The incongruity stems from the ‘Hairy-chested’, get tough on High-Risk Drivers (HRD’s) (Hoons) approach, announced by VicPol. The box-them-in intercept strategy and the alleged direction by the Force to its members to issue warnings to young offenders rather than charge them.
There is nothing wrong with police reviewing their approach to intercepting High Risk Drivers (HRD), but the strategy should favour targeting effectiveness over more violent resolution.
Additionally, calling these drivers Hoons slips easily off the tongue, but call them for what they are: High-risk Drivers (HRD), and remove the attraction for idiots and criminals to aspire to the title ‘Hoon’ that can be worn as a badge of honour, particularly amongst the juvenile cohort, as they currently do when given bail or a non-custodial sentence: ‘I beat it’.
Moreover, the strategy of ‘boxing in’ does nothing to reduce the number of incidents, as the HRDs’ egos usually transcend their ability, and many will believe they can beat the police.
We wonder what WorkCover might say about this strategy, which puts members at greater risk and encourages them to crash Police cars?
The impact of these decisions on Police WorkCover premiums might also be very interesting; can’t imagine it would be good news.
No crook ever intends to get caught as inane as some of their actions may be.
Banks never got robbed if a uniformed police officer was at the front door.
Just look at the last time the Force tried to flex its muscle.
The transition from the traditional Blue to Black (Salute Blue) in 2012/13 for the Victoria Police uniforms was to project a more ‘authoritative image’, a ‘tougher look’, and look at where that got us with the crime rate: more authoritative, tougher, balderdash.
Coincidentally, that marked the precursor to the crime tsunami we are now lumbered with and the real cause of the seemingly endless incidents of HRD events.
While the get-tough on HRDs is underway, the Force has issued an edict apparently to direct members to warn children and not prosecute.
A sceptic may conclude this is simply a strategy to reduce reported juvenile crime figures, with nothing to do with reducing Juvenile crime.
This creates the incongruity.
Is the Force hooked on the premise of locking them up, or is letting offenders get away with crime their current philosophy?
Either strategy is fraught with problems and unlikely to have the desired effect on crime rates or, more importantly, the feeling of safety the Victorian community enjoyed before the crime tsunami.
This youth strategy is not compassion but capitulation.
Surrendering to the Police’s failures in youth and juvenile justice more generally.
This latest edict re youthful offenders flies in the face of another frustration the Police have.
Political interference in operations, and we all saw where that got us during COVID.
Sworn Police members have a historical and legislated right to exercise discretion, and that power rests with the individual member; to place this instruction as a blocker to discretion is the same as the Government interfering in Police operations.
Police take an oath of Office that brings with it responsibilities and obligations; it is the application of these obligations and responsibilities that defines good Policing and, in particular, good police.
Again, these latest edicts seem to further remove responsibility from perpetrators, and the principle of accountability for actions is again swept aside. Until we can impose accountability, we might as well be ‘whistling in the wind’, as tangible results will be elusive.
When dealing with the HRD, the Force should focus on the car, not the perpetrator. In this new age of technology, the answer already exists: the ability to immobilise vehicles remotely.
Frustratingly, a strategy to reduce the danger of intercepts exists and has been ignored by Police for years: disabling the vehicle, improving police effectiveness, reducing danger to the public, and, importantly, in the case of stolen vehicles, reducing the cost to victims, as no insurance covers like-for-like replacements. See https://caainc.org.au/the-g-tag-a-new-paradigm-in-community-safety/
Once a criminal or simply a HRD driver loses the ability of the car to operate, their whole being and purpose are removed, whether that is crazy driving or criminal acts.
This approach should be a no-brainer, but a ‘hairy-chested’ approach is favoured; perhaps it makes the architects of this approach feel good, but it’s sure as hell won’t work.
Apart from the cost of wrecking a plethora of police cars in the process, a cost borne by all Victorians, can you imagine the poor victim, watching the nightly news, seeing their beloved car being driven through the streets on the wheel rims only to be smashed to smithereens along with a couple of police cars.
Some ‘noggin head’ of limited capacity was tasked with running a pilot some years back along the lines of the CAA G-Tag proposal.
Their idea was to fit cars with disabling tech and link them to the owner’s phone, so when it was stolen the owner could contact the police and give a commentary on the location and direction of the vehicle so it could be intercepted.
A couple of major flaws not thought through.
The owner is likely to be severely stressed and prone to inaccuracies.
While attempting to help police, they are trying to figure out how to get to work tomorrow or get the kids to school or, for that matter, how to survive and at what cost without a car.
And unless practised, they may find it difficult to operate two functions of their phone: vehicle location software and communicating that data with Police.
The pilot was doomed to fail as owners lost interest because they weren’t attracted to doing the police’s job for them.
The pilot may have been more effective if its architects had bothered to chat with the CAA.
The next logical expectation from the pilot managers would be for the owner to chase the perpetrator and make a citizen’s arrest. Policing becomes more efficient, and the crime rate drops, or that might be the rationale of the ‘noggin head’.
But the best solution VicPol can come up with is the box-them-in strategy: more vehicle damage, more police cars wrecked, and for what? The crims will nick another car as soon as they are bailed.
Removing the usefulness of the essential equipment (a vehicle) used by criminals is the most cost-effective way to reduce crime. Particularly juvenile crime. If they grab a car and it is shut down, it becomes useless to them and is discarded.
In relation to the second edict of police being instructed to issue warnings, it is arrant rubbish and only supports the non-effect of the courts not holding children to account for their actions; a really dumb approach.
Placing the onus on members is again unfair, as they will inevitably lean towards a warning rather than risk vexing their superiors, who were probably nowhere near the scene; these views and instructions lack first-hand experience of the particular offending and its real impact on the perpetrators’ victims.
If the Victoria Police hierarchy believes a field warning deters a child, as they say in ‘The Castle’, “You got to be dreamin’.”
It only takes a cursory look at the effectiveness of the stern warnings handed out by the judiciary in the Courts. “Was that the fifth time or the sixth time you have offended and this is your seventh, last chance; yep, more ‘whistling in the wind’, and as effective.
It is somewhat embarrassing how the Force at times does not understand human behaviour, and for a people’s business, that is a serious anomaly.
Understanding a particular facet of human behaviour should underpin all policy and strategic decisions at the corporate level.
Children under one year old start to learn that certain actions have consequences, and that can be as simple as touching something hot; the consequences are unpleasant, and the likelihood of repetition is extremely low. As much as parents teach children within the home environment, they do teach themselves a lot.
Fast forward to retirement, and an older person using a drill press intermittently, fails to secure the workpiece properly, and it slips, spinning at the speed of the drill and taking some bark off the luckless operator’s knuckles. A repetition of that risk and consequence is highly unlikely.
There are a plethora of examples throughout life that mould everyone’s behaviour.
This process breaks down with third-party interference, where behaviours or actions are excused, forgiven, or ignored, so the valuable lessons that lead to responsibility for one’s actions and accountability for the consequences are lost.
The Courts seem not to have learnt from this concept, as recidivism, particularly amongst juveniles, shows the judicial system up as a failure.
Now Police are following this trend and will achieve the same outcome as the Courts: failure.
Warning children through the Police Cautioning Program is fine, and as an alternative to a Court appearance, can be very effective. This is primarily because, for a child to accept a Police caution, they must first admit their crime; the Courts, by contrast, are less likely to seek that admission.
More importantly, it involves the child’s parents or guardians rather than being just observers in the court process.
This system also needs attention to improve outcomes by linking the official police caution to the legal system, where the caution can be made known to the judiciary when dealing with a child.
That information should help the judiciary tailor a suitable sanction to avoid recidivism.
A Judicial Review Committee, as previously recommended by the CAA, would go a long way toward ensuring the judiciary does its job and contributes to an overall effective legal system.
An interesting statistic jumped out from the reading of electoral material trying to project the likely outcome of the next State election: 48% of Victorians surveyed felt that Youth Crime and Bail Laws were the number one issue affecting their voting intentions.
While I don’t think anyone will be surprised by this finding, thinking more deeply about why we have such a problem raises interesting questions.
