on police would remove all doubt to what happened that night and give us closure as a family,’’ his sister Madelyn Stanton says.
Police say they are monitoring the use of cameras by other agencies but have no plans for their immediate introduction.
The IPCA found the shooting was justified as the officers were faced with a ‘‘very real risk of death or serious bodily harm’’ after they arrived at the Frankton warehouse at 6.25pm and used a loud hailer to announce themselves.
AOS officers in full kit pushed through the mesh internal door into a lit-up confined workshop where Marshall walked out of an office about four metres away.
He was told to get on the ground but ran to the back of the warehouse and picked up a pump action shotgun, pointed it at police and pulled the trigger, but it failed to fire.
Marshall then pointed the shotgun towards the ceiling and racked the chamber, causing a shell to pop out.
An officer yelled at Marshall to drop his gun but the report states Marshall tried to load another round. Believing Marshall was going to shoot him, the officer fired five shots from his M4 rifle.
At the same time another officer, armed with a pistol, fired three times.
First aid was given but Marshall died at the scene.
More than a year after the shooting, the Marshalls have misgivings about the IPCA report and how the search warrant was carried out.
They don’t dispute that Nick pulled a gun on officers but say he likely thought it was Mongrel Mob members breaking in, says Nelson Marshall.
They doubt whether Nick would have heard the loudhailer as he typically watched TV and listened to music, and sound was muffled by the workshop in front.
They also question why police chose to go in under darkness when they’d visited the premises during the day in the past.
Marshall was deemed ‘‘low risk’’ by police due to his lack of criminal convictions but they were concerned about associates, including gang leaders, seen coming and going from the warehouse.
‘‘So why did they go in with six officers with loaded guns. We just don’t understand why they didn’t do it in the daytime,’’ Stanton says.