A coroner has criticised Victoria Police for delaying a ban on solo police patrols, suggesting it may have prevented the death of a man fatally shot by a senior constable.
Coroner Audrey Jamieson found the death of Vlado Micetic in 2013 was preventable, saying police failed to adequately monitor whether its members were mentally and physically fit for duty.
The 44-year-old was shot three times at point-blank range by Timothy Baker, then a leading senior constable in the highway patrol.
Mr Baker pulled Mr Micetic over on suspicion of driving with stolen number plates in Windsor, in Melbourne's inner south.
Mr Baker was acquitted of murder in 2017, after telling the court Mr Micetic pulled a knife on him and he acted in self-defence.
The coroner said it was "alarming" she could not make any finding about whether Mr Baker was fit for duty on the day of the shooting.
Coroner recommends police develop monitoring system
The Supreme Court murder trial heard Mr Baker, who has since left the force, was receiving mental health treatment at the time of the shooting, and was facing a challenging work environment at the time.
"In the context of the high-risk environment in which frontline police officers carry out their daily duties, there is a need for Victoria Police to be adequately informed about their members' mental and physical fitness for duty," Ms Jamieson found.
"The evidence indicates ... Victoria Police's monitoring of their members' physical and mental health was inadequate."
The coroner recommended the chief commissioner develop a system to ensure the force was adequately informed about their members' fitness for duty, without violating individual rights to privacy.
Jeremy King, lawyer for the Micetic family, said it had been a "long and taxing journey over the last nine years".
"It is extremely alarming, that we'll never know [Mr Baker's fitness for duty] because Victoria Police didn't have proper systems in place to monitor the mental and physical health of their officers," he said.
"It's a damning finding, and one that Victoria Police needs to take very, very seriously."
Solo patrol ban delay 'put everybody in an unsafe situation', lawyer says
Officers were banned from patrolling by themselves in 2015, but Ms Jamieson said the change should have been made sooner.
She pointed out another coroner had recommended they be banned in 2010, after senior constable Tony Clarke was shot dead in 2005 with his own gun while on solo patrol.
Ms Jamieson said if they had been banned at that stage, "the outcome for Vlado [Micetic] could have been different, as his death occurred in similar circumstances".
"The delay in implementing the current policy on single-officer patrols represented an opportunity loss for Vlado," she said.
Mr King said Victoria Police "hadn't acted" on the previous coronial finding about solo patrols.
"And so they had put everybody in an unsafe situation," he said.
Although Mr Baker was acquitted of murder, the coroner said she could not make any definitive findings that Mr Baker acted in self-defence, or that Mr Micetic produced the knife.
She also could not make any ruling on how the knife made it onto the scene.
A dashcam recording captured during the night did not show the moment of the shooting.