The highly effective Police in Schools program, cancelled in 2006 by Chief Commissioner Nixon, has always been a puzzling decision, but even more so when six consecutive Chief Commissioners have also failed to reintroduce the program.
There are attempts to deliver a facsimile of the original program, but apart from not being independently evaluated, the impact and effectiveness of this in creating a special bond with children, therefore influencing their future behaviour and values, is questionable. Most police activity in schools seems sporadic and defeats the advantage of scheduled interactions children can rely on. One of those six Commissioners even declared his support for the program and announced it would be reintroduced, only for it to be quietly shelved again.
This clearly showed that this particular Chief faced internal pushback, stymying any progress in this area. Apparently, kids aren’t important enough.
This is particularly strange given the purpose of Policing is to reduce crime and violence in the community, so why shelve a proven program, particularly when the State faces horrendous youth crime figures that translate into a reality of fear for the community? The program was the only one of its type in Australia to undergo rigorous University evaluation, and while that evaluation was critical of the program’s management, interestingly, the program lives on very successfully in other states, and they all have lower per capita crime rates of youth offending.
That matrix cannot be ignored.
Why cancel a project when the management is the problem? Logic would suggest that replacing the management, not scuttling the whole successful program, would have been the sensible course. Since the cancellation of the program, there has been a steady and sometimes dramatic increase in juvenile crime over the last two decades, and this cannot be just a coincidence.
Recent discussions with another CAA member highlighted a difficulty that I was not aware of until now. Police working in schools sometimes found themselves ostracised by staff, particularly the Teachers’ Unio; not all schools but some.. The argument goes along the lines that the teachers are the only ones who do the teaching, not some other group; in this case, police. The threat of encroachment on the teachers’ perceived turf seemed to be rampant in the lead-up to the cancellation of the program and, in part, of the pushback against its reintroduction, rather than what we had assumed was pushback from within the Force. Chief Commissioners can be pressured by a compliant Government to accede to union demands.
Ironically, many teachers have voiced their support, telling us that in schools where the program operated, students were more respectful of them, of each other, better behaved in class and easier to teach.
Those teachers also felt safer. The shocking reality is that the children’s and the community’s welfare to live with less crime is not even a consideration in the demise of this program; it is purely political, as is its failure to be reintroduced, supported by lame excuses.
Moreover, the Union, you would anticipate, would welcome the support of the police in the classroom to protect teachers and deal with problems beyond the remit of the schools- that is, beyond the school gate – allowing them to focus on teaching in a safe environment.
We also wondered why the Police Association was so silent on this issue, which would help reduce the workload and stress on its members; belatedly, we suspect we now know the answer: politics.
This suggests that the crime tsunami we are now experiencing is, in part, at least, caused by Union interference and lack of political will rather than reluctant Chief Commissioners.
We suspect this is not the only area that has been impacted by Union pressure on policing via the Government. In the mid to early 2000’s a seismic shift in Police training occurred, and it is difficult to understand how this improved the training outputs. Moreover, we are not aware of any research to determine the program’s success or failure, as members of the Teachers’ Union became the primary instructors at the Police Academy.
We have no doubt they are capable of teaching students the theory and principles of law, but having ‘never faced an angry man’ they would fail miserably at teaching recruits the ethos of policing and how the law should be applied, and, most importantly, how police power to exercise discretion should be exercised, the importance of discipline within the organisation, and how to survive in the real policing world, the most critical of all skills taught.
That can only be effectively delivered by those who have experienced first-hand the issues confronting police and cannot be metered out in some theoretical form that would have no hope of emulating real-world experience, and that experience lies with experienced street police officers who have served a substantial amount of time at the sharp end of policing.
The police law Instructor managing each recruit squad of Recruits must be an experienced member, not below the rank of Sergeant, with broad operational experience.
Perhaps this training change has had a serious adverse impact on police graduating from the academy and the spike in Post-Traumatic Stress Injury (PTSI) over the last decade. It certainly should be subject to investigation.
Without the imparting of real-life experiences in the field and how to resolve them, the graduates are ill-equipped to deal with the stresses of policing; hence the escalation of PTSI. They don’t know what they are in for.
It is not too much of a stretch to view these two areas together as they may indicate a systemic failure forced on policing to the detriment of the Teaching Staff and the school communities, and the case of the individual police members diagnosed with PTSI and the impact on their lives, careers, and families, when both areas could be substantially improved by a responsible government and Chief Commissioners who would stand up to outside adverse influences.
Not to be overlooked is the huge financial impost that failures in these two areas impose on the Government Budgets, and it may well be that these issues could be a useful exercise for the Auditor General to investigate.
There is an old adage and lessons to be learnt: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, applicable to both areas.
It is now time for the political parties endeavouring to contest the right to govern to come out and address this issue; at this stage, there is no alternative plan to the status quo, which leaves a huge void on the issue most likely to influence voters in 50 odd days.
At last, somebody, and in this case, the Auditor General, has exposed the farcical management of young offenders by a plethora of government-sponsored quangos masquerading as a Youth Strategy.
Long before this was mentioned or questioned, those in the know have known that community-based efforts with young people don’t work.
What is lacking is for young people to learn accountability: do something illegal, and there are unpleasant consequences; having a youth worker in your corner does not achieve this in any way or shape.
Moreover, if a Community Group funded by Government cannot fulfil administrative requirements, they are very unlikely to be capable of performing a useful function.
And we now know that this failed program has cost us $40m, and a further $52m for the next four years, and even with this Auditor’s report now public, the Government has handed a $5.1m lifeline to keep this failure operational.
The program has been predominantly outsourced to community organisations since 2016.
Launched in 2019 by then Premier Daniel Andrews, this spectacular failure adds to a litany of initiatives launched with great fanfare but lacking substance. A thought-bubble process that this particular Government used to run the State. And now these thought bubbles are coming home to roost, and we are the ones paying for it.
Contrary to Government agency claims, the program’s failure is spectacular by any measure, with 70% of participants reoffending within six months of joining the program.
This scheme, touted as “Labour’s flagship $40m youth crime ‘ fix ‘,” must be thoroughly investigated to ensure there was no criminality involved in the delivery side of the “fix”.
We have regularly seen where projects of Government initiatives have been routinely routed; ‘The Big Build’ and “NDIS” are just two high-profile examples, and inevitably the failure to manage projects is endemic to Governments, so it is not unreasonable to assume that the $40m Youth Fix would be any different because it has something very much in common with the two examples – a failure to deliver – just measured by a different matrix.
But above the sphere of incompetence or criminality is the impact on our youth and the community, more broadly, that these 70% of recidivists wreak.
What the Auditor General has exposed unwittingly is perhaps the answer to the conundrum that those of us interested in juvenile crime have been pondering for years: why has the crime rate among juveniles increased so dramatically?
We have long held the view that the Courts allowing young people to avoid sanctions for committing crime has been a major driver of the current problems. Still, now we find out that the Courts may well be complicit in the mismanagement of young perpetrators by referring them to the Government’s main Youth Crime Prevention Program with the very high prospect of failure and recidivism.
The failure of the Courts was not to ensure that a program touted as the Government’s main initiative was actually fit for purpose.
The ease with which courts seek diversion for young offenders is still a major problem; as the word suggests, they are routinely diverted from taking responsibility for their actions.
Not how Diversion is interpreted by the Courts, but instead, the reality of that approach.
But what to do to solve the problem?
There is no quick fix or magic bullet because the problem is so ingrained in society.
However, the first thing that must happen is that the government’s failed juvenile crime initiative must be cancelled and the funds diverted towards a solution.
Continuing on this failed path would be criminally irresponsible, and Misconduct in Public Office offences must be levelled at those responsible, not only for the project to date but also for anybody failing to cancel this failed initiative.
The Budget allocation for 2026-27 must be reallocated to fixing the problem, not perpetuating it.
To identify the solution, there are two parts: firstly, prevention to avoid young people getting into criminality, and secondly, if they do, then there are unpleasant consequences that will discourage further offending.
The whole management of juveniles must be a reward-and-penalty approach, so they quickly learn criminality has a serious downside.
