A sergeant in charge of Victoria's heavily armed police has rejected claims he was "looking for excuses" not to send a team to arrest James Gargasoulas in the hours before he killed six pedestrians on Bourke Street.
Acting Sergeant Kalev Jones from the force's Critical Incident Response Team refused to help local police officer Frank Caridi in the early hours of January 20, 2017, after Gargasoulas tried to kill his brother.
"They didn't know where he was ... and we needed confirmation of whether or not there is a weapon involved," the now-Acting Senior Sergeant Jones told the inquest into the January 2017 tragedy.
During cross-examination on Wednesday, he denied claims by Mr Caridi that he seemed to be "looking for excuses" that CIRT not attend the job.
"That's incorrect. Any job that came through I wanted to be there, running CIRT deployment. The members of CIRT don't go to CIRT to sit there and do paperwork and stay inside. They want to be out doing jobs, as many as they can. But not to be utilised as a find nothing, in essence," he said.
The inquest before coroner Jacqui Hawkins continues on Thursday.
