by CAA | Apr 13, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized
Sublocade, a powerful medication to treat opioid addiction, is poised to become more accessible. But rapid access is only part of the
CAA Comment
The Canadians are leading the way in dealing with the illicit drug issue with further information about new drugs that can remove the cravings for opioids. We all recognise that the addiction extends past the cravings for a high and includes behavioural addictions like wanting to meet with like-minded people (friends?), the drug culture.
This part of the drug culture is harder to address in many ways than the addiction to the drug of choice. This is where the Police come to the fore. Police who focus on street-level interactions between addicts must be the priority and, in many ways, is more important than targeting the Mr Bigs in the industry. Targeting street-level addicts will firstly disperse them and then make it harder for them to access the drugs they crave, leading to more addicts seeking a medical escape from their addiction and putting muffled pressure on the dealers, making their trade more difficult to function.
The added bonus of reduced public exposure of addicts will reduce the likelihood of others, not addicted, particularly children, being exposed and therefore attracted to the drug scene.
This will also impact the crime related to servicing addictions, an aspect of the drug culture conveniently overlooked by the pro-drug lobby.
We are, however, very slowly, on an international scale, moving towards effective management of this hideous affliction that ruins otherwise good lives and impacts dramatically and adversely on national economies.
It may well be the financial impact that hastens this.
We will see in time the concept of direct and involuntary intervention in drug management become an accepted norm with the advances in medication, that time is fast approaching.
A powerful medication to treat fentanyl addiction is poised to become more accessible in Canada.
Sublocade is a long-acting medication that prevents fentanyl users from experiencing a high from fentanyl, thereby reducing cravings for the drug. It also offers robust protection from an opioid overdose.
On Feb. 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved new guidelines for how the medication can be administered, enabling U.S. health-care providers to prescribe Sublocade to patients with opioid use disorder after just one hour of observing them. Previously, patients needed to participate in a week-long observation period.
Experts say they expect Canada to follow suit, as Sublocade is already being used off-label in Canada to treat fentanyl addiction.
“To get [patients] started on Sublocade, all in one day, right now that’s all off-label,” said Dr. Janel Gracey, an addictions medicine doctor in London, Ont.
The new guidelines from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration will enable U.S. health-care providers to prescribe Sublocade to patients with opioid use disorder after just one hour of observing them. Previously, patients needed to participate in a week-long observation period.
Gracey says this shift could save lives.
“You have to get them on the medication right away, because it’s going to save their life and they probably won’t come back tomorrow,” she said.
‘Rock bottom’
Health-care professionals administer Sublocade to patients by injection, once every four weeks. It costs about $600 a month, but is generally covered by employer or public drug plans.
A similar drug, Suboxone, is available as an oral medication. Suboxone reduces cravings for fentanyl and mitigates withdrawal symptoms. But unlike Sublocade, it does not fully block the high from using fentanyl and offers less robust protection against an overdose.
A 2023 study found patients who received long-acting buprenorphine — the key ingredient in Sublocade — experienced significantly fewer nonfatal overdoses than those on daily treatments such as Suboxone. The study focused on nonfatal overdoses, as buprenorphine largely eliminates the risk of fatal overdoses.
Sublocade patients usually start on Suboxone pills and then switch to monthly injections after seven days. The U.S.’s new guidelines permit patients to start directly on Sublocade.
Currently, most patients switch to using Sublocade in hospitals, when they reach a crisis point from long-term opioid use. Their sustained fentanyl use may lead to serious health complications, such as heart infections, skin abscesses or spinal infections that leave them hunched over at a 90-degree angle.
“That is a pretty big rock bottom,” said Dr. Ken Lee, a doctor at an addiction medicine clinic in London, Ont.. “People go home [from the hospital and realize] this is really doing me damage. I have to stop doing this.”
In 2021, two doctors in the northeastern Ontario city of Timmins launched a hospital program that offers patients access to Sublocade within 24 to 48 hours of being admitted for an overdose.
Since being introduced, the city’s overdose death rate has fallen by nearly 30 per cent. And more than 70 per cent of the patients who switch to Sublocade in the hospital continue receiving it after being discharged.
Lee says the switch to Sublocade in a hospital offers patients something like a “trial month” to reflect on their life choices.
Gracey, the London-based doctor, says fentanyl cravings can diminish naturally as patients receive Sublocade. “Over time, your brain just won’t want it, because it will say, ‘Well, this is stupid, I’m wasting my money and my time,’” she said.
“[But] some of them aren’t ready for that. So in those cases, we just put them on Suboxone, and then eventually, hopefully convince them to come over to doing the shot.”
Slow uptake
Doctors generally encourage patients to stay on Sublocade long term, to prevent relapse.
Gracey believes one reason for the slow uptake of Sublocade is the lack of financial incentives for health-care professionals to provide monthly injections rather than daily dose drugs, which require more frequent visits to a pharmacy or addiction clinic.
“When Sublocade first came out, a lot of methadone doctors didn’t want to even go there,” she said. “Instead of the patient coming every week … they’re coming monthly, or even less than that, so your income just dropped down by three quarters.”
She hopes the government will change how physicians and pharmacists are compensated for addiction treatment.
“It should be a monthly amount regardless of what medication the patient is on,” said Gracey.
“Income is totally what’s gearing what you choose to put a patient on and that shouldn’t be the way.”
The full treatment
While Sublocade is effective, medication is “just a small piece of the pie,” says Gracey. Patients need to receive mental health support as well.
Gracey’s two addiction treatment clinics offer in-house counselors, mental health support and social workers. The demand for these services has grown, she says, with waitlists for counseling extending to about two months.
Lee, by contrast, says only 20 per cent of his patients take advantage of the free counselling available through his clinic. He attributes the low uptake to the difficulty of confronting trauma.
The medication’s long-acting nature also means drug users do not need to regularly visit clinics, safe injection sites or safer supply programs.
For some patients, it can be difficult to lose the social support that comes from regularly visiting clinics or safer supply programs.
“I’ve had one or two patients that actually destabilized once I put them on Sublocade because they needed that weekly visit,” Gracey said. “They kind of went off the rails with their other addictions.”
Lee says the sense of community found at safe injection sites can be significant, because “you want to go where your friends are.”
But he is not convinced that this peer community is beneficial. “It’s like hanging out with the wrong gang at school,” he said.
by CAA | Apr 11, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized
6000 school-based crimes and 439 carjackings, and that is just for 2024. There is no way that arrests alone will solve this problem.
The near-blind obsession with a Reactive Policing model with the Restorative Justice philosophy infecting the legal system, they have combined, and both spectacularly failed, and the figures prove it.
What a mess and the most startling thing to be presented by VicPol was reported as,
“…police are determined to quickly arrest those responsible and seek their remand, a Victoria Police statement said.”
That response from VicPol does not instil confidence that they are on top of this issue, but you can be sure that there will be many more Task Forces or Special duty teams targeting criminals as part of their solution.
Next, they will blame their ineffectiveness in preventing this crime on the community for not supplying CCTV; they already blame the community for failing to maintain security and the Courts for not locking up perpetrators.
Disturbingly, remanding perpetrators in custody, although a step in the right direction, is nothing more than a ‘band-aid’ solution as the perpetrators have not been convicted.
Taking the Task Force approach has also proved inefficient and has had minimal impact.
Each of these teams must be staffed, and those staff are drawn from the local frontline police. Reducing the frontline, so named for obvious reasons, adversely impacts prevention and strategies to maintain a highly visible Police presence to dissuade criminal activity.
No criminal ever intends to get caught; the risk of being caught is the most potent deterrent, and the lack of that deterrent is mainly due to Police strategies.
The current state of play with policing is the remaining frontline police struggle to keep up with calls for assistance. As for any patrols that will reduce crime, they are minimal at best.
Inevitably, the judiciary, thwarted from their preferred position of non-custodial sentences for juveniles by new Bail laws, will simply ratchet up the non-custodial approach when the perpetrator is presented after remand for their hearing.
So, the reprieve from crime by ‘no bail’ Remand, will be short-lived and be merely, in the eye of the perpetrator, a minor inconvenience. Remand will only provide a hiatus unless, upon conviction, the juvenile does some time, be it shorter periods than adults.
Penalties must align with “kid time”.
What is damming is that in the media reports on school crime and carjackings, there is not one mention of how VicPol proposes to stop or even dramatically reduce this blight on our community.
These two aspects of school crime and carjackings are intrinsically linked as the vast majority, if not all, of the offenders involved in carjackings went to school, so the logic would be to tackle the issue through the school system and, in that effort, mitigate the school crime at the same time giving our kids a chance to be educated without fear and distraction.
“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Whether this concept will become a reality in Victoria again hinges on who is appointed the next Chief Commissioner because of the community policing philosophy. Crime prevention has all but disappeared from the force’s operational practises.
For the benefit of Victoria, the selection panel needs to ask the following questions of each applicant,
‘What will you do to reduce the crime in schools and the carjackings?’
An answer of increased patrols and the usual talking points would immediately disqualify the applicant. The only way to reduce crime is by innovative, proactive measures; any applicant worth their salt will have thought-through strategies.
‘How will you measure Commanders’ performances’?
Failure to set enforceable Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on performance for all managers throughout the force would be a failure.
‘How will you manage Commander’s accountability?’
Anything short of an applicant being prepared to exit their Chief’s contract voluntarily if found to be failing to perform would be unacceptable. That would be the accountability standard required of all Police leaders.
We do not want a Chief focused on or bragging about crime-solving. We want a Chief Commissioner with a vision not influenced and bound by traditional speaking points but one who can see through the fog and have a crystal-clear appreciation of the importance of reorganising the Force to positively influence the prevention model.
Preventing crime gazumps solving a crime in the first place.
Just ask crime victims which strategy they would prefer.
by CAA | Apr 5, 2025 | Library, Media, Politics, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues
In a hugely embarrassing turn of events, Acting Chief Commissioner Rick Nugent has announced he will not be applying for the top job after being hand-picked and parachuted into the acting role.
As disappointed as many of us are in his decision, he may well have done Victoria Police and Victoria a considerable service, highlighting and shining a light on the role and failures of Victoria Police Command, forcing the State to take a new approach to selecting its senior executives because by any measure the current process is an abject failure as history shows.
Without major surgery on this selection process, it will be like the adage of ‘doing the same thing tomorrow and expecting a different result’: the definition of insanity.
To fully understand the failure of Police Command, we need to look no further than the Police Oath of Office that all Serving Police, irrespective of rank, must take and abide by, but as history has now shown us, this oath only applies to some within the organisation when it suits them and is breached with regular monotony when it doesn’t.
The VICTORIA POLICE ACT 2013 – Schedule 2— sets out the Police Oaths and affirmations and has four key points within that oath.
The Oath commits Police to perform their duties in a particular manner,
- …without favour or affection, malice or ill-will,
- …will see and cause the peace to be kept and preserved,
- …will prevent to the best of my power all offences,
- …will, to the best of my skill and knowledge, discharge all the duties legally imposed on me faithfully and according to law.
When applying these key points to the performance of Police Command over several years, the score is abysmal and indicates many examples of wanton disregard for this Oath.
We are not suggesting that all Police commanders have been tainted over the last two decades, but the buck stops with the Chief Commissioner and the Command team. They bear ultimate responsibility for the performance and activities of the organisation, but the litany of breaches from which there have been no repercussions against those responsible is staggering. Adding to the dearth of leadership, unbelievably, many police directly involved in these issues have since been promoted.
How can we have a Police Force where poor performance is rewarded?
The following list is accompanied by the number allocated to each part of the Oath above.
- A Chief Commissioner, as the then State Disaster Coordinator, having dinner with friends while Victoria burnt and Victorians were dying. A State disaster with the coordinator missing. Deserting her post in a crisis.(4),
- A Chief Commissioner accepting free flights from an airline. (4)
- The Gobbo affair. Multiple Chief Commissioners and others created, facilitated or turned a blind eye to this issue. No police were disciplined for their roles or failures, but some were promoted to high ranks.
