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Australian authorities change tactics to deal with terror related events

Xinhua, November 17, 2015 Adjust font size:

Australian authorities are being trained to shoot armed terrorists on site, rather than use the decades old "contain and negotiate" approach methods, as the environment for terror related incidents changes.

New South Wales (NSW) Acting Commissioner Nick Kaldas told reporters on Tuesday the training program has been under development for the past year to deal with dynamic and changing environments with highly mobile armed offenders.

The recent experiences in France -- such as Charlie Hebdo and the weekend's events -- has been a "game changer" to the way authorities combat terror-related events in Australia and internationally, Assistant Commissioner for counter terrorism and special tactics, Mark Murdoch said.

"We saw this was coming. It had been an experience of overseas jurisdictions for some time and we weren't going to sit on our heals and wait for it to come to us before we did something about it," Murdoch said.

Similar programs are either being looked at or implemented in police forces across Australia, Kaldas said.

In NSW, Kaldas said general duties and front line officers will change tactics from the "contain and negotiate" methods in some circumstance in dealing with armed offenders, such as the terror attacks seen in Paris at the weekend.

"Contain and negotiate is about containing the situation so nobody else puts themselves in harm way," Kaldas said, allowing for reinforcements to arrive and end the situation peacefully.

"Certainly in a terrorism environment, that is not the case. You're dealing with someone who is there with a pre-conceived aim of dying, and is prepared to kill, or wants to kill as many people as they possibly can," Kaldas said.

"We're dealing with someone where it is far more urgent for us to intervene and get to that person than in a domestic violence situation," Kaldas added.

Australian security services are investigating thousands of persons of concern with links to terrorism, 400 of which are high priority targets. Endit