Porepunkah police shooting fugitive shot dead after seven months on the run

A former police hostage negotiator said this morning that the standoff that led to Dezi Freeman’s death “was always going to end ugly”.

Dr., who is now a criminologist at Macquarie University. Vincent Hurley said that although the police’s goal was to capture Freeman alive and bring him to trial, Freeman’s ideology as a sovereign citizen made that outcome nearly impossible.

“He would see [being arrested] “As a cowardly act,” Hurley said.

“He would either want to get out or hold out as long as possible. The police would tell him that he was surrounded, that there was no way he could escape, that they would not go in and hurt him; this is standard practice. They would reinforce the point over and over again that they were trying to persuade him to surrender freely.”

Hurley said this morning that confrontations like the one in Thologolong were incredibly rare, and that each time they did happen – such as the March 2012 arrest of Malcolm Naden after seven years on the run – police learned from it.

Hurley also said that Freeman is now likely a martyr to the cause of sovereign citizens, and that the damage may have been caused by how much media attention his time on the run received.

“The icing on the cake is that he’s more resilient to the police and the government and gives them the middle finger for seven months,” Hurley said. “Sovereign citizens and extremists will use it as a benchmark.”