The severity of the poor behaviour by Police, particularly senior members, was set out by the High Court.
[Ms Gobbo’s] actions in purporting to act as counsel for the Convicted Persons while covertly informing against them were fundamental and appalling breaches of [her] obligations as counsel to her clients and of [her] duties to the court. Likewise, Victoria Police were guilty of reprehensible conduct in knowingly encouraging [Ms Gobbo] to do as she did. They were involved in sanctioning atrocious breaches of the sworn duty of every police officer to discharge all duties imposed on them faithfully and according to law without favour or affection, malice or ill-will. As a result, the prosecution of each Convicted Person was corrupted in a manner that debased fundamental premises of the criminal justice system.
That nobody was held accountable for this debacle is part of the leadership problems in the force. How can subordinate members act professionally and ethically when they see their superiors not subject to the same rules usually applied? (1), (3), (4).
- Stealing from the State. Two Politicians committed fraud on the state by falsely and unlawfully claiming accommodation travel expenses but were not prosecuted for the theft. (1), (3), (4).
- The ubiquitous Red Shirts saga in 2019 failed to see any prosecutions after blatant interference in the electoral process. It should be noted that the Office of Police Integrity (OPI) decided not to prosecute, but the head of the OPI was later appointed as Chief Commissioner. (1),(2),(3),(4).
- COVID-19 saw the worst performance of Police senior management in the force’s history, only challenged by the Gobbo Affair.
Whether it was the refusal of the Police to provide supervision of the quarantine facilities, which claimed over 800 Victorian lives, or how the community was controlled, from handcuffing a Mum in front of her children for relatively innocuous online comments, accosting old ladies sitting on a park bench, using live ammunition on people demonstrating against harsh and unrealistic restrictions, and activating ‘tea bagging’ control strategies forcing demonstrators to crowd together was the opposite of the essential medical advice for the disease. The over-the-top responses did nothing to achieve objectives other than a perverted sense of authority as displayed by the Government. The argument that the Police only applied the government health order is ridiculous. A Government cannot force a member of the Police Force to breach their Oath of Office; however, throughout the pandemic, it regularly did, and the Force Senior management chose to play along with the Government and defy and ignore their Oath of Office. No disciplinary or criminal charge was laid against breaches by the Police. Albeit that senior command neglected to follow their Oath, all police involved each had a sworn duty and should have been able to exercise their right not to breach their Oath.(1),(2),(3),(4).
- A very Senior Officer accepting a free first-class trip to America from another Government Agency aggravated by yet another Senior Executive permitting the girlfriend of the Officer, employed by VicPol in a different department, to accompany him. The conference they were slated to attend had no relevance to their roles in VicPol. An all-expenses-paid junket. (4).
- A social media troll outed as a senior officer using a non-de-plume to distribute foul material on social media aimed at colleagues. (4).
- A Senior Officer castigating a junior member on social media. (4) also berating health volunteers in public (4) and instigating a Road Rage altercation in a school car park (4). It took so long and so many indiscretions before he was advised his contract would not be renewed. That no action was taken against this senior office was a disgrace and a poor reflection on the relevant Chief Commissioners (4).
- Slug-gate was another disgraceful episode in Victoria’s policing of this state. The ongoing issue started with an alleged slug being placed in a food factory by a municipal health inspector, which closed the facility and caused 44 employees to lose their jobs. This was significant because it came to light that the alleged relationship between the CEO of the local council and the local Area Commander was very close, breaching professional norms. Still, no investigation was ever carried out to determine if that relationship had conspired to damage the food factory, a competitor of a new factory set up by the Government, of which the local Council CEO was a director. The principal Police officer was promoted, a common thread of miscreants in the Force.(1), (3), (4).
- The mishandling of the ‘Bike Boy’ incident involving the wife of the former Premier showed again how the influence over the police operations was directed not by the sworn duty of Police but by some other imperative. Senior Police should have immediately become involved to ensure proper processes were followed. We are still waiting to see who will be promoted by this Police inaction.(1), (3), (4).
What does stand out in this list is the number of Police who were involved who were promoted in what has the look of quid pro quo? Protect the guilty, and you will be rewarded; by any measure, this is corruption. This seems to be part of the reason so many incompetent Police achieve exalted ranks. It’s not how good you are at your job but how good you are at protecting individuals in high Office.
There are other incidents, but what is common is that when browsing the list, the offences of Conspiracy to Pervert the Course of Justice can be applied in nearly every case, as can Malfeasance or Misconduct in Public Office in every example, not to mention numerous disciplinary offences.
The picture painted shows the depth of criminality by senior police or, at best, the sheer incompetence of senior management in running the force. Inevitably, the applicants from VicPol will include some who have been tainted by the issue listed herein. Avoid, at all costs, ‘putting a fox in charge of the hen house’.
Poor selection processes and partisan political interference in the appointment processes have driven this.
To appoint somebody who has no direct knowledge of this particular Force and the players (knowing where the skeletons are hidden) will flounder and fail no matter how well they’re credentialed. We can only hope that the previous poor performance of former Federal officers in executive roles in VicPol will not be repeated. Federal Police leadership has very limited, if any, experience in running a community-based force. Crime prevention, central to community-based Policing, is an anathema in Federal policing. No matter how good they are in the Federal sphere, to appoint one as Chief in Victoria will be another retrograde step.
Avoiding this advice will inevitably cause political pain no matter who is in power.
The options available to the Government in the short term are that the appointment is made via a partisan arrangement, and that should be very attractive as any failures in policing can’t be sheeted back to the government; they can still revel in Police successes.
The other option is a Police Board to oversee Police operations; it must be by partisan appointments to be effective.
The current government has some electoral difficulties and can ill afford another failure at the top of VicPol.
Repairing the Force is a massive undertaking, and the successful applicant will have their work cut out and need all the support that can be mustered. Hence, the attraction to a Board comprised of former police and civilians from a broad cross-section of the community is not dissimilar to the success of the Community Advocacy Alliance (CAA), which adopted this approach and has become a powerful voice of reason.
Many Former police are attracted to these roles as they are no longer impacted by the pressure of working politics in the police environment and all the pressure for promotion. They are still morally bound by the good ethics of Policing.
by CAA | Mar 29, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues
Sweden, the U.K., and Canada all experimented with providing opioids to addicts. The results were disastrous.
By Adam ZIVO
[This article was originally published in City Journal, a public policy magazine and website published by the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. We encourage our readers to subscribe to them for high-quality analysis on urban issues]
CAA Comment
Although we cannot locate a source, the saying, ‘A Drug addict is made by the age of six’ has resonance.
It does not suggest children are addicted at that age, although sadly, some are. It points to the environment and upbringing that will influence later behavioural traits. These factors are neither social class nor ethnic based; every child is vulnerable.
It is this vulnerability that must drive us to a solution that at least minimises the adverse addictive behaviour. Drug addiction and even experimentation are learnt traits, so the vulnerability can be unlearned or at least mitigated.
Providing drugs under the ‘Harm Minimisation’ or ‘Safer Supply’ is not the answer as it perpetuates the drug problem, as overseas experiences have shown.
The difficulty in controlling the Drug plague by the time a person is addicted is too late and generally ineffective, so to invoke policies of ‘Harm Minimisation’ and or ‘Safer Supply’ is a recipe for disaster.
Encouraging those who are addicts to become clean has all sorts of barriers apart from the drug addiction itself; most are addicted to the drug lifestyle without responsibility or accountability, so even if they are supplied with safer drugs, their behaviour will be unlikely to change.
We need to focus on the young and provide coping strategies and resilience, the ability to say ‘no’ would be a good starting point.
In these difficult fiscal times governments face, they will have to be pragmatic and withdraw funding from ‘Harm Minimisation projects’ and ‘Safer supply approaches and instead develop a uniform strategy across the entire education system and support parents in their efforts to develop coping skills for their children as they grow physically and mentally.
This effort will take time to have an impact, but it will not only help prevent children from experimenting with drugs but also create a better learning environment, improving the academic standards of all children and leading to more constructive lives.
***************************
Last August, Denver’s city council passed a proclamation endorsing radical “harm reduction” strategies to address the drug crisis. Among these was “safer supply,” the idea that the government should give drug users their drug of choice, for free. Safer supply is a popular idea among drug-reform activists. But other countries have already tested this experiment and seen disastrous results, including more addiction, crime, and overdose deaths. It would be foolish to follow their example.
The safer-supply movement maintains that drug-related overdoses, infections, and deaths are driven by the unpredictability of the black market, where drugs are inconsistently dosed and often adulterated with other toxic substances. With ultra-potent opioids like fentanyl, even minor dosing errors can prove fatal. Drug contaminants, which dealers use to provide a stronger high at a lower cost, can be just as deadly and potentially disfiguring.
Because of this, harm-reduction activists sometimes argue that governments should provide a free supply of unadulterated, “safe” drugs to get users to abandon the dangerous street supply. Or they say that such drugs should be sold in a controlled manner, like alcohol or cannabis—an endorsement of partial or total drug legalization.
But “safe” is a relative term: the drugs championed by these activists include pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl, hydromorphone (an opioid as potent as heroin), and prescription meth. Though less risky than their illicit alternatives, these drugs are still profoundly dangerous.
The theory behind safer supply is not entirely unreasonable, but in every country that has tried it, implementation has led to increased suffering and addiction. In Europe, only Sweden and the U.K. have tested safer supply, both in the 1960s. The Swedish model gave more than 100 addicts nearly unlimited access through their doctors to prescriptions for morphine and amphetamines, with no expectations of supervised consumption. Recipients mostly sold their free drugs on the black market, often through a network of “satellite patients” (addicts who purchased prescribed drugs). This led to an explosion of addiction and public disorder.
Most doctors quickly abandoned the experiment, and it was shut down after just two years and several high-profile overdose deaths, including that of a 17-year-old girl. Media coverage portrayed safer supply as a generational medical scandal and noted that the British, after experiencing similar problems, also abandoned their experiment.
While the U.S. has never formally adopted a safer-supply policy, it experienced something functionally similar during the OxyContin crisis of the 2000s. At the time, access to the powerful opioid was virtually unrestricted in many parts of North America. Addicts turned to pharmacies for an easy fix and often sold or traded their extra pills for a quick buck. Unscrupulous “pill mills” handed out prescriptions like candy, flooding communities with OxyContin and similar narcotics. The result was a devastating opioid epidemic—one that rages to this day, at a cumulative cost of hundreds of thousands of American lives. Canada was similarly affected.
The OxyContin crisis explains why many experienced addiction experts were aghast when Canada greatly expanded access to safer supply in 2020, following a four-year pilot project. They worried that the mistakes of the recent past were being made all over again, and that the recently vanquished pill mills had returned under the cloak of “harm reduction.”
Most Canadian safer-supply prescribers dispense large quantities of hydromorphone with little to no supervised consumption. Patients can receive up to 40 eight-milligram pills per day—despite the fact that just two or three are enough to cause an overdose in someone without opioid tolerance. Some prescribers also provide supplementary fentanyl, oxycodone, or stimulants.
Unfortunately, many safer-supply patients sell or trade a significant portion of these drugs—primarily hydromorphone—in order to purchase more potent illicit substances, such as street fentanyl.
The problems with safer supply entered Canada’s consciousness in mid-2023, through an investigative report I wrote for the National Post. I interviewed 14 addiction physicians from across the country, who testified that safer-supply diversion is ubiquitous; that the street price of hydromorphone collapsed by up to 95 percent in communities where safer supply is available; that youth are consuming and becoming addicted to diverted safer-supply drugs; and that organized crime traffics these drugs.
Facing pushback, I interviewed former drug users, who estimated that roughly 80 percent of the safer-supply drugs flowing through their social circles was getting diverted. I documented dozens of examples of safer-supply trafficking online, representing tens of thousands of pills. I spoke with youth who had developed addictions from diverted safer supply and adults who had purchased thousands of such pills.