That is not a ‘lock-em up’ and throw away the key approach but a targeted short-term penalty of incarceration where they can be exposed to a process of reward and punishment. Children do not need long sentences to change, as their world is likely to change a number of times in 12 months, so penalties of weeks in the first instance, with a graduated scale for recidivism, would be more effective.
If that approach needs a ‘root and branch’ review of the juvenile justice system, then that is what is needed, and needed urgently.The key to a review’s success is that it is conducted not by those within the system that needs reviewing; otherwise, the outcome will be predictable, and nothing will change.
Establishing an effective review panel will not be easy, and we will, in due course, address this part of the issue; however, the first and most pressing step is to cancel the current program and withhold any unallocated funds.
Apart from a direct assault on incompetence in this sector, it will send a message to all Government Departments that deficient management of initiatives will not be tolerated.That would release the $5 m budget allocation to go towards a solution.
This must be done as a direct consequence of the finding by the Auditor-General.
“The department (Department of Justice and Community Safety) described it as a ‘proven’ initiative, but its program evaluations have not used any targets or benchmarks to measure what success in reducing youth offending looks like, so it cannot show the program works as intended.”- Auditor-General.
Further, it was reported in the Herald Sun that,
‘The program targets offenders aged 10 to 24 with services such as mentoring, pro-social activities, and intensive case management, which over a dozen community organisations receiving state government grants to deliver.
But the report identified critical accountability gaps, including inconsistent participant eligibility and poor record-keeping by the community organisations receiving grants under the program.
It also criticised the Department of Justice and Community Safety for using skewed data to label the program a success, adding that the department’s success metrics excluded dropouts and custody returns from its reporting.’
The Auditor General should also follow the money trail to see how the funds were spent and ensure that individuals were not lining their pockets. As that would amount to criminality, something the program is supposed to address.
The public at large has had it with the lack of effective action by all authorities in this space, and this may turn out to be the defining issue on how the community intends to elect a Government.
The CAA applauds the Auditor General for his tenacity in exposing this disgraceful blight on the governance of Public money, and we would be pleased to offer any assistance towards a solution.
One tried-and-proven program is to reintroduce police into schools. This initiative was extremely effective in turning young people away from crime; police in schools can make a real difference, and its effectiveness can be easily measured.
We must prioritise prevention and use what is proven to work.
The news of a Magistrate freeing a 12-year-old accused of a two-day crime spree certainly raises the spectre of the title Equus asinus (Ass) being applied to the players in this sad process. The 12-year-old was charged over a two-day crime spree with five other co-offenders for trying to rob a business (acting in concert), brandishing a knife, and fleeing in a stolen car. Two hours later, they robbed a service station, and when they failed to force their way in again and were confronted, they fled. Police spotted the stolen car, and the gang stopped at yet another service station; however, police were on hand and arrested two. The four remaining perpetrators fled in the stolen car, crashing into a pole, where another two were arrested. There is no way that a clear-thinking person could conclude that the 12-year-old was just being naughty or mischievous and didn’t know it was wrong.
For goodness ‘ sake, the child had two days of opportunity to stop, and what of the child’s parents; what did they do when the young child didn’t come home? Doli incapax is an ancient legal principle evolving in the medieval English common law, roughly 5th to 15th century, about 500 AD – 1500. .Although now legislated in Victoria, the only State where this has happened, see s 10 of the Youth Justice Act 2024, it has never been legislated in the UK or elsewhere in Australia and remains a legal doctrine. The doctrine of doli incapax is an ancient common law presumption, inherited from English law, and its present Australian authority is the High Court decision in RP v The Queen (2016) 259 CLR 641; [2016] HCA 53, which confirms that a child aged 10 to under 14 is presumed incapable of criminal responsibility unless the prosecution proves beyond reasonable doubt that the child understood the conduct was seriously wrong, rather than merely naughty or mischievous. It has not been codified in Australia but remains a binding common law doctrine unless and until altered by legislation.
There are compelling reasons why this doctrine needs to be codified, not only for the protection of citizens but for the welfare of the child. This particular child’s actions were not their first foray into crime but their first time in Court, and to let the child walk out of Court without any sanction is simply giving the child approval to continue criminal activity. The child receiving a warning from the magistrate only reinforces the premise that it is OK to commit crime. This, of course, raises another conundrum: what happens if this child continues criminal activity and is killed in a stolen car.
Who is responsible? Culpability must rest somewhere, and we would argue that it should be with the courts and the judicial officer dealing with the case. The child can hardly be held to account if they are dead, but watch: if that happens, the ones responsible will duck for cover big time.- That’s him/her over their’s fault! Although we are not privy to the whole hearing, only what was reported, it seems that the Court did not consider the child’s welfare.
This, of itself, must be urgently addressed by our legislators, as must the role of the parents, who must take responsibility for their children’s behaviour. A parent convicted of failing to provide basic parental control and sent to jail for the actions of their child would quickly make a huge difference in the quantum of juvenile offending.
Comparing the children of the medieval era to the children of today is an abomination and an insult.
The list of variances is overwhelming in nutrition, education, and social communication, and the list goes on, so the concept of children at any age not understanding right from wrong is complete nonsense.
There may be very young children who don’t understand, but their age is well below the legal threshold currently in vogue. Understanding is not age-related; there are young people above the current threshold who, in rare cases, may not understand, but as rare as that is, children well below the threshold almost always understand right and wrong.
The issue of understanding is a matter for the courts, not the police. Our greatest concern is the lack of support for younger children involved in crime. At the very least, the child should have been referred to the Police Cautioning program if the Court was unprepared to deal with the matter.
Rather than just pushing them out the door to be exposed to more of the same behaviour, the Court has, or should have, an obligation to the child and to ensure that the child’s interests are best served, and pushing them out the door is not one of them. The courts should also have an obligation to the victims and the community more broadly to protect them from criminals, even if they are children.
The knife they use does not discriminate depending on who is holding it. In reality, a child with a knife, as there was apparently one in this group, is far more dangerous than even a young adult, as they have no ability to be influenced by consequences if they use it. This is distinct from the concept of right or wrong.
The Community Services Welfare Act 1978 abolished the provision for children “likely to lapse into a life of vice or crime”. It is apparent that such a provision is again needed to ensure children receive guidance to prevent them from becoming recidivist criminal offenders as they age.
We are living in a time of heightened criminal activity, much of it committed by younger people than ever before, so an antiquated medieval process that is out of step with our current society and standards must be scrapped urgently. That the Courts still hang onto this doctrine is an indictment on them, and hiding behind precedent to promote extremist values is making the legal system look like an Ass.
By Kelvin (Kel) Glare, former Chief Commissioner and Chair of the CAA.
Misconduct in public office in Victoria is defined by the Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) as any action by a public sector employee that is unlawful or falls short of required ethical and professional standards. The case of Shum Kwok Sher v HKSAR [2002] 2 HKLRD 793 at [91] sets out the reasons for such a wide definition as necessarily cast in general terms because it is designed to cover many forms of misconduct on the part of public officers. An alternative way of dealing with misconduct by public officers would be to enact a statute formulating specific offences for particular categories of misconduct in public office. The adoption of that course would involve a loss of flexibility and run the risk that the net would fail to catch some forms of serious misconduct. To suggest that the offence requires further definition would be to pursue a degree of definition which is unattainable, having regard to the wide range of acts and omissions which are capable of amounting to misconduct by a public officer in or relating to his office. The offence serves an important purpose in providing a criminal sanction against misconduct by public officers. In a Victorian context, does this mean that failure to prosecute cases where there is strong prima facie evidence to support the bringing of criminal charges is, of itself, ”Misconduct in Public Office”? Victoria has seen many instances where no action has been taken or inappropriate action has been taken that ought to have raised the issue of “Misconduct in Public Office”.
George Pell – prosecution, where it was found that a conviction was not upheld; however, there should never have been a prosecution in the first place.
Importantly, you will recall the work done by journalist Andrew Bolt, who demonstrated how it was highly improbable that Pell had the opportunity to offend, let alone actually offend. A reasonable and indefensible Reasonable Doubt. Despite the alarm bells that Bolt raised, doubting the validity of a prosecution, the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) went ahead anyway. Neither the DPP nor VicPol were held to account for a miscarriage of justice. The question is, why?
