Victorians were this week finally granted access to a damning internal report on Victoria Police's failure to arrest James Gargasoulas in the hours before the Bourke Street tragedy.

At the behest of the victims' families, Coroner Jacqui Hawkins agreed to release the review by Assistant Commissioner Stephen Fontana despite police arguing it was not in the public interest.

Assistant Police Commissioner Steve Fontana arrives at the Bourke Street massacre inquiry on Wednesday. Credit:Simon Schluter

Mr Fontana's report identifies many missed opportunities to apprehend Gargasoulas before he murdered six innocent pedestrians, in what is described as a "poorly coordinated, unplanned response".

It beggars belief that our police force did not have a strategy to stop Gargasoulas as he traversed the city for almost 10 hours, particularly at a time when cars and trucks had repeatedly caused mass carnage in terrorist attacks overseas.