After months of public queries, the police department of London, Ontario—where safer supply was first piloted—revealed last summer that annual hydromorphone seizures rose over 3,000 percent between 2019 and 2023. The department later held a press conference warning that gangs clearly traffic safer supply. The police departments of two nearby midsize cities also saw their post-2019 hydromorphone seizures increase more than 1,000 percent.
The Canadian government quietly dropped its support for safer supply last year, cutting funding for many of its pilot programs. The province of British Columbia (the nexus of the harm-reduction movement) finally pulled back support last month, after a leaked presentation confirmed that safer-supply drugs are getting sold internationally and that the government is investigating 60 pharmacies for paying kickbacks to safer-supply patients. For now, all safer-supply drugs dispensed within the province must be consumed under supervision.
Harm-reduction activists have insisted that no hard evidence exists of widespread diversion of safer-supply drugs, but this is only because they refuse to study the issue. Most “studies” supporting safer supply are produced by ideologically driven activist-scholars, who tend to interview a small number of program enrollees. These activists also reject attempts to track diversion as “stigmatizing.”
The experiences of Sweden, the United Kingdom, and Canada offer a clear warning: safer supply is a reliably harmful policy. The outcomes speak for themselves—rising addiction, diversion, and little evidence of long-term benefit.
As the debate unfolds in the United States, policymakers would do well to learn from these failures. Americans should not be made to endure the consequences of a policy already discredited abroad simply because progressive leaders choose to ignore the record. The question now is whether we will repeat others’ mistakes—or chart a more responsible course.
by CAA | Mar 25, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
Many plaudits are attributed to the crime solution proposed by the new bail laws. Herald Sun 20th March 2025.
Although the changes are welcome and will have a positive impact, they are highly unlikely to be the ‘silver bullet’ hoped for. Short-term reprieve for victims is welcome, but long-term gains will still be challenging.
The Bail law changes are akin to taking to a massive pile of ‘record crime’ with a teaspoon rather than a decent frontend loader. The pile will grow quicker than the solutions applied.
What is misleading is the role of Bail or Remand; they are ostensibly mechanisms to ensure a person charged with a crime appears in court to answer the charges.
What was lacking was the consideration of community safety. It was a disappointing omission, but how the judiciary interprets these changes will be interesting to watch.
That a perpetrator has a propensity to continue offending after being granted bail makes the continuation of bail unacceptable. Therefore, the perpetrator must be remanded in custody, no ifs, buts or excuses.
Being held in custody preceding a court appearance to answer the charges is not a punishment for a crime; punishment is the judiciary’s role when the case is determined.
The problem we are facing, which needs urgent remedial attention, is the length of time juveniles, or, for that matter, anybody is held in custody without being convicted of the charges they face.
There is no doubt that for very serious capital crimes, the period in detention would vary dramatically for a juvenile charged with lesser offences.
The solution to this problem lies with the courts, which seem very inefficient. They spend most of their time remanding or considering applications for bail and procedural matters rather than getting on with hearing cases.
By the time a juvenile gets to have their case heard; the time on remand is predominantly deducted as part of the penalty, meaning that after the finding of guilt, there is generally little in the way of punishment that the judiciary applies.
This again sends the wrong message to the youths; they can claim they didn’t get a penalty for their indiscretion, and it then gives them bragging rights.
This issue must be resolved before we achieve meaningful inroads into reining in juvenile crime. And that is before long-term strategies that address anti-social behaviour before it develops.
Changes the CAA propose will further strengthen the process and reduce even further the likelihood of an innocent youth being incarcerated for a lengthy period and negate the much-argued proposition that putting juveniles in jail will make them worse.
Any harm done will be minimised if the remand periods are much shorter, providing less opportunity for youths to learn from other detainees. Careful management of these facilities will further reduce adverse impacts on those on remand.
Remand periods must be reduced to days or weeks, not months; whatever needs to be done to achieve this must be done immediately – no excuses.
by CAA | Mar 23, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
The CAA has a strong record of accurately predicting future developments, like the current youth crime tsunami, years before it blossomed to its current levels. However, the impending disaster brewing causes the CAA members to lose sleep.
Daily, in all media, there is an indisputable increase in people, professionals, and concerned citizens, from parents to shopkeepers, speaking out like never before about the criminal behaviour of our youth and the visceral behaviour of young people.
One of the most plausible reasons for this negative growth of criminal and anti-social behaviour amongst youth was identified by Psychologist Maria Ruberto, reported in the Herald Sun on 23rd of March 2023.
Roberto identifies a failure in resilience at the core of many issues facing young people. The inability to make rational or informed decisions or any decision at all, including saying no, provides the environment for young people to be swept up in anti-social and criminal behaviours, which groups predominantly undertake.
As she points out, the parents have a lot to answer for in over-protecting young people, avoiding the necessity for them to develop reliance.
However, it is not just the parents to blame because much of this lack of resilience has been planted in their parents by the mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic, where the government took away the ability of all citizens to make their own decisions.
Rather than being informers, providing guidance and combating resources, the Government made decisions for everybody and enforced them with the Police.
The real impact of this incompetent management of the Pandemic is only starting to be felt; there is more to come, a lot more.
Identifying the issue is only the start; dealing with it is the real challenge.
Unfortunately, it seems that those with influence see only one solution, as detailed recently by the Youth Commissioner,
“Instead of sweeping laws to toughen bail tests, we want to see investment in assessments, interventions and supports that will tackle the drivers of each child’s offending and effectively support rehabilitation.”
The Commissioner is not alone; she has supporters of this hollow mantra, predominantly academics by profession and performance, claiming that her approach is the way to solve the problem.
The problems with this approach are that there are never any practical programs to deliver, an approach that has failed us for two decades and that the words never contain purpose, direction or action. This approach is an academic fantasy wish list that nobody will ever implement because the proponents are not actually or morally accountable, and there is no evidence that this approach will even work.
Pontification of itself is never a solution.
At best, we can, with care, devise strategies that will slowly change the prevailing youth behavioural demise. We cannot wait longer; the longer we wait, the more entrenched this behaviour becomes.
The CAA is exploring the establishment of a Youth Justice Advisory Panel consisting of pragmatic solution-orientated community leaders who together can design a plan to address the problem. Developing solutions that are pragmatic, effective and affordable to implement.
Holistically approaching the issue and providing consistency in the delivery of a program across a swathe of youth ages will be the key; the message must be consistent from preschool to secondary and beyond, with community initiatives developed to help guide children to adulthood.
The real challenge will be in developing new and innovative ways to deliver the required services and harvesting the positive aspects of all the current players in this space.
Parallel to this approach, strategies must be developed to equip parents to understand better their child’s development needs and coping strategies to assist them.
As important as a focus should be on children, the focus must be equally shared with parents and those in our community charged with interacting with children, whether in law enforcement, education or social development.
The proposed Panel could provide input to the Government, which is ultimately responsible for this issue and must act irrespective of ideological views; we cannot afford the luxury of those views hindering outcomes of value.
We envisage the Panel not being numerically large, quality rather than quantity, and representatives with a high profile from a broad cross-section of the community.
Established and operated by people who care.
The CAA would like anyone interested in participating as a Panel member to lodge their details and a summary of their credentials at ceo@caainc.org.au.
Let’s get this done.
by CAA | Mar 20, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Youth
As predictable as night follows day, all the pundits have raised their heads in condemning locking serious juvenile offenders up on remand to ensure they face court for their alleged crimes while preventing the commission of further crimes.
Be under no illusion the chances of a 10-year-old being held on remand is next to zero, as is any child. A child will have to do more than commit just one offence before the new bail laws take effect, remembering that the vast majority of young people coming before a court have already received multiple formal cautions by Police under the police diversion strategy before Police charge them and take them to court for repeated offences.
Although they may have committed more than one offence and received multiple cautions, they come before the Court as a first offender, and the cautions are not used against them.
A proper reform would be for the Police Cautions to be included in the matters put before the judiciary when deciding penalties or applications for bail – the judiciary should be fully informed.
It is not the locking up that is the problem per se; it is what is done in the management of juveniles in detention, and that needs a considerable shakeup or perhaps the complete removal of current practices on the basis they have and will continue to fail.
It is often said that to lock up a child will make them worse, but worse than what?
If they come out of detention worse, there is only one culprit: poor management of the child while detained.
The pundits reported on in The Age, March 16, are the Australian Medical Association, the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Victoria‘s Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People, Liana Buchanan, and the Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Sing. If they round out the people the government relies on for advice, it is no wonder we are in despair with the youths.
There would be grave doubt that any of these people had ever dealt with recidivists, so their opinion is purely academic and void of pragmatism because they don’t know.
However, the real standout was Victoria‘s Principal Commissioner for Children and Young People, Liana Buchanan, and Commissioner for Aboriginal Children and Young People, Meena Sing, who were motivated to issue a joint statement.
“We understand that Victorians want to feel safe and that particular cases profiled in the media have impacted that sense of safety,” they said. “However, we are concerned the bail reforms proposed by the Victorian government will radically increase the number of children remanded in custody and will not make the community safer.
This may also indicate where the problems are for young people.
These two allegedly esteemed bureaucrats took the tried and tested method of deflecting responsibility by blaming the media,
‘…the particular cases profiled in the media have impacted that sense of safety’, they said, referring to the community angst.
Sorry, but it is not the media causing the mayhem; it is those children supposedly represented but government agencies who cause the lack of safety in the community.
The alternate view of these laws reeks of defending failed functions.
Followed by
“Instead of sweeping laws to toughen bail tests, we want to see investment in assessments, interventions and supports that will tackle the drivers of each child’s offending and effectively support rehabilitation.”
Sadly, those quoted and like thinkers have followed this path for a decade or more, and where that has got us? Because of this fanciful failed approach, hundreds, if not thousands, of children, have lives ruined and the lives of many other citizens because pragmatic and effective strategies have not been employed.
There is an urgent need to improve the standard of care while children are in detention to make the experience of value to them so that they may see the error of their ways. That does not mean enjoyable.
The discipline they need to make their way in society must be foremost in their learning.
Above all else, understand the Bail Laws are not talking about a sentence where the child must stand to account for their misdeeds, but Remand, is a process to ensure they attend Court for their hearing and lose the right to bail because of their continued offending creating the need to protect the community.
It was also reported that for
“Jacinta Allan, Police Minister Anthony Carbines, Attorney-General Sonya Kilkenny, Department of Justice Secretary Kate Houghton and a dozen or so ministerial and departmental advisers, it was a long weekend of a very different kind.
All day Saturday, Sunday, Labour Day Monday and right up until midday on Tuesday when Cabinet was due to meet to consider proposed changes to Victoria’s bail laws, this working group was sweating over the final shape and details of the reforms”.
The Ministers could have saved the sweat by getting a new lot of advisers, as this current lot were not helpful.
It was also reported that,
“A current Senate inquiry into youth justice cites Victoria as an exemplar jurisdiction because it incarcerates children at a lower rate than any other state in Australia. The inquiry heard evidence that on any given night, there were on average 88 children in detention in Victoria, compared to 240 in NSW and 317 in Queensland”. – The Age
This is the problem exposed. Not only is it a fallacy to assume that there is less of a crime problem in Victoria, we know there is not; however, a more useful statistic would be the number of children on remand and their recidivism rate after their legal matters are resolved.
It would be helpful to know how effectively we manage these youths and provide the opportunity to improve the process dramatically. The current regimes are failing, encouraging the judiciary not to use the process, an easy out.
This is either plain old, everyday incompetent groupthink, or worse, telling the government what they think they want to hear.
Either way, if this is the quality of the advice the government relies on, then no wonder where we are where we are with Youth Crime.
Each of these people or organisations identified should hang their collective heads in shame for getting our miscreant youth where they are.
Unfortunately, until some accountability for performance is introduced to this process, nothing will change – contributors and decision-makers are never responsible for the outcomes they promulgate.
by CAA | Mar 17, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
The CAA applauds the belated ban on edged weapons (Machetes) and, like every other Victorian, demands that the ban be immediate.
