Geraldton police shooting murder trial: Cop charged with shooting Aboriginal woman JC ‘not trigger happy’

The first class constable accused of using unreasonable force when he fatally shot an armed Aboriginal woman in Geraldton is not a “trigger happy” officer who wanted to kill someone but a frontline policeman who had “one second” to respond to a “lethal threat” with “lethal force”, a court has been told. The trial of the first WA Police officer to be charged with murder in almost 100 years was also told today he wasn’t someone who had lost control or was angry when he drew his gun and fired the fatal shot that killed JC, a Yamatji mother-of-one, but was a man who “exercised bravery and courage” while performing his duty as a serving police officer. That is how the man’s lawyer, high profile barrister Linda Black, described her client, whose name has been suppressed, during her opening submission of his murder trial. She also told the jury to ignore what they might have heard about this case either inside or outside of the courtroom saying this trial “has nothing to do with race and nothing to do with the colour JC’s skin”. “What it’s simply about is a one second of judgment of a police officer dealing with (an) armed offender,” she added. Prosecutors say the actions of the officer on the evening of September 17, 2019 were “wholly unnecessary” and that he could not have believed what he did – to draw his gun and shoot JC who had stopped moving after she had been seen wandering along a street armed with a knife and a pair of scissors – was reasonable. But Ms Black told the court her client was the only police officer who attended the scene that evening who acted according to his training – to treat a suspect armed with a knife as a lethal threat and draw his gun. She said he was prepared to act with no thought of himself but to “protect others from potential danger”. “But instead of gratitude, he got a charge of murder,” she added. The court was told it only took a suspect armed with a knife 1.5 seconds to travel seven metres. Ms Black said when her client arrived on the scene he was “half a second to a second” away from being stabbed. She also said his colleague who was standing behind him with his unarmed Taser pointing towards JC was also about the same distance away. “The person he was dealing with was an armed, dangerous convicted criminal, who was deliberately carrying two weapons,” she said. “The only reason he was the man who shot JC was because he was prepared to follow police training,” she said. The trial continues.