Slug Gate – was a prime example where normal Police practices were set aside when there was ample evidence to prosecute perpetrators involved in what can only be described as an ideological political stitch-up of a small business operator who, after many years of providing food services to Local Government and other entities, had the misfortune of a Government deciding to enter into the industry with a government-funded competitor hell bent on success.
There was ample evidence of a number of prime facie criminal offences committed by the promoters and operators of this Government-funded competitor, but none were ever prosecuted – Why?
Nicolla Gobbo Affair – cited by a Jurist who described the Gobbo affair not merely as professional misconduct, but as a corruption of the criminal justice system itself, involving fundamental breaches by both Gobbo and Victoria Police.
Even with such a damning indictment from the High Court, no person has been charged or made to answer for their behaviour or role in this matter, which included many in the highest echelons of Victoria Police, including a number of Commissioners and Chief Commissioners, and the members of the Victorian Bar. There has been a rumour that some of the lower-ranking Police involved were to face accountability, but this would be a supreme travesty given the rank of the architects of this debacle. They are the ones who must atone, not those who operate under their instruction or supervision. That many involved have left the force for whatever reason; that must not be the get-out-of-jail-free card that many have dealt themselves. There would be absolute and justifiable community outrage if a criminal responsible for egregious crimes were able to escape investigation and accountability by playing a similar card to the Police in the Gobbo matter. We need to know why?
Bike Boy – All matters are not historic, and the Bike Boy incident, where Daniel Andrews, the then leader of the Oppositions car, struck and severely injured a young boy, has never been properly resolved. No proper investigation was undertaken, and it has taken a number of retired Police to conduct a detailed examination without the resources available to serving police to compile a very solid brief of evidence against Daniel and Catherine Andrews. Adding to that, media reports painted the attending Police as failing to fulfil their professional obligations. The two suspects in this case were the then Opposition Leader of the State of Victoria and his wife. It is no wonder that crime in this State is rampant when the dignitaries are placed above the law, setting an example for the rest of the criminal community.
Miscreants must be charged and face a court, as we would expect to happen to any other Victorian. If not, we must know why?What is the Purpose of IBAC? The anti-corruption body we have seems only to target low-hanging fruit but does nothing to hold the senior miscreants and architects of corruption to account. Who then holds The Office of Public Prosecutions or IBAC to account? Whatever the process of accountability is, it is not working for Victorians.
“Whether the elections produce a new government or a recycled one, Victorians are owed a debt of transparency in the operations of anti-corruption and integrity agencies.”
The latest crime figures released by the Insurance Council of Australia are not surprising, but the magnitude of the problem is nevertheless a shock.
‘3900 property theft and burglary claims last financial year- nearly as many as the total for the combined tally for NSW and Qld – a home hit every two hours.’
More importantly, it supports the repeated claims of the CAA of Victoria being in the midst of a crime tsunami.
There will be a lot of hand-wringing and excuses from those who are responsible; however, most culprits are long retired or have moved on, but they need to be named and shamed for their lack of ability to deal with and not recognise the problem – denial seems to be the infection and cause that the current leaders have caught from predecessors.
Over the last decade, the CAA has been addressing the issue, and we do not doubt that if it had been listened to seriously, we would not be in the current situation.
But what would we know? We only have 400 years of policing experience at an executive level and a broad cross-section of disciplines from the community who have been trying to be heard, over the denials and rejections and downright ignorance from those charged with the responsibility of addressing the issue.
One of the many solutions we have presented has been the G-Tag. A system that enables vehicles to be identified by police.
The system enables the avoidance of police pursuits and renders a vehicle a liability to thieves.
Imagine how many crimes would be avoided if criminals couldn’t access or use a vehicle- 90%?
It makes incredible sense to reduce the one essential tool criminals use to commit crime: a motor car.
Moreover, the danger to police and the community from high-speed pursuits or other high-speed events, without risking the lives of police, the community, and the perpetrator/s, must now be seriously examined with a view to implementation
It’s like organised crime, where the target is always the leader; targeting the foot soldiers of the group would be twice as effective – a leader cannot lead if nobody is willing to be led.
With the proliferation of Task Forces targeting the ringleaders of organised crime, over the last decade, there has not been any serious or sustained impact on the unacceptable crime rate, and a more pragmatic approach to policing and law enforcement is required.
While there will always be a need for some multidisciplinary Task Force groups, the number must be curtailed in favour of bringing all police stations back to full strength as a Force priority.
The Courts play an important role in crime prevention and in providing a fair legal system. While the conviction rate seems not to be a problem, with Police generally doing a good job, the reality is that their good work is undermined by woeful Court case management, and decisions that favour the criminal; the argument that the Court has a role to play in trying to discourage recidivism has clearly failed dramatically.
If the judiciary doesn’t change, legislators must intervene with solutions. Top of the list would be a Judicial Review Panel to manage jurists’ performance. They must learn to operate with accountability not only to the law but to the State.
This issue has been danced around for years, with nobody having the intestinal fortitude to tackle the niceties of the legal system to achieve a positive outcome for the community, not the criminal.
A cynic may conclude the whole court process is designed to favour the Legal fraternity and criminals in our society, leaving society miles behind to carry the burdens psychologically, physically, and financially.
The CAA has pressured the Force and the Government on the issue of reservists for over a decade, and we are delighted that the process and policy have begun, with initial feedback from frontline members of the initiative overwhelmingly positive.
This will improve service delivery for all victims.
Let’s hope some of our other initiatives can be addressed in less than a decade, given the unquestionable link between wrong-headed crime strategies and the shocking crime tsunami.
The CAA is and has never been about gaining credits or plaudits, but about guiding the State towards a better environment with effective policing and law enforcement to regain freedoms lost to crime for all society.
Critically, independent review panels need to be established across law enforcement sectors, with the power to bring about change.
The lack of effective use of computer technology is one glaring failure and wastes many staff hours through duplication of effort; the inability to integrate information means that data is recorded multiple times- inefficiency on steroids.
Specifically, policing needs to accept that crime prevention must be a priority, not simply an afterthought to do when they get around to it.
It doesn’t need new commands or the like, but clear, specific, accountable leadership from police executive managers to ensure this less-than-favourite management priority gets the attention it needs to lower crime rates.
Performance accountability, service delivery, and key performance indicators (KPIs) are not only anathema to police at all levels but are equally deplored in the justice system, and until these fundamentals are adequately addressed, we cannot expect to see signs of crime reduction any time soon.
Nobody seems to have worked out that what we are doing in this space isn’t working and that change is needed.
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”- Are we insane or just incompetent?
There is no escaping the impact of politics on policing, both good and bad, and we are now in for a time of uncertainty as the State heads for one of the most important elections this decade, in a few short weeks.
Although all elections are important, this one has a certain twist and will definitely be one to watch, with new serious players in the mix and a government that seems to be on the nose, with multiple challengers circling the main prize of winning Government.
A new Premier has recently swung the big stick, removing key stalwarts from their lucrative roles who were, in one way or another, responsible for the demise of this once-great State. This move was inevitable, regardless of who won government.
What we are concerned about is the impact on Law and Order and the Force’s ability to do its job.
One person to watch is the Chief Commissioner, who has been in the job for just over 12 months.
As we have already said, he was handed a ‘poisoned chalice’ appointment, given the state of the Force he was given, but be that as it may, the unarguable big political ticket item in this State is crime, and things don’t look the best for the Chief.
One indicator is that although we haven’t heard any criticism from any of the Political players, ringing endorsements are also missing, but that may be in his favour, as in the political arena, endorsement can be the kiss of death.
The risk of destabilising the Force comes from the crime rate, as it affects all parties in this election because most voters will focus on this issue.
There seem to be many positives coming from the conservative side of politics, and the Government is making some good noises; however, the proof will be in how these policies are applied, and who do we trust to implement their platform?
What is sadly lacking is clear planning objectives from the Police, the Courts and Corrections on how the crime will be reeled in, and voters look like they are going to the polls based on broad promises that have little weight.