There is no plausible excuse for a delay.
That a ban was not in place a long time ago beggars’ belief; however, the belated action that will take nine months before coming into effect is absolutely ridiculous; just what are the government planners thinking?
Haven’t they worked it out? It is not the weapon that is the problem. It is the idiot holding onto it.
If they seriously think that the perpetrators who use these weapons are going to show good community responsibility and put their prized weapons and symbols of power into a bin, the government planners are delusional.
For goodness’ sake, these weapons are status symbols that will disappear under their bed, not in a government bin.
And they will be replaced by Mum’s stainless-steel carver.
The Government needs to realise that banning the products altogether will only develop black market trading in the items, playing into the current black market (organised crime) marketing strategy – identify what the market wants, and if it is illegal, go for it.
This strategy works for the crooks, creating unintended consequences, as happened with tobacco. The weapons will probably be sold under the counter from the same shops.
The solution is banning the carrying of edged weapons of every description and giving the Police additional powers to search and seize, supported by mandated penalties to force the anthropomorphic magistracy, where coincidently many of our society ills are created because of their ineptitude, to undertake their role to keep us safe.
It’s not the weapon but the environment where it is located.
Mum’s stainless-steel carver could be the weapon a person is charged with possessing.
At 2.00 am, with a group of mates, the carver is as lethal as a machete and attracts the same status.
If care is not taken, the kitchen arsenal will replace the machete, and we will be no better off. The blades may be shorter, but the victim is just as dead.
It is not anti-social to own an edged weapon, but as soon as it is carried in a public place, the rules change; it’s not the weapon; it is the intended use, intimidation, attack or defence that is the issue.
When the planners grasp that concept, then they might come up with an effective solution like reviewing current legislation and, where necessary, tweaking it to provide the Police with the capacity to properly address the issue rather than being hamstrung by nice restrictive policies sponsored by the socialist elite.
Starting to think of the Police operational necessities (where the rubber hits the road) may go a long way to solving this issue.
Viewing this matter through a political prism will be the downfall of any efforts to curb unnecessary deaths and intimidation.
by CAA | Mar 15, 2025 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized
CAA comment –
The risk of adopting paths to address the drug epidemic without proper scientific evaluation of strategies and not considering the impact of unintended consequences has bitten Canada big time. The hydromorphone experiment has caused greater harm than what the drug was intended to resolve.
We must be alert to these risks and not follow their lead.
A poorly researched strategy using hydromorphone as part of a drug treatment plan implemented in Canada has spawned a new market with addicts securing their hydromorphone treatments and selling them to purchase more potent drugs.
An addict can earn thousands of dollars by selling their prescription hydromorphone at a current street price of $2.00.
The $2.00 drug is the gateway for young people to enter the drug scene and risk addiction.
Australian drug issues are about to deteriorate further with a warning from the Border Force of Nitazenes, or Zombie drugs entering Australia.
If you thought that the behaviour of the current batch of drugs regularly used on the street was a risk the Zombie Drug will pale the current favoured drugs in potency and impact.
Our current Death rate from drug overdoses in Victoria is over 600 a year, already over twice the number of lives lost on our roads, which will skyrocket with Nitazenes entering the illicit market.
Dr. Michael Lester, a Toronto-based addiction physician with 30 years of experience, says Canada’s “safer supply” programs are “inherently dangerous” and causing “dystopian” community harms due to widespread fraud.
These programs claim to reduce overdoses and deaths by distributing free addictive drugs—typically 8-milligram tablets of hydromorphone, an opioid as potent as heroin—to dissuade addicts from consuming riskier street substances. Yet experts across Canada say recipients regularly divert (sell or trade) their safer supply on the black market to acquire stronger illicit drugs, which then fuels addiction and organized crime.
“I have a couple dozen patients in my practice who were drug-free prior to the advent of safe supply, and they’ve gone back to using opioids in a destructive way because of the availability of diverted hydromorphone,” said Lester. “Every single day that I go to work, people tell me they’re struggling with the temptation not to take diverted safe supply. They don’t want to take it, but they take it anyway just because it’s cheap and available.”
After safer supply programs became widely accessible across Canada in 2020, Lester’s patients reported an influx of 8-milligram hydromorphone tablets on the black market, coinciding with a crash in the drug’s street price from $15–$20 per pill to just $2. He now estimates that 80 percent of his patients struggling with opioid addiction have relapsed due to diverted safer supply, leading some to abandon treatment entirely.
“Even if it’s sold at the rock-bottom price of $2 or $3 a pill, a person would make tens of thousands of dollars a year, which would have a tremendous impact on their ability to buy other drugs,” he explained. “Selling hydromorphone is too tempting not to do it, which keeps them entrenched in the whole world of dealing with opioid users and having opioids in their premises.”
Lester said safer supply is evidently “fueling organized crime” because drug seizures in Ontario now commonly include hydromorphone, “which wasn’t happening before.” He added that some individuals who try these diverted drugs later transition to stronger opioids, such as fentanyl.
In July, for example, the London Police Service announced that seizures of hydromorphone had increased by more than 3,000 percent in the city since 2020. According to London Police Chief Thai Truong, “Diverted safer supply is being resold into our community. There’s organized drug trafficking at the highest levels of organized crime, and there’s drug trafficking at the street level. We’re seeing all of it.”
While Lester acknowledges that safer supply can be useful as a “treatment of last resort, after traditional treatments have been tried and failed,” he said it is now being offered immediately to a wide variety of patients, which has “decimated” uptake of traditional addiction therapies, such as methadone and Suboxone.
As a result, conventional addiction clinics are now at risk of shutting down, meaning some communities could lose access to gold-standard treatments (i.e., methadone and Suboxone) while highly profitable, but unscientific, safer supply programs take over instead.
Lester said the evidence supporting safer supply is biased and “misleading” because, generally speaking, these studies simply interview enrolled patients and ask them to self-report whether they benefit from the programs. He noted that many safer supply researchers are public health academics, not doctors, meaning they lack clinical experience with the communities they study.
“It seems to be motivated by a very small, vocal, and well-connected group of advocates that has completely changed the landscape in addiction medicine treatment in a very short time,” he said.
Lester argues that some safer supply researchers seem to purposefully design their study methodologies to favor the programs and disregard systemic harms. He said this flawed science is then propagated by credulous journalists who fail to adequately scrutinize agenda-driven research.
While he personally knows “a couple dozen” colleagues in addiction medicine who regularly express skepticism about safer supply, many have been reluctant to speak out, fearing backlash from activist groups that “terrorize” critics.
“The stories are common of people being harassed and insulted on social media. We’ve heard of doctors being threatened [and] dropped from committees because they spoke out.”
For example, after Lester and his colleagues published two open letters criticizing safer supply in late 2023, they were targeted by a series of articles by Drug Data Decoded, a popular Canadian harm reduction Substack, which compared the doctors to Nazis and eugenicists. The articles were then widely shared on social media by safer supply activists.
Lester recalled an incident in which harm reduction activists targeted a doctor’s daughter at her high school in retaliation for her parent’s public criticism of safer supply.
“It’s just something that seems so unscientific and so bizarre in medicine,” he said. “Physicians just aren’t used to a powerful political lobby changing a treatment protocol.”
After Lester and more than a dozen of his colleagues wrote several public letters calling for reform and requested a meeting with Ya’ara Saks, the federal Minister of Mental Health and Addictions, they found themselves “sidelined and ignored.”
After months of delays, they were able to present their clinical observations to Saks, only to have her disregard them and incorrectly claim, weeks later, that criticism of safer supply is rooted in “fear and stigma.”
“The insults aren’t a big enough consequence to keep me from speaking my mind,” he declared.
After a short reflection, he then added, “If anyone doesn’t have a stigma against this population, it’s me. I’ve dedicated my life to helping them.”
by CAA | Jan 2, 2025 | Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues
The loss of Police shifts may be a major issue for Victoria Police, but it is devastating for the public.
The Austrian Newspaper reports on the 31st of December 2024 on the Victoria Police Annual Report, which indicates that the loss of operational Police shifts has grown to 200,000 from 2024, a 12% spike.
As scary as this headline number is, the reality is that global statistics of this nature enable the actual causes to be hidden.
The impact of attending Traumatic events is well-overplayed; police for generations have all been faced with traumatic experiences, none more horrendous today than Police have faced in the past.
We defy anybody to find a serving or former police member who does not experience flashbacks to a trauma they have been exposed to. These events are with the Police for a lifetime, so managing them is the key.
Police are ordinary people doing an extraordinary job, and the risk that their experiences can overwhelm them is acute; however, how these ordinary people deal with exceptional circumstances sets them apart.
Searching for a solution has spawned an exponential growth of support services across the organisation, but the problem continues to escalate.
As a strategy that is a failure.
Ploughing in more resources will inevitably lead to growth in shifts lost, not a reduction—the self-fulfilling philosophy syndrome.
The spawning of an industry designed to assist Police victims of alleged work-related trauma has grown so large that it now self-generates its own demand and need, bordering on touting for business as the inevitable competition for services increases.
This clearly shows a need to look more closely at causes that may be considered a no-go zone for Police Command.
There are obvious causes, and solutions are embedded in each.
The role of the Police Association in promoting Trauma and PTSI as a major part of the convoluted industrial action is not helping the Police members they allegedly represent.
It does, however, elevate the severity of the problem to near a contagion level- reminding older Police of the contagion at one stage of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI); everybody seemed to catch it.
The Police Association needs to urgently settle several ambit claims so that the workforce can return to some normality and the more contentious claims can be resolved later after the Force recovers to some degree.
One of the most effective methods to ensure the phenomenon continues at pace is the reinforcement among members of the dire state of their trauma exposure.
Continual exposure to the impact on mental health of trauma, in many cases, will promote the severity of a symptom looking for a name. Every foible experienced by Police is neatly packaged as PTSI, Trauma-related. Managers can then bundle up the issues affecting the Police member, tie it off in an apocryphal sack and stick it in a corner. No longer their problem.
The role of Police managers in this process cannot be highlighted enough. It is how the management handles staff that has a direct correlation to outcomes. Critically, this must be accurately measured.
There is broad anecdotal evidence that the trauma a member experiences is not of itself the cause for members not coping but rather the performance or lack thereof by managers throughout their chain of command that is the real cause.
This could quickly be resolved by setting benchmarks or key performance indicators on all ranks above Senior Sergeant, where the incidents of Trauma-related impacts on their staff are measured.
The span of control of everybody above that rank will quickly identify which managers are failing in this area to allow for targeted remedial action by the manager or their environment.
A lack of accountability has infected the Force, and this might be the first step in returning to an environment where staff may develop confidence in their managers by them being held to account.
The Force is not the only organisation with issues with management structure stifling the operations of the organisation.
It has been reported that the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has problems similar to those of VicPol, particularly in staff retention.
The allegations indicated that the ADF management structure is bloated and that decision-making is drawn up from the frontline operatives. Ironically, it is the level of decision-making in the ADF that much of its proud history was built on. Empowering soldiers to make their own decisions.
The similarities with VicPol are significant as recent governments have eroded the independence of the role of Constable of Police, removing discretion and applying legislation that tries, unsuccessfully, to regulate the human function of Police in an environment that is actually unable to be regulated.
As with the ADF, destroying the soldier’s and police’s ability to make decisions and achieve job satisfaction directly adversely affects the organisation’s performance.
This relates directly to the recruitment advertising strategies of both organisations. The high-grade, high-gloss recruiting advertising sets a scene to encourage recruits; however, if the reality conflicts with the advertised image, therein lies the retention issue where recruits quickly become dissatisfied that the advertised careers are not what happens in reality.
Management accountability at all levels is the key to a solution. The issue is not how many senior managers are in the organisation but what is it they do. Solve that, and the overall organisation will again prosper.
