MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — An Australian state police force has worked to form a heavily armed rapid response team since gunmen killed 15 people and wounded three police officers armed only with handguns at a Sydney Hanukkah celebration in December, a government inquiry heard Wednesday.
Testifying before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, which is investigating the spread of antisemitism in Australia ahead of the Dec. 14 attack
at Bondi Beach, New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner David Hudson described a firepower imbalance.
The police force has responded with a plan to establish an Armed Response Command, equipped with semiautomatic rifles, and by reviving a priority-resourced operation that focused on antisemitic crimes and retaliations against Muslim targets, Hudson said.
Rifles within the force have been largely restricted to two specialized paramilitary squads, he said.
Father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram allegedly opened fire with two shotguns and a hunting rifle on hundreds of people celebrating Hanukkah in a beachside park. Only four police officers were present. They were armed with Glock pistols, which are only accurate for a short distance.
“On Dec. 14, our police officers were placed at significant risk being in a gunfight armed with 9 mm Glocks against long arms,” Hudson told the inquiry.
Within five minutes of the Akrams allegedly opening fire, 11 police officers had reached the scene. Three of those officers were among the dozens wounded in the massacre. Police shot the father dead and apprehended the wounded son less than eight minutes after the first shot was fired, the inquiry heard Monday.
In response to the shooting, police also revived Operation Shelter, which had been established in response to escalating community tensions days after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel Hudson said.
Hudson had established Operation Shelter as a “high visibility” proactive police operation to ensure there was no escalation of street violence in Sydney. At its peak, 200 officers had been assigned daily to the operation, which had authority to bring in outside staff from other duties as required.
Operation Shelter existed “in name only” when the Bondi massacre occurred, Hudson said Wednesday, explaining that the program was quickly revived after the shooting and elevated to an “active policing resource” that will remain until the armed response squad is fully operational in the next 18 months to two years.
