2014 – An Open Letter to all Victorians

The CAA Policing Blue Paper: ‘A Vision for Victoria Police’ was released in early June 2014.

https://caainc.org.au/?s=Open+Letter+to+all+Victorians  

“This paper accepts the original manifesto for policing of Sir Robert Peel and reinforces the need for the Victoria Police to become more engaged with the community. 

This is not occurring, and this must change.

Policing in Victoria is moving back to the dark ages, and it seems a fortress mentality is emerging where VicPol is becoming more and more disengaged from the community, particularly youth. 

This is at a time when engagement with the community in general and youth in particular has never been more important, particularly given that terrorist acts are often perpetrated by youth.”

2015 – Crime Tsunami, predicted by the CAA 10 years ago, becomes a reality

The concern of the CAA is now realised with the crime figures rising to the highest ever. The theory of a crime tsunami became a reality, and it seemed that the CAA was the only voice in the community aware of the fate that was to befall the State.

The CAA Blueprint was ignored ( https://caainc.org.au/https-caainc-org-au-wp-admin-post-phppost3483actioneditclassic-editor/)and every effort was made to convince the Police executive and the Government that urgent action was required. The concept of a Plan has been continually updated, now in its 4th iteration, but only minimal efforts by the Force have resulted in only incremental elements of the Plan being adopted. The concepts, however, have never been challenged.

The Police executive derided us, and the Government just ignored us, treating us as irrelevant, which spurred us on.

With 300 years of Policing experience in our group, we were not prepared to be ignored.

Those responsible for the lack of action to ensure the safety of our community have never been held accountable for their inaction.

The CAA set about doing something that we knew would have a major and positive impact on the skyrocketing crime rates.

We began the mammoth task of designing and building a Police school-based program, utilising police veterans to deliver it in as many schools as possible, with as many volunteers as we could attract.

The task took us three years; despite Victoria Police actively trying to thwart our project, we built the Police Veterans In Schools Program, PVISP.

The then Police Chief Commissioner Ashton wrote to every school that welcomed our project, warning them against involvement with the PVISP and issued an instruction to all Police Stations that if the CAA or PVISP made contact, the matter was to be immediately reported to a senior officer, and no assistance was to be provided.

A small number of schools that were initially keen on the PVISP withdrew from the program.

 2019 -The Police Veterans In School Program was Launched.

Despite the hostility to the program from VicPol, the launch late in 2019 was successful.

Our intention was to start small at the beginning of the 2020 School Year and build from there, but the spectre of COVID-19 began to rise, and uncertainty loomed.

The COVID restrictions were launched in early 2020, and the first of the schools to welcome their new PVISP had to have the program cancelled.

The CAA continued to lobby for change but was again ignored. However, when Chief Commissioner Patton met with the CAA in 2024 and listened to our views, he agreed that the program would be positive and intended to reintroduce it.

Patton was warned he could face pushback from within the Force, and perhaps even politically.

We will probably never know the details of the machinations over this issue that Patton faced, but suffice it to say, apart from creating a shadow of what was really required, the Schools Engagement Model, a Police in Schools Program, was never implemented.

We believe Patton’s commitment to reintroduce the PISP was genuine, but those within the Force who opposed it worked against it, introducing a program in name only to thwart any criticism.

2025 – A new era of police enlightenment appears to be imminent.

With the appointment of a new Chief Commissioner, Mike Bush, we are confident that there will be a change and those within the Force who cannot see beyond ‘Arrests’ as the only solution to crime will lose any influence over the Force’s direction.

For our current crime disaster, it is true that the Courts and the Government have a lot to answer for,  but they were warned on multiple occasions, backed up by solutions they chose to ignore.

While we are hopeful VicPol will regenerate a real Police in Schools Program, rather than wait for the ‘system’ to do something constructive, the CAA has dusted off the files and started looking at restarting the Police Veterans in Schools Program.

We are undertaking a review of the Curriculum, all Lesson Plans and our Insurance status to enable the program to be restarted.

We are intending to link in with Blue Light, another very successful program whose support from the Force was generally withdrawn at the same time as the Force discarded other proactive programs.

There is also Operation New Start, which could be revitalised to be part of a resurgence of Proactive efforts to correct the behaviours of our most precious possession as a society, our kids.

We can bleat all we like about the lack of performance by the Government, the Courts, or Police, but the bottom line is that unless we address the cause, the prognosis for fixing the youth crime problem is bleak.

If a school is interested or you are a former police member, and want to be part of something significant, expressions of interest are now open and can be lodged with,

PVISP Executive Director Frank Byrne at  0401224124.

The CAA is and remains solution-oriented.