Police are tackling the scourge of serious crime head-on, with numerous operational task forces continuing to run with devastating effects.
More than 700 offenders have been charged with domestic violence offences during Operation Amarok XII alone over the past fortnight.
Officers are conducting bail compliance checks and enforcing apprehended domestic violence orders.
They are seizing prohibited firearms and weapons, and even intercepting masked and armed offenders in kill-cars. For most police officers, this is why they got into the career, to stop crime in its tracks.
But it is coming at a cost.
When we lock crooks up, we face the issues of prisoner management and transport.
We have a newly created Bail Division of the courts, with Corrective Services shirking their responsibilities back onto police and a judicial system that won’t invest in the back end with resources for quick release of bailed offenders.
In metropolitan areas, up to six prisoners can be found sleeping on threadbare mattresses for an entire weekend, sharing a single cell because correctional facilities are turning police away at the door.
It’s a situation that I fear if not taken seriously by our leaders and the Government, we will see played out in the Coroners Court, where the blame will inevitably sit again with the frontline police officer; a risk that never should have been placed on them in the first place.
In regional areas, police are transporting prisoners hundreds of kilometres to and from correctional facilities in police cars without proper restraints, along with guarding them to and from court because corrective officers aren’t available.
With staffing shortages abound, this is taking them away from responding to emergency calls for assistance.
These cramped conditions aren’t only dangerous for the offenders being held, but also for our officers. This is not a police function, and yet police as the universal problem solvers are asked to perform it.
Former Commissioner Karen Webb took unprecedented steps to inform her senior leaders that calls for assistance are the priority, and Commissioner Mal Lanyon has followed suit.
The barest pact between the police and their community is that if you ring triple-0 and need help, police will respond and help you. Every police officer who takes the oath and puts on the uniform sees this as their non-negotiable promise. With such short staffing and growing, competing demands, police now feel that promise is under threat.
Who is left holding this powder keg? The frontline police officer.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/kevin-morton-police-are-copping-the-blame-for-an-overloaded-system/news-story/65a696b6d9d9c24a7679c914c4495fd7