To manage PTSI, coping methods of informal and formal design must be promoted, and seeking professional help must be downgraded to service only in extreme cases. It’s not the first stop.
A simple management technique is the metaphorical Filing cabinet approach.
A well-constructed four-draw filing cabinet has one unique feature- only one drawer can be opened at a time.
The metaphoric cabinet can store life/police experiences in an order that suits the individual.
The bottom draw is where the worst traumas are stored and are generally of a historical nature; the next draw-up has mid-term trauma, with the current issue needing attention in draw number one, moving them to draw number two due to the passage of time or significance.
That means only one trauma can be dealt with at a time, as you cannot open two draws at once, and you cannot inadvertently open the number four Trauma draw.
The key is that the member is left in control, although triggers may still exist.
Police are ordinary people who do extraordinary things; therefore, the risk of psychological damage is higher. However, focusing on management skills and promoting coping mechanisms rather than rushing to fashionable diagnoses would reduce the number of lost shifts and improve the welfare of all members.
Identifying the managers who lack personnel management skills in this area will become very obvious once the concept that they are accountable sinks in.
Measured by their pushback and inane rationalisations, they should immediately be encouraged to review their career aspirations. They are not fit to command.
by CAA | Dec 11, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Uncategorized
The amendments proposed by the Drugs, Poisons and Controlled Substances Amendment (Regulation of Personal Adult Use of Cannabis) Bill 2023 is a recipe for disaster disguised as promoting Human Rights.
Australia is a signatory to the United Nations Article 61 Single Convention of Narcotic Drugs and has an obligation to comply with that treaty. Human Rights are not an excuse for allowing any conduct that unreasonably harms anyone. That is why acts of violence and many other behaviours are prohibited by law. No society can exist in a state of anarchy.
The scientific evidence that cannabis use is harmful to people is irrefutable. A recent conversation with a person who has lived among habitual users of cannabis brought the following response, “They lose their social skills, become apathetic, their judgement is impaired, they find it difficult to concentrate and complete even simple tasks, they often are depressed, their memory is affected, and they are uninterested in anything but their next “fix”.
This lived experience is a graphic warning about the detrimental effects of cannabis use.
Authorising any household to grow up to six cannabis plants for personal use by people over eighteen years of age and expecting no adverse outcome for younger people is naivety bordering on lunacy. Where households have children under eighteen, it is certain that too many will be tempted to try what they see adults freely using. Escalation of young people using cannabis is a certainty. To deny this is stupidity.
Time, effort and money would be better spent on education programs, particularly for young people, to inform of the dangers of using cannabis and other illicit drugs.
Educating from an early age is a prerequisite to a lasting diminution in the use of illicit drugs that have become such a scourge on society. Public campaigns against drink driving and smoking tobacco have had real success.
The free use of cannabis will be reflected in the Road Toll and the proponents of this Bill will have blood on their hands.
This Bill must fail.
by CAA | Nov 27, 2024 | Library, PTSD, Uncategorized
The Community Advocacy Alliance (CAA) has worked for many years in the area of Police PTSI.
In 2017, the CAA published a paper entitled ‘The Hub’, and although there was minimal interest at the time, we were pleased that this concept was embraced by others who are working to develop the idea more broadly for Police suffering as a result of their service to the community.
Although we have never lost focus on this critical issue, we have been working to develop other initiatives, and in this process, one of the most important contributions and one sadly overlooked has moved to reality: Research.
Our PTSI Team, headed by CAA Director retired Inspector John Thexton, supported by other CAA members, Psychologist Helen Johns and Chiropractor Dr Paul Kelly, have been liaising with Counselling Psychologist Olivia Keene, who is completing a PhD. Her research project is titled:
Olivia has been in contact with Victoria Police to have serving members participate and successfully went through the ethics process.
It is now critical to encourage as many current and former members as possible to undertake the programme.
The CAA and former police members Cleve Salmon and Dave Evans, who facilitate ‘The Journey Forward’, will now take the lead in promoting the opportunity for serving participants to ensure the quality of the research.
If you are interested and would like to access more information on this project, please complete the attached form, and contact will be made.
Alternatively, contact Olivia Keene, Counselling Psychologist and PhD Candidate at RMIT University, via email for further information and to participate:
by CAA | Nov 24, 2024 | Blue Light, Current, Drunk, Library, Police in Schools, Police Veterans in Schools, Privacy, PTSD, Road Safety, Tobacco, Uncategorized, Vietnam Vets
The reports in the Herald Sun 24th November ‘24 about the escalation of violent crime by juveniles, some as young as ten, is a rude awakening for a Government that is by and large responsible.
We can expect platitudes and lame excuses, but action is improbable, and anything the Government does will skirt around the reality that they have made some major ‘faux pas in managing the youth issues.
First and foremost, the Bail Laws are a significant contributor.
The definition of insanity can be easily applied to the Victorian Government’s posture on youth crime matters.
‘Doing the same thing tomorrow and expecting a different result.’
How many of the brainiacs within the Government could have concluded that arresting a child for a crime and putting them immediately back into the same environment that caused them to offend in the first place was a brilliant idea? This is beyond reasonable comprehension.
Those responsible must be removed from their roles.
It is akin to saving a drowning child, only to throw them back in the water.
It looks eerily like the Government is focused on deliberately guiding our society towards a lawless state; we can only assume some misguided ideological plan to destroy the community fabric for an obscure reason has overtaken them, guiding them towards a catastrophe of violent crime we have never before been subject to.
The second and equal act of insanity was raising the age of criminal intent from ten to twelve years, so all the upcoming young thugs are taught crime has no consequences and they can be just like their older peers enjoying the criminal lifestyle.
This crime apprenticeship scheme must be reversed.
The major flaw in this initiative was that no thought was applied to what was to be done with the younger juveniles, as their path to criminality is well laid before they come into contact with the courts.
To make a start, the Government must undertake a ‘mea culpa’; although that concept would be foreign to them, they might wrest back some respect from the community.
There is no shame in admitting a mistake if it was done with the best intentions.
However, there is not only shame but damnation to know an error has been made and ignore it, particularly when the damage is wreaked not only on the community but also on the children the laws were supposed to protect.
There is a third flaw that contributes significantly to the crime tsunami of juveniles, perhaps more important than the others, and that is the performance, or lack thereof, of those in the Government employ (the Government’s own people) who are charged with delivering youth services.
We have seen multiple reports of this systemic failure of this Government’s function, with children who are put into care receiving nothing of the sort.
Poorly supervised and allowed to come and go as they please, no doubt to be told they are naughty, but get to keep their phones and their freedom, albeit their behaviour is outrageously dangerous to the community and themselves.
And finally, the role of the courts must not be overlooked. This lack of holding criminals to account, a concept apparently not applicable to children, can be sheeted home to the judiciary, who, by any measure, have failed in their role, particularly in relation to children.
It is the role of the courts to administer the law, not be social engineers—a social experiment by the courts that has been a miserable failure.
Placing a child in detention to protect the community and the child is in an environment the courts are not comfortable with; is not their prerogative. The Government is responsible for providing sufficient secure services for juveniles to support the Courts.
It would help if some accountability was applied to jurists.
This would not challenge the independence of the courts but may make the jurists more focused on their role and its effectiveness.
Rather than closing jails, which will incur huge ongoing costs to the State, why not convert them into juvenile facilities? After all, it is just a building; what happens inside makes it a jail or a juvenile facility.
All the contracts to operate jails slated for closure are in place and will cost a bomb to extricate from, so it makes real sense to modify rather than close them and the savings for the state will be substantial in real terms, both social and fiscal.
It won’t be long before our litigious community starts acting against the Government for the Government’s failure, resulting in the deaths and trauma inflicted by juveniles on their loved ones.
That could be a good thing, forcing the government to act.
Unfortunately, the only consequence will be a more significant financial burden on the community settling claims against the Government and the other social and financial imposts the juvenile problem imposes on all of us while the Government continues to ‘wash its hands’ of the problem, doing their ‘Pontius Pilate’ impersonation.
by CAA | Aug 20, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
Our State is dying on its feet. We have record debt levels, our Health System is in tatters, Education standards are rapidly declining, Victoria Police are understaffed, our roads are so potholed they are unsafe to drive on and crime, particularly juvenile crime, is totally out of control.
Why?
How can this Happen?
The answer is simple. Knock on (almost) any door. The vast majority of electors don’t really care enough to express their disgust. Apathy reigns.
There is the old joke of a person wanting to start an anti-apathy committee but couldn’t get anyone interested.
For the past nine and a half years, the Community Advocacy Alliance Inc. (CAA) website (caainc.org.au) has contained dozens of articles that we have published repeatedly, drawing attention to some of these problems.
We have gained a degree of traction with the general media as a community voice of reason. While this is appreciated, the CAA operates on a shoestring budget, and we have no paid staff. Our members are actually levied to provide operational funds.
Time to give apathy the boot. Time for our readers to get involved.
Join our organization or consider a donation.
We need YOUR support.
With that we could do so much more to encourage the government to lift their game.
Visit https://caainc.org.au/donate/
by CAA | Aug 12, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
Pic. courtesy Herald Sun
Victorians have every right to express concern about the current crime trends as community safety is rapidly veering towards the biggest problem facing this State, and the community mouthpiece, the media, is generally silent.
Rampant crime adversely impacts so much of our lives, not only at a personal level but in a macro sense, affecting the ability to deliver Health Services, creating budget pressure, curtailing positive Education outcomes for our children as perpetrators and victims, adding millions to the delivery of infrastructure, and most significantly, destroying many families, the cornerstone of our society.
Understandably, much of the adverse focus is on the Police; after all, the CAA and the media generally are the first to call out issues where Policing is failing, and that is a legitimate and healthy role that should not be discouraged. However, that police ‘carry the can’, so to speak, for the crime tsunami is very unfair.
In particular, the media gives the Courts a free run, generally avoiding any criticism, which is a mistake that does not serve the community well.
Until the courts accept and act on their responsibility, irrespective of how efficient or proficient police are in bringing perpetrators before the courts, crime rates will continue to soar. Paradoxically, the inaction and lack of support in a global sense for policing by the courts contribute significantly to the crime rate as perpetrators lose the important deterrent factor the courts are supposed to perform. Police end up chasing their tails.
We acknowledge that legislators also bear responsibility, but even with weakening laws, there are many ways that the judiciary could improve. One of those is through a system of robust accountability.
The current accountability is based on vague notions that fly in the face of sound jurisprudence.
Two core legal principles are crushed by the current lack of effectiveness of our legal system by the courts.
- Justice delayed is justice denied—a 19th-century proverb.
The lengthy delays in bringing perpetrators before the courts are either due to poor administration of the Court systems or inept behaviour by Jurists. Either way, before the inevitable blame is placed on budget restraints, the path to efficiency must be empirically demonstrated.
- It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffers.- Blackstone’s Ratio.
We read daily of inordinately long delays in delivering justice, sometimes years, translating into more crime or unjust treatment of accused persons.
Jurists’ propensity to repeatedly bail accused persons has a severely detrimental effect on justice delivery. Perpetrators from all court jurisdictions are let back into the community for extended periods under court-imposed conditions, which are rarely adhered to, to commit further crimes while awaiting trial. The net effect for most accused is that they are caught one day back on the streets the next.
- The accused languishes in jail on remand.
That is unjust, even for a serious crime, as the accused is innocent until proven guilty. However, jurists send accused persons to jail without a trial and without conviction for extended unacceptable periods. That the accused does time and is then not convicted is cold comfort for the prisoner and amounts to a cruel and unjust punishment.
Innocent Victims who have lived through crime trauma are further punished by inordinate delays often contributed to by the Legal fraternity as a tactic to maximise the benefit to their accused client, weakening the victim and witnesses’ resolve. How we can stand by and apply the punishment the legal process applies to victims is unconscionable.
An ineffective Judicial system is responsible for, in large part, the rise in crime.
