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Following the police shooting of a homeless man in Footscray, there have been renewed calls for a paramedic-first approach to acute mental-health episodes. By Denham Sadler.
Inside the Footscray police shooting
On April 11, Victoria Police issued a statement flagging a “strong show of force” in Footscray. They promised that officers would “saturate” the area in Melbourne’s west.
Less than a week later, a Somalia-born refugee experiencing homelessness was shot dead by Victoria Police officers in the suburb.
Police were called to the area at 9pm, after an emergency call about a man armed with a knife. After this man “charged” at the officers, they opened fire, Victoria Police said.
The man shot and killed by the police officers was Abdifatah Ahmed, a 35-year-old refugee with no fixed address. He was experiencing mental-health issues at the time of his death, according to many who knew him.
The “show of force” operation in Footscray is understood not to be linked to the shooting, but an increased police presence in the area has led to a criminal justice response to those experiencing mental ill health and other issues, says Molly Williams, director of engagement and projects at Inner Melbourne Community Legal.
“We default to thinking the only way to deal with this is sending in the police,” Williams tells The Saturday Paper. “The communities we’re working with are really marginalised and experiencing a lot of psychosocial distress. Their mental health is precarious, and that leads to challenges in public places rather than support, and then the police are turning up to respond.”
The fatal shooting has brought to a head concerns in the local community about a lack of adequate assistance and support systems for those experiencing disadvantage and mental-health issues.
More broadly, it has led many advocates and community lawyers to question the reliance on police and prisons in dealing with those in mental-health crises, rather than offering health-based approaches.
For the chief executive of WEstjustice, Melissa Hardham, the shooting makes her ask why this last resort was the only option on offer.
“Without having a detailed understanding of this particular person’s personal challenges, it just seems a really sad state of affairs that this is what our response is,” Hardham tells The Saturday Paper.
“It sheds light on the fact that police appear to be often the ones that are the first and only ones to these incidents, and we just don’t have the health and mental-health system to be able to support people that are escalating to this extent.”
A Victoria Police spokesperson said the officers in Footscray were facing an “extremely volatile and high-risk situation and made a tactical decision to use their firearms in a matter of moments”. The spokesperson told The Saturday Paper: “We understand the community is concerned about this incident – this is something no police officer wants to be involved in when they come to work.”
In 2021, the Victorian government committed more than $200 million to provide tasers to all frontline police officers over five years. At present, only 60 per cent of Victoria Police officers have tasers. The officers who responded to the call about Ahmed did not have them.
New South Wales Police Force officers have had access to tasers for more than a decade.
According to Ilo Diaz from the Centre Against Racial Profiling there is a lack of culturally appropriate services to support people such as Ahmed. “The people I’m speaking to are feeling really frustrated, they’re saying there’s not enough services and that they’re not helping,” Diaz tells The Saturday Paper. “I’m translating that to: the services that are available, they’re not for us.”
In the past six years, the number of mental-health crises that Victoria Police is responding to has increased by more than 25 per cent. That equates to a call-out every 10 minutes, according to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee.
Neither Victoria Police nor the state government wants police to be the first responders to mental-health-related triple-0 calls. Ambulances were meant to take on this role from late 2023, but this program has been delayed several times and is now slated to begin in 2027.
This reform stems from a recommendation made by the Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System.
Molly Williams says the delay in implementing this reform is “really distressing” for individuals who have interacted with police while experiencing a mental-health crisis. “It’s in no one’s interest that it’s delayed,” she says. “It will very often escalate situations that might be able to be resolved in other ways if the police aren’t involved. The slow pace of reform has been very challenging for people impacted by these issues.”
Hardham urges the Victorian government to prioritise the implementation of this reform. “What we are doing at the moment is putting incredible pressure on Victoria Police to be the answer to all problems when it comes to mental health and community safety,” she says.
“We need to invest in all the ingredients we know can create reform across mental health in the most effective way. A failure to do so is costing lives and an extraordinary amount of money for governments.”
The Victoria Police spokesperson said the force is supportive of this change and is working with Ambulance Victoria and the state government towards “reduced involvement” in these cases.
Rory Hudson, the managing lawyer at Inner Melbourne Community Legal, says many of his clients have had previous negative interactions with police, and the involvement of law enforcement when they may be having a mental-health episode can unnecessarily escalate the situation.
“Straightaway the arrival of police brings in that punitive element,” Hudson tells The Saturday Paper. “The people who have had previous interactions with them are straightaway upset and heightened by the fact they’re experiencing an acute mental-health episode.
“It’s using law and order to resolve complex social problems, underpinned by a lack of accessible and safe housing, lack of access to mental health and other services, and people not having their material needs met, along with structural racism.”
Diaz says the shift from a police-based response to mental-health issues to a health-based one is sorely needed but must be approached with caution. “It’s right to move towards it absolutely, but we need to keep in mind that the kind of response we take on the ground needs to be from the ground up, from that community, for that community and by that community.”
The delay in implementing this reform is indicative of how the state government has dealt with the wider suite of reforms proposed by the royal commission in 2021. According to the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee report, of the 74 recommendations agreed to by the state government, 57 are still in progress and six have not yet started. Just 11 have been fully implemented.
Six of the short-term recommendations are already at least 18 months behind schedule.
“What the state government needs to prioritise is rolling out the recommendations of multiple royal commissions and inquiries … A failure to do that comprehensively is costing us, in this case, human lives,” Melissa Hardham says.
“We need to focus on those recommendations, and not just adopting them but actually rolling them out and investing in them. We’re not seeing that now.”
In 2024-25, the Victorian government will spend $4.5 billion on policing, nearly double the amount that will be spent on mental-health clinical care and community support services.
“We have put a lot of resources into our policing system and our jail system, at a disproportionate rate and quantity than we have into community and health services, particularly those that are place-based and where people who are in deep distress require better and more comprehensive support,” Hardham says.
The most recent Victorian budget set aside $1.5 billion in the current financial year for the state’s prisons and $216.8 million for its youth prisons. According to the Productivity Commission, it costs $445 a day to hold an adult in prison, and $7775 to incarcerate a child – by far the most expensive of all the states and territories. “When you look at what that money would translate to if you were to support that young person, it’s significantly cheaper to provide that person with 24/7 psychological support over the course of a year,” Hardham says.
A Victorian government spokesperson said that $6 billion had been invested into mental health since the royal commission. “We’re not wasting a minute building a system that works for every Victorian no matter who they are or where they live – one that responds with care, compassion and clinical expertise,” the spokesperson said.
The state government is expected to release a Diverse Communities Mental Health and Wellbeing Framework and has distributed $4.2 million through the Diverse Communities Grants Program.
While the transition towards paramedics responding to mental-health call-outs continues, the state government has launched TelePROMPT, with $1.4 million in funding to connect paramedics on the scene with mental-health expertise.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 3, 2025 as "Blunt force".
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