The weight of these promises may well decide the election.
This is where the Chief Commissioner is at risk, as neither side of politics will have much faith in him if he doesn’t produce results quickly.
It is right that he stays out of the Political fray, but he takes a real risk by not providing leadership on each warring faction’s promises.
At this stage, the Force seems to be improving in the targeted approach to crime. Still, those who know are fully aware that this does not necessarily translate into crime reduction, no matter how the stats are massaged; a meaningful reduction can and only ever will be achieved by a Force that has the community on its side.
And that means proactive policing.
Policing is a service delivered to the community, and they are the first to notice failures and the first to let their politicians know about them, usually without fuss- the most effective weapon available to them.
We are sure the Chief is aware of this and also aware that the real impact of proactive policing cannot be produced overnight. The strategies need to be planned, implemented, reviewed and measured, and the results may not be seen for a few years.
Some initiatives will fail, and some will succeed spectacularly, and those are the ones VicPol must pursue.
The community, however, is being grossly underestimated, as they know this, and even if results are not immediate, if the planning is good and meaningful programs are implemented and properly explained, the community will accept them.
The community will quickly tire when they realise that all these big target operations, successful or not, have little to no impact on the service they expect to be delivered.
There have been, for example, a plethora of high-profile convictions and many more slayings of key crime figures by their own ilk; however, crime does not decrease. The community still has its cars stolen, houses robbed, children assaulted, and addicts running riot unchecked, and the fear of injury by criminals is real and reducing our liberty nearly as badly as we experienced during COVID.
Initiatives like the G-Tag, which we previously recommended, could have a substantial impact, was ignored, along with other technological advances that could make police more effective and the community safer.
It won’t be the politicians who cop the blame; they will only be in office for 4 years; however, the Chief may be in a far more tenuous position.
The last 10 years haven’t all been doom and gloom; in 2016, CAA heavily promoted the reintroduction of the Police Reservists and has taken every opportunity to promote this approach ever since.
Now the current Chief has introduced the Reservist concept, and lo and behold, we are getting positive feedback from serving members on how successful this initiative is, albeit early days.
But when many former police officers of all ranks, including Commissioned Officers, return in numbers, members welcome them with open arms to help with the drudgery of policing; furthermore, the expertise these Reservists can impart is invaluable, which members realise.
The community sees this move as a step towards reopening Police Stations, which will have a huge positive impact.
It only took us 10 years of pressure to achieve this result.
But it is initiatives like this that the community realises serve them well and build public confidence in the Force.
The Chief must look to the bag of tricks and produce a few more initiatives of this ilk, and that will not only help the State but secure his future, as politicians aren’t likely to move on success.
The Police In Schools Program would be another great starting point and would be ideal for Reservists to deliver.
Although there are currently quasi-Police school programs, the PISP in its purest form is another beast entirely, and its capacity to succeed has no peer.
…it was a sad day that the Police in Schools program ceased at my school. With over 40 years’ experience in a Primary School, I never understood why the program was discontinued. If Police were at my school, they might find out what is really going on in the community.
…Pearl Garland – Primary School Teacher.
…school principals are screaming out for help to deal with the problems they face. A huge frustration is that any effort they make must by definition stop at the school gate. A revamped Police in Schools program will be enthusiastically embraced.
…Kris Arcaro – Director Wellbeing, Health and Engagement Division DET
These two endorsements of the PISP come from a 2016 paper produced by CAA to create an initiative to stem the rising crime rate.
No action, and guess what? The crime rate has continued to climb unabated. It has become more deadly and dangerous, impacting citizens, if not directly, then indirectly, with the financial hit of huge insurance increases and the loss of liberty because of rampant crime.
We really need to get this one done.
Chief, you have the power and the resources; all that’s needed is leadership, and the results will flow.
Don’t let the naysayers within block you, and ignore the temptation of political expediency.
A well-hackneyed proverb sums up the current approach to reducing crime: insanity.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
What makes this even worse is that this is the same strategy used and built upon over more than two decades, and Police and political leadership have never, it appears, been prepared to question it, albeit the impact on crime is negligible; the statistics prove it.
We are not claiming that Task Forces do not have an important role to play in managing crime; however, their overuse and use as a political tool needs to be substantially reigned in.
They have been used to replace many of the former Crime Squads, looking at a specific crime rather than a specific area within that crime category. The loss of specific knowledge and skill built up in a Squad approach is therefore lost over time.
This impacts the effectiveness of Detectives who can only specialise in a very narrow sphere.
The overarching reality is that as you build Task Forces or other like groups, both regionally and Force-wide, unchecked, the pendulum shifts even further from preventing crime to an overreliance on catching crooks to reduce crime – a spurious assertion.
It is morally wrong to wait for a crime to occur and another victim to be created when there are other options. There needs to be a balance struck.
Were all the resources put into getting a conviction against Tony Mockbel worth the effort, given those same resources could have prevented untold crime? A crime tsar, we were told, who now attends the races, seems to live a good life and deems not to have to work.
Another example is the Taskforce Hawke/CFMEU; where after two years there appears to be no convictions of ringleaders achieved.
The Task Force hierarchy was reported in The Age as bemoaning a lack of cooperation from victims, hindering the investigation. A recurring issue highlighted in reporting around the operation has been that many potential victims and witnesses have been unwilling to formally cooperate with police.
This reluctance is commonly linked to fears of intimidation, repercussions within the industry, and the influence of organised crime figures. Without victim statements and witness cooperation, investigators face difficulties gathering admissible evidence and laying charges
There was once a criminal offence of Misprision of Felony – knowing a felony had been committed and by whom and not reporting this to police. A modern version aimed at serious indictable offences may make some recalcitrant witnesses come forward.
Overriding these concerns would be a lack of trust in police, promoted by the criminal elements involved in the Big Build, but the Task Force has not applied resources to remedy this problem. Simply throwing more detectives at the problem will not change anything.
Traditional policing methods are the answer.
A sustained uniform presence in and around building sites like Big Build will give the Police a chance to build relationships with individuals and enhance the opportunities for victims to have a ‘quiet word’ with a Police member who has built trust. The same strategy should be used in all uniform Police work in the community. The Task Force is finding out you can’t Police without the community; only in this case, rather than the broader community, the construction/contractor cohort.
Making Building sites safer for workers would generate better results for the Task Force.
These resources need not be pulled from the Stations; a professional relationship between Task Force Commanders and Station Commanders should enable a team approach in which Stations can support the Task Force’s objectives.
Many Police involved in Task Forces develop an elitist attitude and would find it difficult engaging with a local station commander – this must change.
Furthermore, it is imperative that Police support other agencies with roles in the Building Industry so they can do their job, and they know it.
There are reports that Task Force Hawke has charged five individuals with blackmail, three with extortion and five with corruption. But how these successes help the safety of Victorians is questionable because, to use this mechanism, they would have to charge hundreds to have an impact on crime. What are the objectives and targets (KPI’s) set for the Task Force, and how do you know when it succeeds?
The current inflexible Task Force approach reminds us of the old joke,
“How many people does it take to change a light globe? “None. They just promise the old one is working.”
And that raises the question of how that Task Force has made the State safer; the Force has trouble enough delivering, or trying to deliver, its service to all citizens, but is ensnared in following perhaps political imperatives rather than its real role to the State.
Something is terribly wrong with our system when additional Detectives (number unknown) can be assigned to a Taskforce that serves the Government’s political needs and can’t keep Police Stations open for the rest of us.
That proposition has taken a downward curve with the announcement of four inner suburban Police Stations being permanently closed. The rationale is obscure, but a cynic might suggest this is a power struggle between the Force and the government – give us more or we will close more stations?
Crime is escalating both in quantum and severity, so arguably strategies have failed all of us, police and the public alike; crime is not diminishing but increasing as the fiscal and psychological cost in police resources is growing astronomically.
Task Forces have an important place in policing, and organised crime figures must be pursued and charged where possible, but a continued careful evaluation of resources allocated to each target must be ongoing to prevent Task Forces from forever gobbling up resources with no measurable improvement in obtaining results.
