 When tasers were introduced a few years ago the objective of the taser introduction was not as a compliance device but to prevent people being shot and killed. Has that failed basically after the recent events? No, I don't think so. In fact tasers are used about 1200 times a year throughout the state and in 80% of the use of tasers by our police It is merely the threat of a police officer drawing a taser which gets compliance from the people concerned. But the taser is only one small component of our whole use of force continuum. The primary role of our police is to wherever possible to de-escalate and resolve a violent confrontation situation. First in these circumstances rather than guns drawn? That's an important question. Unfortunately these matters are now before the coroner. I'm not trying to be to use that as a way of not answering your questions but the coroner is in charge of these investigations and the information that surrounds them. So I'm unable to talk about the specific details but what I can say to you is simply this. If someone's running at you with a knife and they're two metres away trying to shoot them with a taser is not the sensible option. And certainly we provide a series of use of force options for our police and we allow them to make the best decision for the most reasonable and lawful and appropriate use of force which is necessary to resolve that particular situation. How does it concern you Commissioner that one or more of these recent incidents may have been either suicide by police or copycat incidents because of the recent run? This is something that obviously we are considering and certainly that factor has not been, we've certainly considered it. However any decision about that will be made on the basis of all of the facts and that is the job of the coroner. The independent arbiter in these matters. We've expressed obviously confidence in the services training while announcing a review. Are there any instances or parts of it off the top of your head that need to be looked at specifically that you think could or should be improved or done better off the top of your head before the review commences? No, I think that people say things like well why don't we have firearms training more, why don't we have more taser training, why don't we have more capsicum use of capsicum training. These are only small components of our whole use of force curriculum. I believe that we have a wonderful training system in that regard but the catch is always this that somewhere in the world there will be someone with a slightly better view, a slightly better way of doing things and that's what we need to search out. We need to be looking always for that to improve what we do because at the end of the day we never want to use lethal force as a police department. I mean that is the very last resort but the situations that our people are faced with as I said on a daily basis and if you think about it over half a million triple zero calls to Queensland Police each year. That's the current stats. Millions of interactions that we have with the public every day and sadly though we still have those very rare occasions where the use of lethal force is necessary. But are you worried about what the public is beginning to think? How are you receiving members of the public speaking to you about these incidents, I mean three in a week? I wouldn't be standing here today telling you that I'm going to take all of these actions if I wasn't concerned about the trust relationship that is absolutely critical to the Queensland Police Service doing its job on a daily basis. That's why I'm here. What I am saying is please understand and put this in the context of the broader environment in which we're operating. I mean it should not be a secret to any of you that in Australia now we have the highest level of alert for counter-terrorism that we've ever faced in our history and that's right across Australia. Daily we are seeing issues involving mental health. Daily we are seeing issues involving poly-drug use. Our people need to be equipped to handle all of those to be ready to respond to keep the community safe and secure in all of those situations. That alert came out a couple of months ago combined with the decision for all uniformed officers to be carrying weapons. Do you think that's plating any part in these incidents for police to reach first to their fire arms? The honest answer to that is I don't. However the coroner is going, I suspect that the coroner will look at all of those issues and so the coroner should. I think it's very important that they look at the entire environment that we're operating at the moment. I ask our people to be hyper-vigilant at the moment and I said this before G20. This wasn't just about G20. This was about our current working environment. It is important that all police, all sworn officers are ready to deploy to any situation that they're confronted by or that their workmates are confronted by. That is our sworn duty. So I don't believe that simply preparing our officers to be deployable, to be ready to handle any situation has had that impact. But other people will no doubt look at that and they'll have their views. G20 which during one security briefing I was told that police were trained up to G20 but not given much downtime before the G20. These incidents have happened post G20. Just taking Michael's point about readiness. Is that a factor that could be playing in here as well that some police are just so wired in readiness for something that's where the call becomes? No because quite honestly I think we've been in this state of higher readiness probably for about 12 months. I really don't think that's been a factor but then again there will be an independent review of all of this which we will cooperate with. And I'm glad to see Ian Leavers here in the room today because I think Ian and I are on the same page in this space. Any review of what is occurring within our community in how we're trained to respond to that in the way that we provide for the safety and security of the community entirely. I think is an important thing that we both support. Commissioner you mentioned about 1200 times a year Taze is being deployed or pulled out. Has there been any figure of the average use of guns being pulled out? I can tell you that in the last five years we've been involved in 13 shootings so that's since 2010 and only in six of those occasions have the outcome been a fatal fatality. Commissioner sorry just to clarify that includes these recent five and six. Sorry can I be very clear on this I'm talking about the times where we've actually shot at people so 13 shootings where we've shot at people in the last five years only six of those have been fatal. And that includes the recent spades sorry. Yes it does. Queensland Police are looking at they announced earlier this year that big changes to the ethical standards command and police discipline will this still go ahead given this new review as well. The ethical standards command I think has benefited from the changes that we've made where we have a far greater range of staff and the skills base of staff in the ethical standards command. Certainly that is that has been I think a major a major advantage to us in these current matters. The discipline