Crime impinges on every aspect of our lives, so there is now more than ever an urgent need to expose Judicial failures and demand that an independent Judicial Review mechanism be established to address the issue that currently exists, whether that be the performance of the judicial system overall or the performance of individual Jurists.
The Judicial Review Authority must not be allowed to become a ‘lawyers’ picnic’ and have lay people in the panel representing the community with higher representation than the legal fraternity, which is clearly out of touch with the community. This Authority must also be accountable, which is best served by being appointed and answerable to a Parliamentary bipartisan oversight committee.
The media reports on many legal matters, and it seems that questions should be asked about the behaviour of some jurists but are not.
The legal system, as it stands, allows misconduct to go unchecked, and that is as bad for the credibility of the Courts as it is for the competent and reliable Jurists who serve the community well.
There are several examples,
- One case we are aware of involves a defendant charged with serious violent crimes who has allegedly manipulated the legal system to extend his bail for five (5) years to avoid being held to account despite appearing for thirteen (13) Bail hearings.
What is significant is that the thirteen appearances were before thirteen different Magistrates, strongly suggesting a breakdown in Court administration or Magistrates being manipulated by the defendant’s Legal counsel.
The Lawyer representing the defendant in this matter is an Officer of the Court, so any indiscretions by a lawyer in a matter before the Court are the ultimate responsibility of the Court. By due process, the judge sitting as a court in any jurisdiction is therefore accountable; hence, there is a need for a judicial review authority to ensure the judge’s accountability in this situation.
The victims, a mother and her children, are in hiding, destitute and unable to move on but continue to hide in fear. The impact on these victims taking a terrible toll on their lives and their future, an unconscionable outcome.
It is inexcusable that the Courts allow this to occur.
- The infamous Gobbo affair is an outstanding example where criminality within the legal system was exposed. The findings of the High Court of Australia were unambiguous in its condemnation of the players in this matter. Still, nobody has been held to account for all the dozen or so key players and the many more-bit players. The question is, why were these players not put before the Courts? Is there corruption at the highest levels? What consequences exist for this transgression?
- The Covid-19 pandemic exposed many failings, but the most significant was the failure to hold people to account for the over Eight Hundred people who it is alleged died as a direct result of incompetence. The opportunity existed on at least two occasions for the courts to take action. The Coronial inquiries into the deaths should have exposed the issues, as should the much-maligned and malevolent ‘I can’t remember’ Coate judicial inquiry.
- Currently, the aftermath of the motor car collision between the ex-Premier Daniel Andrews’s car and a young boy makes its way through the civil courts, raising the issue of why the matter was not processed initially through the criminal system. The whole event has a whiff of criminality, not only the crash itself but the actions of a law firm and others after the crash.
Article 26 of the Australian Human Rights Commission sets out unambiguously the rights of Australians before the law, but unfortunately, the courts trample on those rights in the examples given
A Judicial review Authority must have the power to intervene when the Judicial system appears to be in trouble or fails.
To avoid serious misconduct and matters being blocked or diverted from the courts, the Judicial Review Authority must have the power to initiate inquiries with powers similar to those of the Royal Commission. This would allow the community to be confident in the court process.
The process must allow the light in. to sanitise the process, and the community mouthpiece, the media, has a crucial role in facilitating this outcome.
by CAA | Aug 9, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
Pic. courtesy Herald Sun
The Herald Sun headline on the 9th of August ‘24 gives hope that Victoria Police are entering a new phase where clever resource use reaps outstanding results, but more can still be done.
We don’t know whether this means that the media have more access to police-community operations and are privy to what’s happening. Still, either way, it is a positive change and will boost the community’s confidence in the Police.
The current operations in the City of Port Philip demonstrate what can be done when Police management applies itself.
The real test, however, will be when the major Operation ends.
This Police Operation, with multiple arrests, will wrest the streets back from criminals, making the area safer for a time determined by the Courts, not the police.
With current court experience, most, if not all, offenders will be back on the street within hours.
The Police can’t do much about that but what planning is underway to ensure the regular policing response maintains the edge that the major operation archives? Or will it revert to business as usual until the community again raises concerns about a lack of police action in their locality? We hope not.
It was reported that the Commander of this operation said,
“ Remanding offenders in custody for low-level drug offending would only choke the courts further.
“We don’t want to tie up the courts; we don’t want to tie up the criminal justice system with what needs to be a health-led response,” he added. – HS 9th August ‘24
This raises two critical points.
- Police are not responsible for Court management or the Justice system; they need to remain focused on the police function and not be influenced by the inefficiencies of another Government function. The Courts are renowned for being super inefficient, which is a matter for the Courts, not the police. Police have enough to do.
In many ways, the Courts’ overload may be a positive, pushing them to take a greater responsibility in reducing recidivism among perpetrators. Much of this recidivism is hidden by so-called ‘Diversions’, which obscure the effectiveness or otherwise of the Courts.
Shut the Justice revolving door.
- Secondly, the issue of a health-led response. This much-bandied concept has been hijacked by the pro-drug activists pushing the incorrectly interpreted strategy of ‘Harm Minimisation’, which has been manipulated into ‘Harm Facilitation’.
The dug injecting room, free supply of drug injecting equipment (instead of the needle exchange program)and Pill testing are classic examples where the government has given up on proactive discouragement of illicit drug use, moving to actively promoting drugs by facilitating their use and abuse.
The issue we have with a health-based response to date is the past experiences, particularly Covid and Harm Minimisation.
We are not comfortable with the government directly collaborating or even conspiring in the illicit drug process, an illegal activity, giving drug use credibility it should not have.
We do, however, strongly support a health-based approach. Essentially, that would involve the Police having the power of a Health Officer to issue a Health Notice to anybody whose cognitive skills are compromised and who has recently consumed drugs, illicit or otherwise, that can adversely affect their cognitive ability or are likely to compromise their health.
These people can then be transported to a secure facility, where the Health Department manages the suspect’s health and avoids clogging Hospital ERs and tying up Ambulances. Contracted transport can move the drug-affected people around as they do with Drunks.
The facility must be secure so that when the person is detained, they can be released back to the police when their health is stabilised to finalise any pending criminal matters or the police have nothing else pending they can be discharged without further action provided the Health professionals sign off that it will be safe for the person to be discharged.
We must, however, remain eternally vigilant as efforts to de-power police in recent history have accelerated at a pace never before experienced in this State.
Police have lost the power to manage social disorder by various Summary Offences being repealed, the power to arrest and charge young thugs, even some committing unspeakably cruel crimes, has been severely curtailed, and the Force actions have been further curtailed by imposition of functions to tie up Police resources gathering data for other government agencies.
The next target for the ideological zealots will no doubt be the common law power for police to use discretion.
There are already signs of inroads being made to curtail this power, evident in the legislative provision regarding Police caution in the new Youth Justice Bill currently before the Parliament.
It is a program that has served the community very well for many decades, ensuring young people are diverted, not from the justice system as the Bill intends, but from a life of crime, a much more effective and desirable outcome.
Over the decades, many, many thousands of young people whose only brush with the law resulted in a Police caution for some indiscretion have since developed into very worthwhile members of society, which may well include some of our community leaders.
Removing Police discretion will be a significant win for the ideologues, and it must be resisted with vigour.
The days of the Courts simply processing those charged and issuing a penalty appropriate to the conviction are past. Society now looks to the Courts to take an active role in crime prevention beyond their traditional role.
When crime statistics are released, the police are inevitably judged by them as a measure of their performance; this must also be extended to the Courts and individual jurists as Key Performance Indicators (KPI).
by CAA | Aug 8, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
“Four teenage girls and a 12-year-old boy have been arrested and a number of machetes seized after allegedly leading police on a chase across Melbourne’s eastern suburbs in a stolen car” – Herald Sun on the 8th of August 2024.
This report is a far too common theme, young children committing very serious crimes, and the headline response from the government is to raise the age of criminal responsibility from ten to thirteen in the new Youth Justice Bill currently before parliament. What an inane response.
Unbelievable as it may seem, the new Act also removes any accountability for young offenders and gives them control of their processing.
The Bill imbues the child perpetrator with the power to reject any efforts to manage their behaviour by authorities.
This provides a blatant windfall for Lawyers representing the young, guiding them to exercise their newfound extended rights.
They are old enough to make decisions about their management but too young to understand that they are committing a crime, really?
There is a distinct possibility that these changes, opening the door for lawyer involvement, will not benefit the child but have the opposite effect.
Given these changes, not only will young people be disadvantaged, but the community will have no idea what number of children under thirteen and eventually under fourteen are committing acts that would otherwise be crimes.
Perhaps fortunate for these particular young offenders, the Youth Justice Act will not influence the process that can currently be implemented. Therefore, there is hope that these children will be redirected from a life of crime.
But let us presume, for the sake of debate, that the Youth Justice Act is operational relative to this incident.
In particular, the circumstance of the twelve-year-old.
Under the new Bill, the Police can take the child to a Police station or their home.
They cannot be interviewed or subject the child to any other of the traditional processes designed to reduce crime, such as photographing, fingerprinting, or interviewing.
And who will know, much less have any ability to intervene, if the twelve-year-old is the principal offender leading the girls into crime?
This Bill, however, allows a child to conclude that their behaviour is acceptable.
Steal a car and evade police, having armed themselves for a yet-to-be-determined purpose, and for the twelve-year-old and possibly others, there are no consequences.
They do not have to take responsibility for their actions or intent, and they can reject any attempts by authorities to divert them.
Good police work averted a far more serious crime where obviously the weapons were to be used.
What sort of society are we creating? Not a good or safe one.
The most serious omission of due process is the interview, which, amongst other things, may determine the social dynamic that caused such a young child to end up in a stolen car armed to the teeth.
This information is vital in determining how this child can be diverted from further criminal activity.
Indeed, the current diversion practices are not working well, as evidenced by the monumental increase in young people’s offending. Their crimes of choice are more violent and pose a greater risk to the community and themselves than has ever been the case.
Rather than reducing crime as suggested, the new Youth Justice Bill is whitewashing criminal behaviour and, with it, the power of authorities to intervene and adjust young people’s behaviour.
As the legislation converts the previously criminal behaviour into non-criminal behaviour, it raises critical issues.
- What happens to a recidivist child who kills somebody or is killed in a stolen car – does the liability and responsibility lie with the Government?
- What action will the government take to stop the young from being recruited by organised crime?
- Or, more importantly, given the current risks of terrorism, managing the recruitment of young people by extremists to inflict terror on the community.
- What recompense will victims of what would otherwise be crimes receive?
It is well understood that children often do not comprehend the total consequences of their actions. As we head for a dismantling of processes designed to manage young people committing anti-social acts, for all its faults, the effort should focus on improving the current system rather than throwing it out and installing an untested system that is not based on any empirical foundation.
Our children are too important to be used in a social experiment.
by CAA | Jun 19, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
As reported in the Age on the 18th of June ’24, New South Wales is leading Australia in meaningful action to reduce the burgeoning rate of death and assaults from Domestic Violence.
Premier Chris Minns, on the 14th of May, announced that Electronic Monitoring (EM), or ankle bracelets, will be introduced to perpetrators bailed.
Today, the 19th of June, West Australian Premier Roger Cook announced measures similar to those in NSW but much more comprehensive.
In the West, about 550 family and domestic violence perpetrators will be forced to wear ankle bracelets with the introduction of new laws to track and monitor high-risk perpetrators in the community.
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/western-australia/one-aussie-state-will-force-dv-thugs-to-wear-ankle-bracelets-so-highrisk-offenders-can-be-monitored-in-the-community/news-story/d97915951872826bf60ef09e1a61d671
The Apple Isle Tasmania has been using these devices since 2018 to manage Domestic Violence perpetrators with a high degree of success.
And while Victoria drags its feet on yet another initiative that will save lives, Domestic Violence victims are needlessly dying, being injured or living in self-imposed purgatory to try to keep safe.
This paper shows how victims and their families can achieve dignity and self-worth free from danger.