The Task-Force phenomenon has gripped the policing and political psyche as the panacea to the crime epidemic.
Task Forces appeal to Police administrations and Government as an easy way to appear to be doing something, even as crime rates climb rather than decline.
The alternative is creative and effective policing strategies and management aimed at the heart of criminal activity, and that can be found in every local Police area command.
The effectiveness of the Task Force strategy is never disclosed, but the crime statistics paint a picture of failure.
Moving police from street-level policing into a Task Force or similar is not only an inefficient use of resources but also of questionable value, since the Task Force outcomes are never made public, and we are never told at what stage the cost-benefit of these groups ceases to be worthwhile; or are they just allowed to wally along in the hope they get a result?
It is a political nicety for the police and politicians to announce another Task Force; all that means is the problem has been given only a political fix. Whether it solves the community issues is moot.
Every time we see another reference to a Task Force, Special Duties, or other such group (Police management have become very adroit in describing these functions to mask the number of Groups set up ) of police to tackle a specific crime or social issue into a unit, they all rapidly dress up like American Special Forces, ditching their uniforms for some unidentifiable rationale, raising an aporetic question.
Parading around in public in mufti while fully armed and decked out with Police accoutrements, sometimes including a ballistic vest with Police emblazoned across it, seems very odd indeed. Perhaps they think they are undercover? Doh!
Former Chief Commissioner Patton, addressing the CAA at an AGM, said that the Force had a huge problem with new members breaking their necks to get into a Police uniform and then, within three or so years, breaking their necks to get out of it.
Avoiding shift work might be part of the answer; as might a uniform not fit for purpose; however, more important is the matter of culture within the Force. If the leadership places such weight on the Task Force phenomenon, then that’s where the action is and where, for my career, I need to be. Diluting the importance of the uniformed frontline 24/7 policing role may be to blame.
It reminds us of a previous Chief Commissioner who changed the Force uniforms to black (Salute Blue) and allegedly claimed the reason was to make the Force look tougher, ‘or similar words’; an inane reason by any measure.
Moreover, where does everybody think the police come from to fill this plethora of units?
The only source of police is from the police stations, which has the effect of reducing policing at the local level, from where all crime, serious or otherwise, emanates.
Taking resources from Police Stations defies logic, aggravated by a general trend to take the best and brightest. You can imagine what that does to those not selected. A blatant demotivational strategy that management seems to embrace, and we wonder why some of our Police are less than enthusiastic about attending to our needs.
The move to a centralised hierarchical management model where the district Commander, usually a Chief Superintendent, had power that the higher echelons were jealous of has caused serious damage to Police effectiveness and efficiency. The regionalisation dismantled this localised command structure, which had previously been willing to challenge executive decisions when their actions adversely affected the communities they served.
But there can be nothing more frustrating for a member than looking at a new station roster where their shifts for the coming period are constantly weighted by afternoon shifts, quick changeovers and more frequent night shifts and weekend work. Moreover, the number of shifts allocated to catching up on the ever-present paperwork shrinks, which means more pressure from the bosses.
And while that is happening, more and more members from their station are seconded to a Task Force or other special duty group, and the numbers on the Station shrink further; the outlook for a member pursuing their new roster period, the first casualty is their culture, takes a huge hit – is it all worthwhile?
If crime and social disorder are adequately and effectively managed at a local level, focusing on preventing crime at its source, where it all starts, may not make headlines and make politicians and Police leaders stop puffing their collective chests, but it will reduce the crime that the community has to deal and live with daily.
The CAA has long advocated for the reintroduction of the Police Inspectorate that can oversee and evaluate, amongst other things, Task Forces to ensure their efficacy. Independently within the organisation, reporting directly to the Chief Commissioner, at the very least should ensure the Chief is getting the right advice, not advice from other senior officers serving their own purpose. The Putin phenomenon.
The CAA has been a staunch supporter of Chief Commissioner Mike Bush, but we are starting to have doubts about whether that confidence and respect was best placed.
The Herald Sun 13/08/2026 carries an article headed, “PSOs TO PATROL SHOPS” and reports that the Premier directs that PSOs will blitz crime-ridden shopping centres.
The Police Act 2013 is specific relating to the deployment of Police and PSOs.
Under Division 2 – Relationship with government, Section 10, Ministerial directions:
(1) The Minister may from time to time, after consulting the Chief Commissioner, give written directions to the Chief Commissioner in relation to the policy and priorities to be pursued in the performance of the functions of Victoria Police.
(2) Subject to subsection (3), a direction under subsection (1) cannot be given in relation to any of the following matters—(f) the allocation or deployment of police officers or protective services officers to or at particular locations;
Clearly, the Premier has ignored the Police Act and usurped the prerogative of the Chief Commissioner (CCP) to allocate operational police and PSOs.
The Act, unfortunately, had unintended consequences when it requires the CCP to follow directions as to policy which is interpreted as permitting Governments to interfere with personnel allocations, despite the specific prohibition of this in Section 10.
None of the requirements of Sub-section 3 is applicable.
A classic example of the folly of such a power to order the deployment of police by Government is when the Andrews Government, during the COVID Pandemic, ordered a “Ring of Steel” be imposed to curb people’s ability to travel and required Police to enforce this edict when effectively it was a direction impossible to effectively implement.
The politicisation of the Victoria Police that has occurred over the past decades must be curtailed if we are to have a Force that acts without fear or favour.
The allocation of police resources must be at the sole discretion of the Chief Commissioner.
Victorian Police were known colloquially in the 1980s as the ‘People’s Force ‘, ironically the title of the book by VicPol Police Inspector, Dr Robert Haldane, chronicling the History of the Force.
It is sad that some 40 years on, the title and its function have been lost and, even worse, the positives that created the ’ People’s Force’ are seen as irrelevant to today’s Policing and ridiculed by many within the Force.
The cost to the community has been high, having to deal with reduced public safety and the consequence of an out-of-control crime rate. Apart from the social cost, the fiscal cost must run into Billions.
A comparison of VicPol performance to NSW, a comparable State, is a good place to start.
NSW, for example, maintains some of the lowest violent and property victimisation rates across all Australian States and Territories.
Comparing police per capita ratios between Vic and NSW is relevant to measuring the overall Police Force’s performance relative to each State’s crime rates.
The risk of anarchy rises and falls in direct proportion to the crime rate.
This graph is an eye-opener for all Victorians, and Police administrators in particular.
This comparison must be assessed in light of the geographical difference between the two states. NSW is roughly 3.5 times the size of Victoria, and the tyranny of distance places greater demand on Police resources and Police operational planning, making the differences highlighted in the graph substantially more impactful.
From 2000, there was a decline in both States’ crime rates, but around 2013 the wheels really fell off in Victoria; the impact of 2000 Administration moves kicked in. A rapid increase in crime remains unchecked, and you will note that since about 2015 there has been a substantial increase in Force numbers where NSW numbers have remained relatively static, which highlights the concern that throwing 1500 more Police members at the problem is very unlikely to achieve any meaningful impact on the crime issue.
There is a real likelihood that they will be thrown into inefficient Task Force Operations so high-profile arrests can give the illusion of effectiveness. High-profile arrests have little or no impact on crime figures.
Graph prepared by Adrian King of AXS Partners.
More dollars out of our pockets for no meaningful return.
As a priority, the poor management of crime and social disorder in Victoria is a critical factor that negatively affects all of our lives; this didn’t happen this year or last, but it is a culmination of poor executive appointments incapable of running a Police Force since about 2000, excluding the current incumbent who has been handed a poisoned chalice.
A failure in this critical area of Government can and does break our society.
As our political system relies heavily on Law and Order to function properly, irrespective of a Government’s political persuasion, all politicians have a vested interest in ensuring Law and Order is maintained, as the adverse impact of failure is profoundly deleterious to all Government and societal functions.
We are now questioning the politically favoured solution promoted in Victoria of ‘more police numbers’ as the panacea for this issue.
We accept there are numbers of police at any given time who are on sick leave or vacancies that have not been filled. But there is no reason to suspect that NSW doesn’t face the same issues.