process is an ongoing discussion with government and with the union. You mentioned that is your understanding that the coroner will look at these in combination or with other individuals and when will that be because obviously if there's a situation now we've gone away 12 months for a coronal inquest. Right. And you might notice that in my statement about the actions that we intend to take is not only will we support the coroner inquiries if the coroner was to ask me for extra resources. I would happily give them to try and make sure that we get these particular matters dealt with very quickly. I think that that is very important for the entire community. Certainly I have been in touch with the coroner today and I believe that the coroner will be looking at doing a joint inquiry of all of these matters. But that is quite probably something that perhaps you should ask. White ribbon for White Ribbon Day. A lot of these incidents seem to be related to domestic violence. Is that right? Look, can I ask that we keep these matters separate? I'm doing some White Ribbon Day media later today in the Queen Street Mall and I'd ask you to keep those questions about White Ribbon Day because I don't want the importance of White Ribbon Day to be lost in the discussion that we're having about these incidents. So in terms of domestic violence, quite a few incidents of these incidents are related to domestic violence. Some of them are. Will your officers need more training on handling these situations? Is that a factor? Our officers get significant training across a whole range of issues and situational incidents. We do a lot of scenario training with our officers now and certainly any violent or highly charged situation like a domestic situation where violence is involved, a road rage incident, a brawler to pub. All of these are things that our people have to deal with. Almost on a, not, sorry, all of our people have to deal with these and these are occurring across Queensland on a daily basis. So we don't specify particular instances. What we do is we specify behaviours and how best to deal with those behaviours. You mentioned that you're going to open the access to training for the media and the communities so they can see what's going on there. Is that because you don't think there's enough understanding and proximity issues like I think the FBI caught the 21 foot rule? You're absolutely right and thank you. Thank you. That's an important issue and that's exactly why I intend to open the doors of our academies to groups of people who can come in and start to understand the complexity of what our people are facing. See it's not just about someone running down the driveway at you with a knife, extended screaming at you that they're going to cut you into two. It's not just that. It's understanding. If you have time, what is the state that this person is? Why are they acting in this way? What has been the causal factors for them reaching this level of aggression? What is your backup? Are you able to retreat safely? I mean all of these factors play a part in how we deal with these high risk situations. It's not just about standing firm and you know pulling out a baton or a gun or whatever. There are a whole lot of variables that our people have to consider at the time. But ultimately it's about their safety, the community safety and the safety of the person with the knife as well. Is increased drug use a factor in these cases? I think the complexity of what our people face on a daily basis has changed. And it's not just the CT, the counter-terrorism environment. It is the fact that daily we see people with the impact of poly drug use on them either right then or over a period of time. As we see with mental illness and the way that that impacts on our society. I think our people are dealing with the consequences of a whole range of important social issues. And this is always the balance for governments. Do you pour money into having more police with all of the extra equipment? Or do you pour money into things like rehabilitation programs and what have you? Ultimately it is your police that get called to deal with the consequences when people are in trouble. When people are the next door neighbours going off the handle, being violent, damaging property. That's when the police get called. We're at the end of the chain. And part of it is making sure that our primary focus is to try and resolve peacefully any situation we can. But at the same time, sometimes that's just not possible. You talked about how the nature of policing is more and more complicated, more and more challenging. It is. That's the case. Why do police not have standard issue body worn cameras? And why is such a large percentage of police having to go out and purchase these devices themselves because the QPS isn't doing it? No, it's a very good question. And there's a precedent for this. When I was a young detective a number of years ago now, I went out and I bought myself a small digital recorder. It wasn't a digital recorder in those days. It was a little tape. We didn't have a digital recorder. We did that way before I was asked to or when the police department itself decided to move to that. And what it reflects is the fact that I can put body worn cameras on a lot of people, but it's not going to stop people being shot dead. That's the reality of it. It will record frame by frame what occurred. And yes, we'll be able to review that. But my focus has always been looking at ways that we can actually prevent us ever getting to that stage. That's clearly it. Do I think that we will ultimately have body worn recording devices that will record audio and video? I think we will down the track, but there is still a whole lot of complications in dealing with that as an organisation. And I encourage our officers to go out and buy their own. But ultimately, once I start to buy them there are a whole range of issues that come into play. Not the least of which is the complications about losing police off the road when they have to sit down and classify six or eight hours worth of video. They have to then not just classify it, but download it. And technology is not just, whilst it's wonderful, it's not quite there yet. I see a time where Google Glasses will probably be part of the answer, that type of technology. Because as you know, if I look over here, what's happening over there is not captured on what's occurring with a very worn video that's pointing that way. So if you see where I'm coming from, I just don't think that the technology is quite as mature yet as when we're going to need to put it in more globally across the organisation. But we're looking at it. We're looking at it all the time and we're reaching out. And I know that Ian from the Union has been very vocal about this and I understand that. But I hope that he will be prepared to also understand my views about what this might mean into the future. There's obviously been a lot of complexities and this might not happen again for two or three years. Would you explain this recent state as being just a sad coincidence? I would never try and explain that to you or to the community. Every one of these is a tragedy in their own right. I said before that and I meant it. None of our people go to work with the idea that they're