Bradley Balzan died a violent death in his own backyard, in what some are calling “the worst outcome imaginable of proactive policing”. He was shot after being approached and pursued by police officers on December 23, 2020.
A few hours later, they gave their first account of how they came to be in his backyard in the Sydney suburb of St Marys. They said officers stopped Brad while he was walking home from the shops because he was “acting suspiciously”.
What exactly “acting suspiciously” means has become the subject of a coronial inquest into Brad’s death. Brad Balzan, the inquest has heard, wasn’t known to the police officers who stopped him. He wasn’t breaking into a property and wasn’t dealing drugs. A toxicology report after his death found only trace amounts of cannabis in his system.
The reason he was branded “suspicious”, the inquest has revealed, was that he was wearing a hoodie on a warm day. Paul Farrell of ABC Investigations reports.
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