We are also cognisant of other pressures that affect effective policing, such as poor legislation, the abysmal performance of the Courts, and natural or manufactured disasters.
Probably one of the most significant issues is corruption within the Government and the private sector. Clearly, legislation is way behind in arming police with the capacity to do much about it.
Even with these headwinds, it is time to accept our Force is not up to par and needs a major overhaul, particularly to its culture.
Making excuses for failure no longer washes.
There is no guarantee that providing Victoria with 2000 more police or the 1500 announced will result in a comparable reduction in crime and social disorder, or, more importantly, a return of a feeling of safety to the community.
The question is what happens if we are in the same place ,crime-wise, in three years; very likely on current trends, it will be a place far worse than where we are today.
There is nothing in the public space about VicPol forward planning and, critically, how these plans will be implemented, but even more importantly, how they will be empirically measured to give us confidence somebody knows what they are doing.
The community is entitled to demand that information; we pay the Force’s bills including the Police salaries.
Graph prepared by Adrian King of AXS Partners.
Although this graph focuses on the individual members, the Graph is a macro look at the organisation, and as an organisation Victoria falls well short of our neighbours north of the Murray River.
Even with the VicPol’s focus on Reactive Policing, this does not translate into less crime.
It has long been recognised in policing and criminal-justice circles that “you can’t arrest your way out of a crime problem”—a maxim often used to stress that arrests are only one part of crime reduction, alongside prevention and community engagement,
Our take on the statistical data is that VicPol has substantially failed to deliver its services, and a direct comparison with NSW suggests that VicPol management needs urgent and frank discussions with its NSW counterparts to determine how they have succeeded, even with the additional challenges of a much larger geographical area 3.5 times larger than Victoria.
Most revealing are the graphs showing a huge rise in criminality we can reasonably attribute to COVID-19, but NSW has achieved laudable results given its ratio per capita. Victoria urgently needs to discover their secret.
Victoria is leading the charge on out-of-control crime and doesn’t look capable of reining it in. We garner this is also the view of the community more generally, translating into a growing lack of confidence in the Force.
Since 2000, we have seen a dramatic decline in proactive policing, which involved working with the community rather than being isolated from it. The focus has now shifted much further toward the Reactive function, and the numbers prove it.
VicPol has lost sight in recent years that the effectiveness of policing correlates directly with its relationship with the community it is supposed to serve.
Central to this police-community disconnect has been the strategy of isolationism by successive police administrations.
Recognising that Police serve the community rather than the other way round is a cultural shift the Force must implement.
Implementing that shift will be hard; however, the additional byproduct will be that Police will be working in a more conducive environment, lowering pressure on them and reducing the likelihood of stress-related injuries among members.
Moreover, the need to adjust the pendulum, which has moved too far towards the Reactive function, back to an equilibrium with the Proactive functions is a critical, long-overdue change, and the reason we are rapidly falling into an unchecked spiral towards anarchy.
The task of turning around VicPol’s failures is daunting, as the problems have been allowed to fester under years of poor administration.
To redress the failures, there needs to be a properly resourced Inquiry that can provide the Chief Commissioner with the guidance, advice, and tools to improve the Force’s performance for the benefit of all Victorians.
Simply throwing money at the Force without addressing the problems won’t work.
It must include input from NSW Police command-level officers, and VicPol must, if necessary, eat humble pie, as NSW have shown how it is done.
This graph of the comparable budgets for the three Eastern seaboard states is an important indicator on this issue.
The budgets, with NSW having a $1B+ break on Vic., suggest NSW has invested in advanced technology and other resources rather than blind member-number solutions. Which have proven in Victoria not to work and are unlikely to in the future.
The CAA stands ready to assist in achieving the required transformation; we have 400 years of policing experience across various levels and eras, supported by a wide cross-section of non-Police Victorians, all of whom combine to form a formidable body of experts.
We can speak with authority from a policing and community perspective.
Yesterday, 28 July, a new Premier for Victoria, Ben Carroll, was appointed, and a couple of announcements ‘right off the bat ’ had some merit. But with all these types of announcements, the devil will be in the detail and the application; at least there should be some credit for recognising the problems. A cynic may say that these announcements are a blocker to the criticism in the media of this Government and are the two major issues that are ‘cutting through’ with the electorate. Unfortunately, in the vein of the announcements, there was a big miss.
The first major announcement was the Premier’s intent to appoint a Royal Commission into the Big Build criminality that has been widely made public for years. Although this may steal some of the Opposition’s thunder, that’s politics. The value of this Commission will not be known until we see the terms of reference, and, given the previous inquiries of this nature set up in recent years, they each seem to have been politically expedient, and even findings are selectively applied; therefore, we have some scepticism for an outcome that properly addresses community concerns and whether those responsible are held to account, which paradoxically, is not a ‘strong suit’ for this Government based on past performances. So, what may on the surface appear to be a bold move may in reality be another whitewash in the making. To give the Royal Commissioner scope to investigate the circumstances properly in the best interest of the State, the role of individual politicians and Public Servants in any corruption must be included in the terms. Otherwise, the best we can expect is that some low-hanging fruit may get plucked. We will wait and see the Terms of Reference with interest.
The second and probably the most significant, for direct impact on all Victorians, was that the new Premier announced having called the Chief Commissioner before his press conference to advise that the Government would support the Police both financially and legislatively. This will no doubt have a positive impact on policing resources and give the Chief Commissioner the flexibility to instigate more proactive activity preventing crime before it happens, and this would be warmly welcomed by all Victorians, who would rather not be victims of crime. Although very encouraging, we should not get too excited until we see positive actions. It may be just political manoeuvring so the failure of law enforcement in this State can be blamed on the Chief Commissioner rather than the Government. The old, ”It was not us, it was him over there,” retort applies.
The Big miss from this announcement was that the other call the Premier should have made was to The Hon. Sonya Kilkenny, the Attorney General (AG). The major problem is that no matter how much money the Government throws at the Police, it is all wasted if the hard-working Police are continually thwarted by lenient sentencing and other legal paralysis in the Courts. The inefficiency of the Courts is also a disgrace and works against good jurisprudence. The first move must be for the Courts to be told to accept their responsibility for the crime tsunami caused by their failure to enforce the Law. Announcing that the crisis of the Courts is to be addressed by the AG, whereby the performance of jurists is made accountable and enforceable by a Judicial Review Panel, would go a long way to reducing criminal activity. Under the present system, criminals hold sway in court proceedings at the expense of victims.
The pendulum has swung too far to socialist philosophy and needs a substantial correction. Accountability for individual and organisation-wide performance is one of the most serious issues facing the Government and the various arms of Government, with a correction starting at the top being the most effective. Until employees of the Government accept this and are managed and promoted based on performance and ability, all political protestations will be of little value.
Political nepotism never works in the best interest of the State or the people that pay for their lack of service, us. The failure of successive administrations of this State has been not to recognise that failing to hold State employees to account (as happens in the private sector) for performance is a ‘slap in the face’, and a demotivator, for those who are genuine hard workers contributing to the State’s fortunes. Individual and corporate accountability may be a seismic shift, but one that will pay dividends not only in performance but substantially to the budget bottom line for this State. Premier Carroll, we wish you well.
For quite a period, the politicisation of Victoria Police has been evolving, and no more so than during the COVID pandemic, when it became so prevalent that it seemed the norm.
During that time, however, there was always an endgame, when the pandemic was over, that offered some solace to those aware of the insidious nature of politicising the State Police Force.
Apart from COVID, the political interference in Police operations has been all too evident for nearly two decades.
This interference is not always overtly evident, but when you look at these major criminal matters, there is a common thread that reeks of politicisation.
The major criminal activities we refer to are,
George Pell – prosecution, where it was found that a conviction was not upheld; however, there should never have been a prosecution in the first place.
Importantly, you will recall the work done by journalist Andrew Bolt, who demonstrated how it was highly improbable that Pell had the opportunity to offend, let alone actually offend.
A reasonable and indefensible Reasonable Doubt.
Despite the alarm bells that Bolt raised, doubting the validity of a prosecution, the police and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) went ahead anyway. Neither the DPP nor VicPol were held to account for a miscarriage of justice. The question is, why?