going to shoot someone. I mean, that is the least thing that they think of when they go. But when you see the fact that we've had four fatal shootings in a small space of time in reality, even though in my view these are relatively rare occurrences, I think it's my duty to go to the public and reassure them that we're going to look at all of these issues to make sure that there's no specific issue that's impacting on us right now and perhaps to prevent that occurring into the future. We always are looking for better ways of doing things and it's really, really important that I reassure the public that we're taking this very, very seriously. How many of these deaths are classified as deaths in custody? All of them. A police shooting is a death in custody. How are the police officers have you spoken to them? No, I haven't personally spoken to all of the ones who are involved in all of these incidents. I tend to wait just a short period of time because they become quite overwhelmed by the fact of life that we often lose the officers from the organisation over time and you probably personally know of examples of that. But my message is clear to every one of the men and women of the Queensland Police Service, I have confidence in them. I trust them. I believe that they have good training. I believe that they honestly go out there with the best intentions on behalf of the community every day. And it's important that they know that because I do not want them taking an extra second to make a decision that's so important tomorrow or the next day or the week after that, I ask them just to do their job and to be confident in their training, to be confident in their equipment, to be confident in the fact that the leadership of this organisation and I think the general public support them when they do the right thing. I don't want them waiting that extra half a second because that could cause the death. Commissioner, you said there's going to be a review of procedures and training. Who's going to be doing that review and are you going to be looking at the use of force model as well? Yes, absolutely. And we will mount an internal review firstly, but we will also look for international best practice and there are a number of people who we believe come from policing academia who have a significant interest and expertise in this area and we'll reach out to them. We'll also reach out to perhaps experts in the use of force and that could be people from policing, it may be the ADF as well. So we have an open mind on that at the moment, but I'll keep you up to date as we progress it. Why are police shootings in the last two months, four of them fatal? When was the last time that rate was so high? Well, I can't answer that because I can only go back five years at the moment. No, sorry, if I could say just this, this is our 150th year. I am sure that if we go right back to the start of that, there will be fatal shootings by police officers all through that time and I think it reflects the society that we're in. There are those in society for whatever reason who choose to have violent confrontation with authority figures in this case the police department and certainly that history is there. What I do want to make clear to everyone is that whilst each is a tragedy, these are very rare in reality and that's the truth of it and I think the figures bear that out when you think about the number of times we actually work with the community every year and when I say millions of interactions, I'm talking about every incident we go to, every street arrest, every violent brawl, every road rage situation, every break and enter, every times a young group of people speed off in a car and we try to stop them hurting themselves. Every one of those violent confrontations that we get involved in, the fact that there has only been 13 times in the last five years where police officers have had to shoot to preserve their lives or the life of someone else in the community and the fact that we've only had six fatalities. I think that actually says loads about the professionalism of your police department. How does that compare to other states? I'm sorry, I don't have comparative figures on what happens in other states but certainly I'm sure that any review, that's something we will look at as we move forward. You have had a reputation for a while where the police were trigger happy. Are you concerned that the public may think that about Queensland? Look, I would hope not. There was a situation in Victoria at one stage where they developed a project called Project Beacon. They did a lot of work. They retrained their whole police department. I don't think we've seen that sort of issue since then. We actually had a project just after that called Project Lighthouse which took cognizance of what was happening in Victoria and that has formed part of our development of our strategies. So I'm going back to the mid-90s now. And we've come a long way. Certainly our training continues to evolve and the scenario training that we now do, that we've been doing for a couple of years that actually started about 2005 and we built on that until we've actually implemented that scenario training. So what I'm saying is we are clearly always reviewing what we do but I think it's important to have a specific project right now to make sure that we don't have an outlier, a factor that perhaps we hadn't seen previously that we need to address. And we will address it if we find that. Does the communication between various agencies need to be improved so that police called out to these hostile jobs that perhaps give them more background information with what they could be confronting? Thank you because that's a really, really important point. And it is an area that I'm passionate about and you might know about our Q Light project so that's the iPads our officers have. I'm hopeful that by rolling them out right across the organisation we will achieve just that. We will allow our people to get better information about the environment they're about to walk into, where that information exists. Now it's not a perfect world and we won't always have that information but sometimes we will and it will make it safer for officers to be able to get that information instantaneously as they get the job and they can say, wow, I've got to think about these other things going in the front door or going up the driveway or just pulling up near the house. This is the best that we can get to. Are we there yet? Excuse me. Are we there yet? No, we're not but we're getting better. Part of this also is the ability to interact with other government agencies and other support agencies who are perhaps non-government agencies and have that inner change of information. That will make our community a safer place. I'm absolutely sure and we're working towards that. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for today. I really appreciate you coming in at short notice. I appreciate the fact that Ian Leavis is here from the union. I think it's really, really important that we together and with the commission officers union as well we demonstrate that we are taking this very seriously. We'll do everything we can to get back that confidence that we need from the community. So thank you very much for your part in that.