‘No escaping the fact’: Victoria Police shake up gets uniformed staff off the desk
Victorian police officers will spend less time dealing with paperwork and intelligence gathering will be centralized in a major overhaul of the state’s policing, the Chief Commissioner has announced.
Superintendent Mike Bush, who announced the change Monday, cited rising crime levels as motivation to fire more officers.
“We have a crime problem in Victoria. There’s no escaping that fact,” he said.
“The levels of crime we see in our community are completely unacceptable.
“Good people, innocent people who go about their daily lives are victimized on the streets and in their homes. This cannot continue like this.”
The state’s annual crime data was released last month and showed the number of crimes in the 12 months to July rose by 15.7 per cent – a further 86,587 offences. When adjusted for population, the nominal increase represents an increase of 13.8 percent.
The change focuses on having more non-sworn police employees and retired officers handle more arrest paperwork. The Chief Superintendent said uniformed officers spend 4,000 hours at the toll booths in front of the station every day, equating to 1.4 million hours a year.
“These things are really important, but they don’t need to be done by front-line police officers,” he said.
“They are stretched beyond their capacity under the burden of bureaucracy and systems that do not talk to each other.
“If we want to prevent crime, it starts with appropriately resourcing and empowering our front-line police officers… We need to do policing differently. We need a reset.”
Sworn officers will gradually withdraw from the front benches as part of the trial over the next three to six months.
The flip side of getting more officers out of stations and onto the streets is streamlining police departments.
A new state crime coordination center will open in the first half of next year and will process data to bring intelligence and operational deployment to a central hub.
Victoria Police’s backroom administrative units are also being weakened. The number of commission members will be reduced from six to four. The new deputy commissioner role will focus mainly on youth crime.
Chief Commissioner Bush took up the post in June after serving as New Zealand’s chief commissioner.
The Victorian opposition said Monday’s overhaul was good news but the government should also focus on filling “2000” Victoria Police vacancies.
The police union said it would take time to analyze the changes but supported a front-line presence and a preventative focus.
“This is a challenging time for the Victorian community and we understand the need to rise to the challenge,” Police Union secretary Wayne Gatt said.
