A Queensland police officer has told a coronial inquest that a lack of resources explains why her colleague overlooked an email requesting mental health support for Joel Cauchi a year before he stabbed six people to death in Sydney’s Bondi Junction.
The inquest on Monday heard from her colleague, Sen Const Peter McDiarmid, who was acting as the police force’s only mental health officer for a district serving 220,000 residents when he received an email from another officer asking him to follow up with the Cauchi family. But the court heard he did not make contact.
It came after an incident in January 2023, when Cauchi called the police to his parents’ home in Toowoomba after his father confiscated his knives amid concern about his son’s mental health.
Cauchi’s mother told police: “I don’t know how we’re going to get him treatment unless he does something drastic.”
On Tuesday, Sen Sgt Tracey Morris – the officer who was normally the mental health officer – cried when asked about McDiarmid, her colleague who was acting in the role for five weeks and missed the email.
“His oversight of [that] email is devastating and is not indicative of him as an officer or how he performed my role,” she told the court.
The inquest, scheduled for five weeks, is examining the stabbing of six people by Cauchi, who had schizophrenia, at Westfield Bondi Junction in April 2024.
Cauchi, then 40, killed Ashlee Good, 38, Jade Young, 47, Yixuan Cheng, 27, Pikria Darchia, 55, Dawn Singleton, 25, and Faraz Tahir, 30, and injured 10 others at the shopping centre on 13 April last year before he was shot and killed by police inspector Amy Scott.
‘We will always look at it from a policing lens’
The inquest heard on Tuesday that between 2016 and 2020, police responses to mental health call-outs in Queensland jumped by more than 50%, but officers were not equipped with the “skills and knowledge” to cope.
Morris, the officer in charge of mental health intervention in the Darling Downs district – where Cauchi’s parents lived – said her position had been “fast becoming an overwhelming role”.
Asked by the senior counsel assisting, Peggy Dwyer SC, if McDiarmid might have missed the email due to a lack of resources, Morris said: “Absolutely.”
“On any given day, I could receive 30 to 40 emails,” she told the court when referencing requests from other officers regarding mental health incidents.
Morris told the court staffing levels should increase from one full-time position to three to adequately cover the mental health workload in the district. The court heard some districts didn’t even have one dedicated full-time mental health officer, despite that being recommended in a 2017 inquiry.
The court heard that Morris was unable to find another officer to backfill her role while she was giving evidence during this week’s inquest at Lidcombe coroners court.
She was due to take three weeks of leave soon, but there was only someone backfilling for one week.
The court heard that, had Morris been at work when the email was sent requesting a follow-up for Cauchi, she would have either called or met with the Cauchi family to discuss their options.
She told the court she would have searched Cauchi’s history in the police database and discovered he had had three interactions with police for erratic driving.
The court heard she also would have learned that in July 2022, Cauchi had repeatedly called a boarding school asking if he could watch female students undertake sporting activities.
The database would have also shown that in 2021, police visited his share house after reports he was screaming and stating he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and off his medication.
Morris told the court that part of her follow-up would have included “immediately” reaching out to her Queensland health counterpart to learn about their engagement with Cauchi.
The court heard on Tuesday that Cauchi had been weaned off medication by a psychiatrist and was meant to be monitored – but wasn’t.
Morris said there was also an issue with resourcing in the wider health sector for people suffering a mental health crisis.
She said such people were increasingly dealt with by police because they had nowhere else to turn.
“We are attending to people with so many vulnerabilities that have no other avenue to seek help other than call triple zero. If it’s not bleeding and it’s not on fire, police have to attend, and we don’t always have the experience or legislation to support these vulnerable people.
“We will always look at it from a policing lens … That may lead to charges and them going through the court system when [it’s] effectively because of the mental illness.”
‘Not equipped with the skills and knowledge’
Insp Bernard Quinlan, the manager of the vulnerable persons group for Queensland police, also gave evidence at the inquest on Tuesday.
He told the court police were “not equipped with the skills and knowledge” to respond to mental health crises alone.
“It shouldn’t just be a policing response. We are not equipped with the skills and knowledge. It’s a no-brainer for me that there should be responses that are health-led that can go out and assist people when they need help.”
Dwyer read to Quinlan the expert opinion of a psychiatrist who reviewed the body-worn footage, which showed police’s interaction with Cauchi when his father took his knives away in January 2023.
The psychiatrist determined Cauchi was “certainly psychotic” and in her view qualified for “compulsory admission” for a mental health assessment.
Asked if that would be the benefit of having a specialist in mental health attend call-outs alongside police, Quinlan said: “I couldn’t agree more.”
The court heard that since January 2023, there were co-responder models enacted that allowed health professionals to attend alongside police officers.
Both Quinlan and Morris agreed that the Mental Health Act should be changed so police could send people in mental health crises for emergency assessment if they were a risk to others. That would reflect how the legislation operated in NSW.
Currently, the legislation in Queensland only covers a person posing a serious risk to themselves.
“That is shaping up as a significant recommendation in this inquest,” Dwyer told the court.
The inquest continues.
