Fran­cis Joseph

Thir­teeen po­lice­men walked out of the Ari­ma Mag­is­trates' Court yes­ter­day, hav­ing been cleared of six fa­tal shoot­ings, in­clud­ing the five deaths at Waller­field in 2007.

For the first time, the po­lice­men did not hide their faces. They calm­ly ex­it­ed the cour­t­house and walked across to the near­by po­lice sta­tion, no longer hid­ing their faces from me­dia cam­eras.

Coro­ner Gail Gon­za­les brought the two in­quests to an end, say­ing that there were no grounds to sus­pect any­one li­able of an in­dictable of­fence. In­side the very small Third Court, rel­a­tives of the five Waller­field vic­tims sat, await­ing the rul­ing. The coro­ner al­lowed one rep­re­sen­ta­tive from each of the five fam­i­lies to sit in the room be­cause of the small court.

The coro­ner was in­quir­ing in­to the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the deaths of Lin­coln Ford, Glen Liv­er­pool, Hay­den God­dard, Jor­dan Steve Charles and house­wife Wendy Court­ney, at Waller­field on Au­gust 17, 2007. The sub­jects of the in­quest were Cor­po­rals Craig, Si­mon and Green, and Con­sta­bles Williams, Lake, Pitt, Madeira, Mas­call and Ra­j­coomar. They sat in the first two rows of the court, and lis­tened as the coro­ner gave her rul­ing.

But be­fore the coro­ner gave her rul­ing, Is­rael Khan, SC, at­tor­ney for the nine po­lice­men, launched a scathing at­tack on Ex­press re­porter Dar­ryl Heer­alal for an ar­ti­cle, dat­ed De­cem­ber 2, 2008, in which he stat­ed that Spe­cial Branch had done a re­port on the Waller­field killings. Ac­cord­ing to Khan, the Ex­press then pub­lished an ed­i­to­r­i­al, head­lined, "A clear call for jus­tice." Khan said act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice James Philbert at­tend­ed the in­quest and said no such re­port was ever con­duct­ed by Spe­cial Branch, since he was their com­man­der at the time.

The se­nior coun­sel called for the re­porter be charged with crim­i­nal li­bel. Khan said po­lice of­fi­cers put their lives at risk al­most dai­ly. He said the main is­sue in the in­quest was whether the four oc­cu­pants of the blue Almera car–PBS 1628–were killed in self-de­fence, mur­dered, or reck­less­ly killed. Khan said it was time that the po­lice start killing. "If they shoot at you, shoot at them, kill them," he said.

"This task force was set up to hunt down ban­dits, ar­rest them and kill them if nec­es­sary. The po­lice­men thought their lives were in dan­ger and they act­ed in self-de­fence." The se­nior coun­sel said there was no in­sur­ance for po­lice of­fi­cers on du­ty. He said when there is a shoot-out, po­lice of­fi­cers re­turn to ac­tive du­ty the next day. They see no psy­chol­o­gist.

"Let me re­peat, any­time po­lice of­fi­cers see ban­dits and these ban­dits shoot at them, shoot them down," he said. "These of­fi­cers here should be an ex­am­ple to oth­er of­fi­cers...These ban­dits are show­ing no re­spect for the po­lice." As far as the coro­ner was con­cerned, the killing of the four peo­ple in the Almera was jus­ti­fied. Gon­za­les said the on­ly in­no­cent per­son was Court­ney, who was shot in her house while rest­ing. Gon­za­les ruled her death a mis­ad­ven­ture.

Khan said he would rec­om­mend to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to pay an ex-gra­tia sum to Court­ney's rel­a­tives. Ac­cord­ing to the ev­i­dence, po­lice re­ceived in­for­ma­tion on Au­gust 17, 2007, that men in a blue Almera were go­ing to rob the pay­roll at HDC, at the Ja­cob Hill con­struc­tion site, Waller­field.

They con­front­ed four men in the blue Almera, who opened fire at them. The po­lice re­turned fire and the four oc­cu­pants were shot and killed. Court­ney, who lived 100 feet away, was shot by a po­lice stray bul­let, and she, too, died. In the oth­er in­quest, Coro­ner Gon­za­les cleared Cor­po­ral Michael Pe­ters, and Con­sta­bles Calvin Patrick, Nicholas Cam­po and Matthew Hare­wood in the fa­tal shoot­ing of Ari­ma hunter, Christo­pher Kan­hai, on Jan­u­ary 7, 2004, at Lala­ja Road, Blan­chisseuse.

The coro­ner found that the of­fi­cers, who were rep­re­sent­ed by at­tor­neys Ul­ric Sker­ritt and De­bra James, were not guilty of any felony and brought the in­quest to an end. Kan­hai, 32, of Wal­nut Dri­ve, Cal­vary Hill, Ari­ma, was shot dead by po­lice dur­ing a hunt­ing ex­pe­di­tion in Blan­chisseuse.