NSW police fatally shot man self-harming within minute of knocking, Taser failed, court hears

New South Wales police fatally shot a man who was self-harming in a Sydney public housing estate within a minute of knocking on his door and after a Taser failed to deploy, a court has heard.

On Monday, the NSW coroner’s court began its long-awaited inquest into the death of 43-year-old Jesse Deacon, almost three years to the day since he was shot in Glebe on 19 July 2023.

The deputy state coroner David O’Neil heard that Deacon lived with treatment-resistant schizophrenia and fell into a group of about 30% of people with the illness for whom treatment is “incredibly complex”.

Since his death, Deacon’s mother, 82-year-old Judy Deacon, has become one of the state’s leading advocates calling for change 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.

The counsel assisting the coroner, Donna Ward SC, walked through the chronology of police actions leading up to Deacon’s 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 “cut wrists”.

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 “without provocation”.

Ward said that at at 11.56pm police knocked at Deacon’s door and said: “Hello mate, just the police, can you open the door please.”

At 11.57pm the officers kicked open the door, and then Deacon came out with a “large knife in hand” and an officer deployed a Taser, which failed. Less than a second later another officer fatally shot him.

Ward told the court the police’s system did not include warnings about his mental health challenges.

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’Neil, he said he was surprised there wasn’t a warning that Deacon suffered from mental ill-health given his prior history.

“The purpose of warning is to convey the most important information to police when responding to incident,” he said.

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.

During Judy Deacon’s questioning of Browne, she asked what he thought could be done to prevent people dying like her son.

“I’m not completely sure, Mrs Deacon, I wish things could be done better, I wish there were better ways,” Browne responded.

“The reality is they deal with thousands of different types of incidents every day in their work and it’s very difficult to train them up to a high standard in respect of everything they attend.”

He later said: “Where 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.”

Ward told the court Deacon was stuck in a “cyclical pattern” 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.

“But 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,” Ward said.

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’t being raised to engage in “victim blaming”, saying Deacon did “not cause his own death” but “we can’t understand the dreadful circumstances of Jesse’s death without confronting the difficulties he confronted in life”.

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 while she was experiencing a severe episode of psychosis in 2015.

“I’m hoping with the way I intend to question people, which is not to lay blame … 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,” Judy said.

The inquest continues.