1997

The very public police shooting of Roni Levi on Bondi Beach in 1997 attracted international headlines and divided public opinion.

The French migrant, who was suffering a psychotic episode, was shot four times by officers. A hour earlier, Levi’s flatmate alerted Bondi police that he had left the apartment on Brighton Boulevard with a kitchen knife. After a frantic search, he was spotted on the beach.

Levi was mumbling incoherently, looked dishevelled and was refusing to respond to increasingly tense police demands to drop the knife, which he was wielded at himself and the five officers surrounding him.

During the 30-minute stand-off, onlookers gathered, including French photographer Jean Pierre Bratanoff-Firgoff who captured Levi’s final moments on film.

The photographs made front-page news and the graphic images triggered heated debate about excessive use of force on a mentally disturbed civilian.

Concern was raised about apparent discrepancies between police claims of self-defence and the photographic evidence. It was later revealed the two officers had been under investigation by Internal Affairs at the time of the shooting.

Although both were exonerated by the Director of Public Prosecution, one resigned in 1998. He was later convicted of supplying heroin on the Gold Coast. The other was dismissed from the force in 1999 but remained in Bondi.

A Police Integrity Commission investigation in 1999 conceded there had been numerous ‘deficiencies, systemic failures and omission’ in Levi’s case. However, it rejected allegation of ‘deliberate police misconduct or corruption’.

The findings resulted reforms including mandatory drug and alcohol testing for police after critical incidents and training on de-escalating potentially violent encounters with the mentally ill.

Images courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy Jean-Pierre Bratanoff-Firgoff.