Based on the current research, nearly 70% of perpetrators who kill their partners have one thing in common – they all had interaction with the legal system before they committed the murder.
That means the courts are a major contributor to the system’s failure.
Premier Minns has taken the first steps with mandatory EM Monitoring as a condition of Bail. Still, the court hearing may be months or years away, so the EM intervention must be immediately after the incident or when the Apprehended Violence Order (AVO) is served.
In one case, we are aware that the perpetrator has avoided court for five years by seeking adjournments, so in NSW, he would avoid EM, and the victim continues to live in fear for the life of her family and self.
More than three out of five of the killers (68 per cent) had a prior engagement with police, 65 per cent had “prior engagement in a legal setting”, and 65 per cent had previous convictions for a criminal offence. Thirty-four per cent had prior convictions for family violence.
Police must be given the power to apply EM.
Given the statistical data, police are unlikely to get the use of EM wrong, but if they do, the issue can be resolved at the perpetrator’s first bail/adjournment hearing.
Modern technology solutions have been available for some time. However, timid politicians are more concerned about offending their perceived electoral sensitivities rather than protecting victims; perhaps they see them as unavoidable collateral damage.
A proper dispassionate interpretation of what the research tells us is that the likelihood of death or serious injury to domestic victims can be dramatically cut by using EM.
The EM must also be part of the Police Family Violence Safety Notice (FVSN).
If the Police have the power and see the need to issue an FVSN, then they should be able to implement the use of EM as part of that notice to ensure compliance and protect the victim during the period of heightened risk.
It is noteworthy that the data available to courts is the same as that available to the Police at the scene, with police having the advantage of seeing the demeanour of the parties at a time of stress, making their judgement far more informed than when the parties appear in the emotionally neutral court.
Police using this power can have their decisions overturned by a court, as an FVSN is also, in effect, a summons, and that is the proper place to test the evidence of the need for the ongoing EM compliance device.
The advantage is that the courts will no longer need to make orders for EM; they will need only to evaluate the extension. There would need to be compelling evidence for a court to order the device removed, and the court would need to be well satisfied that the judgement of the police who attended the scene was grossly misguided.
To get an accurate snapshot of just how significant the problem of Domestic Incidents is, the Crime Statistics Agency has produced some potent figures at,
https://www.crimestatistics.vic.gov.au/crime-statistics/latest-victorian-crime-data/family-incidents-2
More victims will die, and many more will be traumatised and living in constant fear as the government fails and meekly continues to accumulate blood on its hands instead of taking decisive action.
The government must get its act together and implement EM for persons issued with an FVSN by the Police as a matter of urgency.
The infrastructure, resources and technical knowledge are already well-established in the private sector and would be able to respond in short order; police training in their role in the process is minimal as the service provider looks after all technical aspects, including responses to fitting, servicing or adjusting the devices in the field as well as monitoring the devices 24/7 advising police (according to a Police protocol), of any breaches to the conditions imposed on that device.
There are no excuses for not establishing this initiative and using the private sector as a government response to establish or expand the ability to deal with this. In the best, most optimistic scenario, it will take 4-5 years.
Time the victims don’t have.
by CAA | Apr 24, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
No objective assessment can question that we are in a crime crisis.
While there is overwhelming evidence of a crisis of significance, what is also happening on a scale below the headline events, and is numerically high, is many cases, inflicting cruel injuries, both physical and mental, to innocent victims that are irreversible, ruining their lives and their families.
We must be realistic and accept that what we have been doing doesn’t work; blaming others and trying to identify the cause serves a purpose, but not now.
Now, is the time to bring the problem under control, and then we can look at long-term solutions.
What has become abundantly clear is there is a dearth of leadership.
Somebody needs to stand up and tackle the issue, not in a month, but now, before more people are maimed or die.
We urgently need a significant boost in Police numbers to enable a visible Police presence at all places of high risk 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
We also need to deal with the demonstration issue so that policing the state can continue despite threats of demonstrations.
The Chief Commissioner could decree that all non-essential police operations be suspended for two months and that police freed up be allocated to patrolling high-risk areas.
At the end of the period, it may well turn out that a hiatus of the non-function or fiefdom building functions are not as critical as assumed, and elements could be permanently dispensed with.
It seems that Victoria Police are hesitating to face the challenge.
We expect that VicPol, in crisis, will return to the failed Matrix Management philosophy of having a meeting instead of somebody displaying leadership, addressing the problem, and accepting responsibility for the outcome.
The attraction to the meeting strategy is the appearance of something being done that will solve everything. The added bonus is that no individual can be held accountable for failure. VicPol is not alone; there is nothing of substance from the Government or Opposition either, which is very worrying and exposes the weakness of the leadership currently on offer.
There are currently insufficient police under current police management practices to become proactive and prevent these incidents; however, in this crisis, we need to be bold and innovative to deal with the current life and death problems.
Part of the solution lies in using the thousands of retired police in the community, who can perform many operational tasks and most back-room administrative functions—a Force Reserve.
This frees up police to man shopping malls, shopping strips, transport hubs, schools, or any place that demonstrates a security risk to minimise what is quickly approaching carnage.
It may be argued that it is easier said than done, but it is not difficult if intelligent minds are assigned to the task.
Establishing a Police Reserve where retired members can be offered a position at the same rank and payscale they previously held to stay on for a specified period or part-time, returning to work under the same conditions.
Amendments to the Police Act can be quickly drafted to accommodate a Police Reserve. Some retirees value the freedom of retirement but are very prepared and capable of taking up short-term commitments as required, a technique used significantly by the military.
A cash incentive scheme would guarantee sufficient interest. If handled correctly, the Reserve members may need a short training update of weeks, not months.
The argument that we should recruit more is a long-term necessity. Still, recruiting potentially competent and effective police is too slow to provide police management with the surge capacity required to keep the state safe.
The recent COVID experiences placed incredible demands on Police resources. They should have been enough to cause serious planning to create the capacity for VicPol to develop a surge capacity.
An adequate surge capacity means responding to the issue while retaining the necessary resources to maintain day-to-day functions.
For example, the significant issue during the COVID response was VicPol’s inability to respond and provide security for the COVID-19 quarantine facilities that housed infected people.
The task then fell to a questionable Private Security firm. As a result, it has been argued that 801 lives were lost because the virus escaped the Quarantine facilities—a security failure.
Whatever the argument that the Chief Commissioner of the time put forward, it is not unreasonable to conclude that had police taken on the Security function from the beginning, the likelihood of the virus escaping would have been substantially reduced, albeit that Private Security could augment Poilce and be phased in over time.
Inexplicably, Emergency Management Victoria seemed to play no part.
The problem of VicPol not having adequate surge capacity to deal with unforeseen events was exposed, but here we are again, only a couple of short years later and again, the lack of a surge capacity persists.
The difference this time is that the evidence of an impending social disorder crisis has been evident for some time as thousands of new migrants have been added to the population without consideration of the infrastructure, including police numbers, to deal with the additional migrants who historically bring with them new and problematic issues requiring more intense Police attention.
Here are some suggestions for how a reserve may augment operational members to create a surge capacity.
- The majority of staff on a Booze Bus could be sworn Force Reserve.
- Watch House Keepers throughout the State could be drawn predominantly from the reserve.
- Capable Force Reserve members could interview witnesses.
- Crime scene specialists could be trained in the reserve.
- All police allocated to community liaison roles supporting special interest groups could be reallocated to operations, and much of this work undertaken by the Police Reserve members.
- There is no doubt Reserve members could replace many Police involved in training.
- On the issue of training, which has generally moved online, the efficiency and efficacy of that move need to be reconciled. Hours spent on a computer most shifts compared with police being returned to the classroom for training where all the advantages of group training can be experienced must be revisited. The online move suits the trainers, making their lives easier, but it is not a good management practice. Online training hours are not adequately managed, affecting Police member’s productivity. Spending a couple of hours online during a shift where they could provide a visible police presence is a counterproductive use of members’ time.
- Every Police function must be reviewed and categorised as essential, necessary or nice to have. The latter is where the numbers can be extracted from.
These are just a few examples that could effectively increase the force capacity by over a thousand members when required. Still, with application, there are hundreds of other jobs where a reserve member could effectively function to achieve efficiency. When done appropriately, service efficiencies can achieve a higher level of service delivery.
Reserve members of all ranks could also be considered for relieving tasks. This could have a very positive impact on resource capability and suit many retirees’ lifestyles.
Unfortunately, these current issues are not like COVID-19 and are unlikely to dissipate like a virus.
The issues are deeply rooted in the cultural and non-secular values instilled over generations by many of the new migrants arriving in this country. As they continue to come in great numbers, the problems will escalate, not diminish.
VicPol cannot just sit back and hope but must start seriously addressing the resource problem with clear, nonpartisan values.
The cost would be considerably less than accelerating new recruit training and avoiding taking shortcuts like lowering standards that may prove detrimental to the organisation in the long term.
If the matters require Government funding, the community has every right to know that a lack of funding compromises their safety, and the Government can take responsibility.
At the moment, VicPol is responsible.
by CAA | Apr 23, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
Latest developments have exposed the consequences of failing to manage the youth crisis, and a grave deterioration has started to evolve.
The worst possible outcome is the evolution of vigilantism.
Vigilantism as a solution to a crime issue has the enormous risk that rather than quelling lawlessness, it may increase it, with these groups becoming part of the problem rather than solving it.
We have suburbs of Brighton employing private security to improve safety, but now residents on the other side of Melbourne, and in vastly different socio-economic circumstances, in Mambourin Estate near Werribee are indicating they propose to set up patrols from 9:00 pm to 3:00 am when the thugs in the area are most active. The outcome could be a disaster, as there is every likelihood the thugs may decide to assert their strength, leading to bad outcomes.
There would be no doubt that the thugs feel they rule the streets, so they are likely to oppose any challenge to their ‘freedom’. The challenge would be ugly.
Victoria Police need to step in immediately, not with consultative groups, a favoured non-function, but with sufficient resources to proactively patrol the area to give the community the safety they deserve.
If local police were doing their job, they should have known of the growing concerns and taken proactive action before it got to this stage. Another mangemnent failure.
But that is what happens when the Force focuses on reactive functions and is not proactive.
by CAA | Apr 19, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
As reported in the Herald Sun on April 18, 2024, Victoria Police bemoaned the impact on resources caused by the outbreak of demonstrations in the city.
Ten thousand shifts of Police keeping the broader community safe have been redirected to managing the epidemic of demonstrations currently in vogue.
While we empathise with the current Force perspective, much of the current issues have been caused by the police themselves.
As we have consistently argued, applying law and order must be consistent and not influenced by ideology. Inconsistency breeds contempt.
The continuing ideological bias is blatantly apparent.
This bias became evident in the lead-up to and during COVID-19 and continues today, so why are we surprised Melbourne is the Demo Capital of Australia?
Failure to act decisively when a new issue attracts demonstrations and then failing to be consistent not only promotes more demonstrations, as is the case in Victoria, but the broader public sees through the spin and police respect further declines along with support.
‘They are the Police; how come they can’t fix it’ is a growing question within the community as frustration builds.
The current impasse, which encompasses a number of Law and Order issues, including the ‘Youth Crisis,’ is adding to the loss of respectability and confidence in our Police as a consequence of COVID responses.
There are two aspects to this article: police resourcing and police capability.
On police resourcing, the press article tries to deflect the blame for police management’s lack of capacity to respond to operational demands by blaming the demonstrators for not complying with police requests for information on proposed activities.
Finding excuses rather than solutions has become the police go-to position on various issues.
The need for pragmatic police management is now essential.
In the current crisis, how can resources be applied to a sexual complaint that allegedly happened over fifty years ago? We understand that considerable police resources are used to investigate historical events of this nature. Pragmatic leadership has two strategies at its disposal: pressuring the Government and encouraging public debate on a statute of limitations and, more effectively, intervention by police command to prioritise the allocation of resources.
