The death of Justine Damond, the Australian woman shot and killed by an officer in Minneapolis, is no more tragic than all the other baffling deaths at the hands of U.S. police — and deaths of black men in the United States by police have received a considerable amount of attention. But, for Sydneysiders, there is one difference: She’s ours.

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As I reported on Damond’s death on my radio show in Sydney, I heard from shocked callers who had grown up with her on the city’s beautiful northern beaches. They knew her as a life-affirming, loving, energetic woman who gave public lectures about meditation and neuroscience. “Life is too short,” she’d say to people who were avoiding making important life decisions. She was going to be married next month.

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It was inconceivable, her friends said, that this positive life had been extinguished in a confrontation with U.S. police.

Further details of Damond’s death began to emerge this week. She was in her pajamas at the time she was shot. She was not armed. She had called 911, alarmed by what sounded like a sexual assault occurring close to her home. The police officer, identified as Mohamed Noor, was still sitting in the passenger seat of his squad car when he shot her multiple times. The mandatory cameras — in the police car, on the officer’s body — were switched off.

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Australians are astounded and baffled by U.S. police shootings and by the level of gun crime generally. We also cannot understand how the officer concerned has — so far at least — refused to give evidence about what happened. The mayor of Minneapolis, Betsy Hodges, is also concerned that Noor has refused to give evidence. In Australia, as a serving police officer, Noor would have instantly been required to answer the questions of his superiors.

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In Australia, about 300 people gathered at an early-morning vigil on Sydney’s Freshwater Beach, near where Damond grew up — the haunting sound of a didgeridoo playing as the sun rose. Attendees said they were there to “honor, love and respect” the life of an “extraordinarily kind, funny, smart and loving woman.” Speaking on television Wednesday morning, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull asked, “How can a woman out in the street in her pajamas seeking assistance from the police be shot like that? It is a shocking killing, it is inexplicable. … We are demanding answers on behalf of her family and our hearts go out to her family and all of her friends and loved ones.”

Damond’s death has prompted examinations of how Australian police approach the use of force. Unlike the British police force, our uniformed officers carry guns — but they rarely use them. One recent study from the Australian Institute of Criminology concluded there are about five deaths each year at the hands of a police officer, nationwide, in a country of 24 million. Of the 105 fatal shootings identified in the study — they collected data for the years 1989 to 2011 — only one was classified as an unlawful homicide.

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Indeed, if there has been recent criticism of Australian police, it has been about their reluctance to shoot. In 2014, a man with a lengthy criminal record and a history of extremist Islamist views, took more than a dozen people hostage in a cafe in the center of Sydney’s business district. He draped a window with an Islamic State flag, held the hostages at gunpoint and demanded the prime minister talk to him on the phone. The siege went on for more than 16 hours. Police sharp-shooters had the man in their sights, but were operating under a “contain and negotiate” strategy — partly driven by the suspicion the man might have a bomb and a psychologist’s mistaken advice that he posed no real threat.

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Police stormed the cafe and shot the man dead — but only after one hostage had been executed. Another hostage died from ricocheting police bullets. In the wake of the Martin Place siege, the new commissioner of police, Mick Fuller, agreed that the “wait-and-see” policy had been too cautious. Police, he said, should have gone in earlier. When I interviewed Fuller after the inquiry was complete, he said he was committed to more aggressive rules of engagement — but only when it came to terrorism. Outside a declared terrorist event, he was keen to maintain the force’s gun-cautious culture. It had, he said, “saved countless lives.”

In January, a young man, having his stabbed his brother, drove his car erratically through the city of Melbourne. Police, armed with guns and Tasers, were set to pull the driver over on one of the city’s bridges, but the attempt was called off as part of a “no-pursuit” policy — part of a rethink after a period in the 1980s in which police shootings, particularly of the mentally ill, had spiked alarmingly. Later, the man drove into a pedestrian mall, killing six people and injuring more than thirty. One police officer labelled the no-pursuit policy “a disgrace” — with much agreement from the public. An inquiry into the tragedy begins in Melbourne this week.

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When it comes to non-terrorism related policing, most Australians would support Fuller’s ambition to remain cautious with guns — despite the criticism of police in both the Melbourne mall killings and the Martin Place siege. Lethal force should be a last resort.