Yesterday mid afternoon in a Westfield Mall near Bondi Beach in Sydney Eastern Suburb a Lone Knife wielding male began a stabbing rampage.
A female inspector entered the mall and was guided to where the nutter was located on a fifth level, pulled out her weapon and closed in on the still threatening male from behind, he turned to face her and raised the knife, she shot him dead as he lunged toward her refusing to “drop the Knife”, Inspector Amy Scott then removed the weapon from the by then prone attacker and began life saving procedures. Now that indicates some serious trained response.
The first time I visited The Lucky Country some thirty years ago a very early encounter with the thin blue line was a woman with a quite large posterior sporting a Glock pistol in a holster made to look quite a small weapon. She was patrolling in a public concourse of Sydney Airport. It was confronting to one who had lived amongst Police everyone knew were unarmed, my very first thought was I wonder how long it would take for that momma to reach around to draw her weapon, I had zero intent to find out.
Of course the rapid ending of the rampage at Bondi Junction would have taken longer here and it can be asked for how much longer will that prevail.
Police are going to lengths to suggest the perpetrator was a lone male “Known to Police” and until the now dead nutter is identified they are regarding this as “not a terrorist incident”.
Great proactive policing Inspector Scott.
Funnily enough that was what I expected my reaction to be when I first arrived in Chicago, and yet it wasn’t. For whatever reason I just took in stride.
By contrast the one that did shock me was when I landed in Britain a year later and before even exiting Gatwick airport, found myself staring at a cop holding a frigging sub-machine, and one that was obviously well-used because it had bits of paint flaked off.
Of course that was at the height of IRA attacks.
I know it a cliched comment from Andrew Breitbart but..
“Walk towards the Fire” or in this case “Run”
What a role model for our own policewoman or any woman considering joining our police.
Ably backed by those 3 men who were right behind her!