What’s a paragraph in a memo when lives are at risk?

A lot, for the lawyers trying to understand the almost-token (but ultimately heroic) police presence at Bondi Beach on December 14 last year, when terror struck Sydney’s orthodox Jewish community.

On Tuesday morning a police officer responsible for assigning three junior police officers and a supervisor to the ill-fated Chanukah by the Sea celebration insisted at the Royal Commission into Anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion the instructions were not what they sounded like.

Despite being warned by Jewish security advisers on December 8 a terrorist attack was “likely”, the officer approved a light-policing plan based on what is called a high-visibility police presence, or HPV.

“Please take a car crew or two with you and provide a HVP presence,” one of her subordinates wrote to the police officers in charge of Bondi that day. “No need to stay the entire duration, but your presence will ensure the community feel safe.”

The policewoman told the royal commission the message did not mean there was “no need to stay”. That phase referred to the police supervisors and not their officers, she told one of the inquiry’s barristers, Richard Lancaster, a fact she said would have been obvious to the inspector in charge of operations.

“He knows me well enough to know that my expectations are that I was intending they would be there for the duration of the event as had been...,” she said, before trailing off.

Even Mr Lancaster, who tries not to offend, intimidate or upset witnesses, suggested the instructions meant something else.

“In its ordinary meaning doesn’t this email suggest to the command inspectors that there was no need for the car crews to stay there for the entire event?” he asked.

The answer was part defiance, part apology.

“Knowing the command inspector,” she said, “knowing all my senior leadership team, them knowing my expectations — I believe it’s poorly worded. It was that a car crew or two and provide a high-visibility presence. Perhaps, new paragraph. The wording isn’t great.”

As for the December 8 warning from the Jewish community’s private security service, the policewoman initially said she wasn’t sure if she read it, and then said she didn’t.

“I couldn’t confidently say I’ve read it prior,” the massacre, she told the inquiry. “Whilst I didn’t read it, I don’t say that anything in it would have changed my thoughts.”

Warning signs

The discussion is partly academic. Despite the blasé planning, four police officers were present when the shooting began.

Three were wounded. Without their bravery, more people might have died.

But the policing approach to Chanukah by Sea is part of a deeper examination into whether the well-funded security services should have taken the danger to large gatherings of Jews more seriously.

There were, after all, plenty of warning signs. Jews were being targeted around the world by Islamists infuriated by the war in Gaza.

A Manchester synagogue had been attacked two months earlier. In May, an Israeli couple had been ambushed and murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. Men had celebrated the 2023 invasion of Israel on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House.

Yet Chanukah by Sea was categorised as a low-risk event. Inexperienced police were forced to defend themselves and thousands of terrified people with pistols against rifles and shotguns.

When asked if that decision was wrong, the policewoman tried to have it both ways.

“No, I don’t accept it was mistake,” she said. “What I know now is events should be treated like Jewish High Holy days.”

Celebrations of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, had greater police protection because they were considered more likely to be targets of violence. One of the changes by the police since the massacre is to increase the firepower protecting all Jewish events.

Classified hearings

Towards the end of the week the inquiry will switch to private and classified hearings. They are expected to examine failings by the security services, although the secretive approach makes it impossible to know for sure.

Those witnesses will be spared the abuse thrown at the Jews who shared their experiences in the inquiry’s early hearings, evidence that sometimes became depressingly repetitive.

At the start of Tuesday’s session, commissioner Virginia Bell complained of an “undiluted level of hatred and bigotry” on social media directed at witnesses.

“The Commission has as one of its principal objects understanding and assessing the lived experience of anti-Semitism by members of the Jewish community and it is being informed by conduct of this character,” she said.

Which suggests the abuse has already strengthened her sympathy for the Children of Israel.