The Death of Adam Salter

Four Corners' program on the death of Adam Salter was an outstanding piece of criminal justice reporting. Raising many significant issues, highlighted herein is statements given by senior police to the press shaping subsequent reporting of this event.

Coverage on the evening of the shooting by NineMSN, the Telegraph and the Herald aped the version of events alleged by an Assistant Commissioner during a press conference at the scene.[i] The police message thus conveyed was Salter confronted police with a knife, an experienced and senior officer fired the shot and a further struggle ensued after the shooting. Other than the appeal of a police shooting, evidently Taser use developed as the significant news point for the media. Even as they pressed this, the media was reflecting the police’s ‘side of the story’, the dominant ideology in the circumstances,[ii] of Salter’s possibly wrongful death.

At the coronial inquest real doubt was established regarding the police version of events. Civilian evidence indicated no general aggression or confrontation toward those present, including the police. [iii] Allegations of a struggle were unsubstantiated.[iv] The recollection of a paramedic present in the room when Salter was shot was he “dropped to the ground and went into cardiac arrest”.[v] The Coroner declared the police intervention at best “an utter failure”.[vi]

Yet Situation Reports (“SITREPS”) composed within hours of Salter’s death contained the “almost entirely wrong”[vii] version of events given to the media. SITREPS inform senior police about serious incidents and the representations to be made to media. The day after the shooting Commissioner Scipione did not challenge the incorrect characterisation of events when repeated to him on talkback radio, instead reaffirming the ‘message’ of the officer’s experience as the best gauge for the use of lethal force.[viii] This is particularly repugnant as time stamps on the recorded interviews with the paramedics on the day of the shooting indicate police knew there was another side to the story.

As the Coroner noted, the public - through the media - were misinformed, highlighting whether this was an attempt to manage the media.[ix] Evidence points to a kernel of incompetent and corrupt operational practice, yet the media interactions following are compounding elements. It reflects the effects of the 24-hour news cycle, the police react to the importance the media places on them, espousing an image and account before forensic and investigative process can be followed.[x] Moreover a shooting has the strong news value of violence, particularly when the deceased can be reported as repeatedly stabbing himself prior to ‘turning on police’. Thus the spectacle of a senior officer giving a 'presser' in a sealed off suburban street follows.[xi]

In this blaze of attention, the approach of the Police Media Unit (PMU) appears inevitable in presenting police actions in the best light.[xii] Even knowing the drubbing they were about to receive, on the day Four Corners aired the Police Media Unit published a response. Now finding a reason inhibiting untimely comment, the PMU still proceeded to background the strengths of police mental health processes, woeful in spirit and for the logical fallacies it contains.

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[i] Excerpt included at approximately 25:25 in the Four Corners report.

[ii] Marsh, I. and Melville, G. (2009) Crime, Justice and the Media, 31-32.

[iii] Inquest into the death of Adam Quddus Salter, Local Court of New South Wales (Coronial Jurisdiction), 3333/09, 14/10/2011, [44]-[45] (Magistrate Scott Mitchell).

[iv] Inquest into the death of Adam Quddus Salter, [52], [72]

[v] Ibid [86].

[vi] Ibid [128].

[vii] Ibid [91].

[viii] Excerpt included at approximately 27:00 in the Four Corners report.

[ix] Inquest into the death of Adam Quddus Salter, [92]-[93]

[x] Marsh, I. and Melville, G. (2009) Crime, Justice and the Media, 130-131.

[xi] Jewkes, Y. (2004) Media and Crime (1st ed.), 54-56.

[xii] McGovern, A. and Lee, M. ‘Cop[ying] it Sweet’: Police Media Units and the Making of News’ The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology 43(3), 451-452.

Image: http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/police-response-an-utter-failure-coroner-finds-20111014-1lo17.html

Originally published 31 May 2012.