‘They were shot in the front’: premier and top cop defend police response to Bondi terror attack | New South Wales

New South Wales premier Chris Minns and commissioner Mal Lanyon have defended the police response to the terror attack on Bondi beach, saying pistol-armed officers neutralized two gunmen armed with high-powered weapons.

“I am incredibly proud of our police officers,” Lanyon said Tuesday. “They encountered two men with long arms. Our police officers at the scene were armed with pistols.”

The prime minister intervened before Sunday’s attack after Lanyon was questioned repeatedly during an intense news conference about the number of police officers at the Jewish festival and the response time during the mass shooting that left 15 people dead.

“NSW police acted with courage and integrity,” Minns said.

“They engaged gunmen with pistols on the footbridge. They did not back down. The criminals had long-range rifles and NSW police officers were responsible for killing one of them, shooting another and ultimately saving many lives.”

Minns and Lanyon declined to answer questions about how many officers were assigned to guard the Hanukkah by the Sea event or when police at the scene returned fire.

“This is currently under investigation,” Lanyon said.

“We base our police response on the threat that existed at the time. A lot of business is going on between us and the Jewish community. Bondi beach is a large, public area. We patrol that area regularly, as we did that day.”

Lanyon said he was given “duties” for the Jewish festival and that “there are always policemen going around there, and we have policemen going around the area regularly.”

“We took an appropriate police response to ensure that the police worked closely with the community to get through there. We take security very seriously. If there had been intelligence that there was a specific threat in that area or in relation to that incident, we might have given a different police response,” he said.

During the approximately 10-minute confrontation, two police officers — a constable and a probationary officer — who Minns said had only been on the job for months were shot.

It is unclear whether the two officers were assigned to the Hanukkah festival or were on general patrol.

But Minns was angered by the claim that police did not respond when the shooting began.

“There are currently two officers in intensive care in NSW hospitals. They were not shot in the back as they fled. They were shot in the front,” he said on Tuesday.

“I’m sorry to be graphic about this, but if there are any allegations that the NSW police have failed in their responsibilities to the people of this state, it must be rejected as it is not consistent with the facts.

“NSW police officers, some of whom have been on duty for several months, have risked their lives to save people in this state and, in my view, this rush to conclusions before all the facts are known is disrespectful to their actions on Sunday.”

NSW police under Operation Shelter, which was established following Hamas attacks on Israel in October 2023, deployed mobile patrols in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, as well as static patrols in all Jewish settlements.

Inspector Amy Scott shot dead schizophrenic Joel Cauchi in April 2024 to end a stabbing attack that killed six people at Bondi Junction.

Scott told the coroner’s inquest in April this year that he felt nauseous as he ran into Westfield shopping centre: “Because in my mind I had resigned myself to the fact that I was probably going to die.”

He said officers are told in active-arms offender training that they have a 60-70% chance of not surviving, “and that’s if you partner and you’re empowered and I’m neither of those things.”

The superintendent said he dealt with conditions in the 2016 training that forced officers to move from a “contain, negotiate” approach to a “don’t wait, go” approach. Scott said he was trained to “stop the killing, stop the dying.”

Australia’s “Active armed offender rules for crowded locations,” it states that “police first responders are trained to move toward the threat at a sustained pace to neutralize or disarm the criminal.”

“In doing so, they may need to continue walking past people who may have initially panicked and been injured. Their primary goal is to prevent the offender from killing or causing serious injury to other victims.”