It is time for a twenty-year statute of limitations to be applied to all historical crimes. The likelihood of safe convictions and the fallibility of human memory can lead to many hours of wasted police time, all while the state is faced with an imminent crime crisis.
A safeguard for victims in exceptional circumstances would allow them or the police to apply to a court to have the statute lifted on a case-by-case basis.
A fifty-year-old case versus stopping home invasions and curbing youth crime now; we know where the public sits on this conundrum.
Victoria Police have to develop the chutzpah to say no and prioritise resources.
Gathering data for other agencies is another resource black hole.
As the article argues, 10,000 hours were lost at the local level, but why must it be at the local level? Why is our frontline carrying the brunt of the Policing load?
There is a significant number of non-operational and operational support police who should be called upon before the stations start to lose shifts. They are all sworn Police officers.
Or is it just lazy management finding it more accessible to bleed staff from the stations?
Losing a day here or there from the support areas would not significantly impact many police functions, and the weight can be lifted from the stations.
The lack of planning to develop a surge capacity for VicPol is a blatant management failure and must be addressed.
Developing a Force Reserve would be cost-effective, operationally sound, and a significant step toward solving the staffing crisis.
VicPol must be asked the question: What would happen if another significant incident occurred during a major demonstration? What is plan B?
Overriding this issue, publicly exposing resourcing matters is not the best idea we have seen, as no doubt any terrorist cell plotting insurrection now knows when to strike.
Police capability and the government’s role in ensuring police have the tools to be effective have been significant issues.
The Premier was asked about this, and her response was;
“The Victorian government will not be following in the footsteps of NSW by implementing a permit system for mass gatherings.”
“Victoria Police have the tools and the resources to respond to these activities,” she said.
“(They are) demonstrating that they have the tools,” she said.
If the Premier believes VicPol has the tools, why aren’t they being used?
The permit system works well in other jurisdictions and is not designed to prevent the right to demonstrate but to prevent unruly mobs from disrupting the community.
This position on permits exposes the government’s inability to govern for all Victorians and not pander to a few: ideology usurping pragmatism, a common and distinctly modern political trait.
If the government won’t reinstate the ‘move on laws’ and introduce a ‘permit system’ for demonstrations, the disruption and the police’s failure to act decisively, even if their ideology is controlled, must be at the government’s feet.
Strong statements must come from Victoria Police so the community is informed.
Doing away with blame-shifting might be an excellent start to rebuild confidence.
by CAA | Apr 16, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
It would have been reasonable to assume that, if nothing else, VicPol would have learnt from the errors of policing demonstrations during the COVID-19 pandemic. A lack of consistency and basic mistakes in Command and Control principles caused much of the mayhem and operational missteps.
While policing is confronted with demonstrations or social disorder issues that form part of the fabric of Policing, somewhere along the line, experiences of the past have been lost, reducing the effectiveness of the Police function.
Many former Police officers serving in a different era were shocked and dismayed at the ineptitude during COVID-19. They hoped the mistakes made then would be a lesson and future issues would be handled differently. It seems a forlorn hope.
Several flaws in the COVID response included a lack of consistency in approach. Seemingly, the police response to every event differed, creating confusion among the demonstrators or, more importantly, confusion among the individual members on how to respond.
Thankfully, the COVID era and all its failings seem to be behind us but will not be forgotten for a long time to come, and for all the wrong reasons.
Fast forward to the current issues motivated by the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Large pro-Palestine/Hamas demonstrations are designed to, as far as possible, disrupt the significant commercial hubs within Australia, trying to wreak as much disruption as possible by sheer weight of numbers.
As the fervour of these demonstrations is allowed to fester, the real possibility of demonstrations escalating into insurrection becomes an ever-increasing threat, and that is because of a Police failure.
Instead of taking decisive and consistent action, rather than just being observers when the demonstrations on this issue began, the police made a significant mistake in allowing ideology to enter the operational approach.
It became very evident at the Town Hall demonstration that the line of impartial law enforcement had been crossed.
Recently, a huge group of pro-Palestine/Hamas demonstrators gathered outside the Town Hall to demonstrate issues being debated by the City Council. Entry to the chamber public gallery was by ticketed invitation, and three Australians of Jewish origin with tickets to the event tried to enter the Town Hall to attend the meeting but were violently set upon and blocked by a worked-up pro-Palestine/Hamas crowd.
At that point, the three invitees became victims of unlawful behaviour.
The Police response was counterintuitive to the sworn duty of Police. They removed the three victims and sanctioned them by barring them from the city.
The perpetrators of the assaults were not arrested, albeit they committed the offences in the immediate presence of the Police.
All of this was videotaped, and the vision was available to police. Arrests and charges ought to have followed.
The actions of the Police gave the demonstrators a huge moral win and set a new standard that assaulting people was acceptable behaviour.
This action by the Police will embolden and escalate future demonstrations in this cause.
The Police excuse that it was an Occupational Health and Safety issue (OH&S); reducing the danger to police from the demonstrators is unacceptable and a dereliction of their sworn duty to act without fear or favour.
Perhaps Inspector Amy Scott of NSW Police thankfully missed the memo about OH&S as interpreted in Victoria and saved many lives as a result.
Policing is an inherently dangerous occupation, and safety is created by competent leadership and planning, appropriate equipment and training.
Victoria Police need to recalibrate their operational approach to demonstrations, and where laws are broken, decisive action must be taken. Policing has no place for cowards.
Lawbreaking without consequences only escalates lawbreaking.
The OH&S Claims at the Town Hall have been exposed as a rampant ideology as the latest mass demonstration saw Police charge demonstrators interfering with traffic lights.
The Victims in those offences were the traffic lights, but when the victims were Jewish, OH&S a different standard was applied – consistency?
There is a strong argument for introducing a permit system for gatherings of over ten people and providing a water cannon as a backup for members’ safety.
There has been a reluctance to provide water cannon technology because it is rarely, if ever, used, and the cost is said to not be justified. However, having a big stick backing the Police would be the smartest way to defuse incidents and reduce police injuries.
Not having specialised emergency management equipment because of a perceived lack of demand is incredibly short-sighted. If we applied that logic to a specialist high-reach fire truck or airport fire appliances, the ‘hue and cry’ if they were needed and were no longer available would cause a justifiable uproar.
The CAA implores Victoria Police to police according to their oath of office ‘without fear or favour’ and to review and change the biased practices we deplore.
by CAA | Mar 5, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized
One might call it the alignment of the stars. Still, we are inclined to view the current Police management as an alignment of the ineffective, more concerned about being woke and aligning themselves with an ideology driven by a limited number of politicians in government that, unfortunately, like in the Force, holds sway.
We have a Police Force that is ineffective and indifferent to our needs directly due to poor management driven by ideologues sidelining pragmatic Officers dedicated to the core principles of policing consistent with their Oath of Office and Peelian principles.
Fortunately, this insidious phenomenon has not infected all the senior officers. Still, of those who are, bring the honour of the Force down.
The statistics say it all, and the flimsy excuses no longer wash.
Whilst the crime rate soars, juvenile crime is out of control, and the deaths on our roads are rapidly escalating as the Force expends so much energy on being woke, it fails to adequately address the fundamental policing issues.
Given the VicPol performance and the latest risk assessments of the likelihood of terrorist activity on-shore, Victorians are rightly concerned as to whether the Police command is up to a challenge of this magnitude, particularly how the police might respond depending on the cause the terrorist represents.
Following policy set by the government of the day is necessary; however, that does not extend to following a particular ideology proffered by individuals within a government and not what the citizenry expected when they cast their ballot.
There is no mandate for a woke Force.
Police are individually entitled to their personal views; however, when this starts impinging on the operations of Victoria Police, which is not the plaything of the alleged enlightened officers of the Woke brigade, something has to be said.
The credibility and confidence in the Police Force is crumbling, and the remedial action needed is urgent. Unfortunately, some in the hierarchy are in denial, and that is going to make it difficult to rectify, so it is essential that those who suffer from this malaise must be moved out of the Force as a matter of urgency.
The mantra to all police at all levels should be ‘go woke, go somewhere else’.
Over the last few years, politicisation, wokeness and the inward focus have developed a pattern that makes these issues very concerning and supports the view that the Victoria Police has become an arm or weapon of not only one political party but appears to show loyalty to one faction of the party.
A pattern developed as a string of issues supports the hypothesis that the Force backs the Left factions of the government.
Israel-Hamas War Demonstrations Response
Police may have exposed the Force to litigation by their response, failing to uphold their sworn duty.
The police argued that they were avoiding the escalation of violence by tolerating Pro-Palestinian activities, but they were consenting to their behaviour, a recipe for further escalation.
It is a pity that the principle was not applied during the COVID-19 demonstrations.
Police need to do their sworn duty, encapsulated in their Oath of Office, which in part says,
“ – I will see and cause the peace to be kept and preserved, and that I will prevent to the best of my power all offences, and that while I continue to be a police officer, I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties legally imposed on me faithfully and according to law.”
How conflicted must front-line police feel when pushed towards breaching their Oath by Command decisions?
The latest incident was when, for the first time, pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested. With all the anti-Jewish pro-Palestine demonstrations, there were no arrests; the victims, however, were penalised, but now pro–Palestine demonstrators have been arrested for disrupting a Gay event.
It seems it is ok for the pro-Palestinians to demonstrate and be violent towards the Jews, but it took a disruption of a Gay event before any Police action was taken against these thugs.
It is a pity the Police didn’t protect the Jews impacted like they did the Gays.
Gay Pride March response.
The CAA position is that what Police do in their own time as it relates to their sexuality is their business, and it should remain that way unless it is affecting their Police function. Irrespective of any issue, police must remain dispassionate in performing their duty and not become part of events.
The previous Gay Pride march was marred by violence and not by Police dealing with violent demonstrators, but by the Police involving themselves -they became part of the problem willingly or not.
The blame for allowing police to put themselves in this position must be ‘sheeted home’ to Command.
Various gay events or celebrations have had uniformed Police taking part over quite a few years; however, VicPol failed to read the room and understand that the uniformed police presence was no longer welcome.
The staff commitment to the march hurts the Police service delivery, and with arguments that the force numbers are down and the crime rate ballooning, as is the Road toll, how can the force afford to take so many police away from operations for this frolic?
The response by VicPol to this debacle of policymaking was surprisingly utterly inadequate.
‘We will return’ was the VicPol message, a parody of General Douglas MacArthur’s famous ‘I will return’ made in a war setting.
This very ‘bolshy’ response would no doubt appeal to the hairy-chested knuckle draggers in VicPol. The other side, however, will be super-charged by the challenge. You can bet that planning for the next event to screw the cops is well-advanced.
If the mistake is compounded by police again marching with this or any similar group, you can guarantee there will be an escalation of violence.
Hotheads cannot prevail.
A mea culpa is essential, and as it would be the cause for reducing lawlessness and couched in that way, the community would support the action as responsible.
Let’s hope Victoria exercises the same sensible approach as NSW and withdraws from direct involvement in politicised causes.
Drawing a comparison between the over-the-top COVID responses and current strategies is telling. Although we are confident in the actual frontline police, it is their master’s that are cause for genuine concern.
We despair as to what lies ahead and how future challenges faced by police will be managed; challenges of various magnitudes are inevitable, and some significant changes at executive and sub-executive levels are now critical to ensure that the ability to handle the unexpected is capable of being done.
This is an old but apt adage, given that many results are less than optimum to date.
‘- if you do the same tomorrow as you did today, do not expect a different result.’
by CAA | Feb 27, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues
The CAA has published a series of Plans aimed at identifying issues in the law and order space that adversely impact all of us. The current iteration is PLAN 100.3, updating the last version, published in 2019.
A lot has happened in the intervening years. This paper will update the community about the issues we identify and provide suggestions to decision-makers on how things can be improved.
We welcome any comments and hope this paper informs the broader community to pressure for change.
Plan 100.3 Word Doc
Plan 100.3 PDF