Slug Gate – was a prime example where normal Police practices were set aside when there was ample evidence to prosecute perpetrators involved in what can only be described as an ideological political stitch-up of a small business operator who after many years of providing food services to Local Government and other entities, had the misfortune of a Government deciding to enter into the industry with a government funded competitor hell bent on success.
There was ample evidence of a number of prime facia criminal offences committed by the promoters and operators of this Government-funded competitor, but none were ever prosecuted – Why?
Nicolla Gobbo Affair – cited by a Jurist who described the Gobbo affair not merely as professional misconduct, but as a corruption of the criminal justice system itself, involving fundamental breaches by both Gobbo and Victoria Police.
Even with such a damning indictment from the High Court, no person has been charged or made to answer for their behaviour or role in this matter, which included many in the highest echelons of Victoria Police, including a number of Commissioners and Chief Commissioners, and the members of the Victorian Bar.
There has been a rumour that some of the lower-ranking Police involved were to face accountability, but this would be a supreme travesty given the rank of the architects of this debacle. They are the ones who must atone, not those who operate under their instruction or supervision.
That many involved have left the force for whatever reason; that must not be the get-out-of-jail-free card that many have dealt themselves.
There would be absolute and justifiable community outrage if a criminal responsible for egregious crimes were able to escape investigation and accountability by playing a similar card to the Police in the Gobbo matter.
We need to know why?
Bike Boy – All matters are not historic, and the Bike Boy incident, where Daniel Andrews, leader of the Opposition’s car, struck and severely injured a young boy, has never been properly resolved. No proper investigation was undertaken, and it has taken a number of retired Police to conduct a detailed examination without the resources available to serving police, to compile a very solid brief of evidence against Daniel and Catherine Andrews. Adding to that, media reports painted the attending Police as failing to fulfil their professional obligations. The two suspects in this case were the then Opposition Leader of the State of Victoria and his wife. It is no wonder that crime in this State is rampant when the dignitaries are placed above the law, setting an example for the rest of the criminal community.
Miscreants must be charged and face a court, as we would expect to happen to any other Victorian.
If not, we must know why?
Tobacco Wars – The so-called Tobacco Wars are like all crime, driven by greed, with little or no consideration of Victims. The Government has quietly sat on its hands, failing to take decisive action against the criminals and organised crime driving the problem. The State Government has seen this as a Federal excise Tax issue, and there is some truth to this; however, the state is responsible for law and order, and the criminal behaviour needs to be excised from the excise tax issue, and sufficiently strong legislation enacted to arm the police to deal with criminality.
It is no coincidence that weak anti-organised-crime laws have encouraged bikie-linked organised crime to shift to Victoria, where such laws are the weakest in the country.
There is also the growth of lawlessness on building sites, and this is not just an unfortunate coincidence but the result of being soft on crime by hamstringing the Police, and a Judiciary in lockstep with the failed Restorative Justice ideological dream. The public is entitled to know. Why?
Gang violence – another community and law professionals’ sore point. It has become very apparent that Victoria Police are very effective at bringing the perpetrators to justice, but there, effectiveness hits a brick wall.
Jurists responsible for delivering justice have embarked on a campaign over the last decade or so to do just the opposite. Yes, and again, it is restorative justice embraced by so many of those charged with delivering justice that has failed.
It has not been lost on those who are interested that the Restorative Justice push coincides with the evolution of the Crime Tsunami.
The Government has got nobody else to blame but itself for listening to ill-informed people who thought the idea of providing an amnesty to allow for the surrender of edged weapons into bins outside Police Stations was a good idea.
Understanding the psyche of those who carry these weapons, one would think it would be a strategy, one-O-one.
The weapons are a status symbol amongst many of the youth cohort and give them some misguided power to let it be known amongst their peers they are armed, so they are not going to relinquish their ‘ protection’ or ‘strength’ in a bin outside a Police Station. Remember, we are dealing with juveniles who have no respect for the law.
If you thought this might work to reduce the number of weapons carried by youths, from the immortal classic, ‘The Castle,’ “tell em they’re dreaming”.
But we, as a community, are not privy to what strategies (if any) will be implemented to tackle this problem. Why?
The latest news, however, is that a top secret agency (until now – if it is supposed to be top secret, why announce it – doh! ) would target gangland-related activity that has sparked a wave of fire bombings, extortion and other serious crime in Victoria.
Whoop-de-doo, a fat lot of good that will do when all the other outstanding matters listed herein are not being seriously addressed and resolved.
And more importantly, how do they plan to staff this agency?
Presumably, it will be Police, but where are they going to come from?
One guess- your local Police Station.
The Chief Commissioner is reported as supporting the idea, but he must have grave fears that this sort of decision or thought bubble is going to be foisted on an already overstretched Force.
Unless there is a plan to ensure that the Judiciary will support this approach, the whole idea is rather moot.
Our view is that we have an excellent and very competent Chief Commissioner, and the Government should butt out and, instead of announcing ‘mind sparks’, provide the Force with adequate resources and remove the recruiting cap for both full-time Police and Reserve Police.
We know that you cannot arrest your way out of a crime tsunami; the only effective strategy is to prevent crime before it happens, and to do that, you need sufficient police. We are confident that the Chief Commissioner understands this approach.
Like many political activities, the question remains: has this thought bubble any meat on the bone?.
The lack of detail reported is bordering on scary.
Announced as a Top-Secret Agency implies it will be an autonomous body, A Government agency: A public body that administers programs or regulations. Example: The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
This is getting perilously close to a secret government law enforcement body that can operate at the will of the Government of the day.
The ultimate politicisation of law enforcement is the path to a Police State.
Our article on One Up patrols certainly drew some attention across the spectrum of social media.
There was substantial division across the comments made, with a strong tendency for comments to come out in favour of the concept of one-up patrols, particularly for highway duties. And those comments came from current and former members who actually worked in this space.
The critics in the ‘no way’ camp, unfortunately, missed an important point. Not only that, I suspect that some of the comments were from people purporting to be Police with little idea of Policing realities.
The Chief Commissioner was not advocating a blanket one-up rule but putting forward a sensible Opt-in proposal.
In other words, contrary to what some have said, the plan is not to compel unwilling members to work one-up.
What is worrying is that some comments, either in the social media or wider media arena, have been emphatic ‘no’. It seems that those commentators didn’t read the fine print either.
We suspect there is a very strong reasoning behind the Chiefs’ view, and it is not a lot to do with increasing risks to members, but the reverse.
Moreover, the office of Police Constable, which all members voluntarily sign up for, comes with certain powers.
A significant power is the ability to exercise discretion in performing their duties, and here we have a number of critics paradoxically claiming that Police should not have the power to exercise discretion in relation to their own safety.
The power of safety should transcend all others.
The power to walk away from a confrontation is the single best defence a member can exercise; however, this is unlikely with the peer pressure of other Police present.
There was plenty of criticism aimed at the retired members by the critics who fail to understand that while many retired members did serve in a different era, just as many served in recent times, and all acknowledge that the current environment for policing is inherently more dangerous, but the police of today have advanced technology and numerically more support specialists than their forbears ever would have dreamt about.
Many retired police officers were equipped with a small rubber baton, a set of handcuffs, and occasionally a .32 mm Browning pistol or an even older .32 Colt pistol (most stations only had a few of these weapons, certainly not enough to arm the Station patrols fully). They were so obsolete, rumour has it, you could hear the bullet rattling down the barrel before falling at your feet. If the thing fired at all, the chances of hitting the intended target from more than 1-2 meters were remote. The weapon failure was generally down to ammunition that had been around for decades. Notably, this was also pre-ballistic vests for members.
I remember having a conversation with the former Chief Commissioner Mick Miller, who was waxing lyrical about the introduction of Police Utility belts, when he said,
“My gravest fear is that with the utility belt and all the Police paraphernalia hanging from it, it will cause members to push the belt through the door to solve a problem instead of using their brains”.
Although the current issue predominantly refers to Highway Patrol, the broader application exists where the approach to Patrol duties needs review.
Foot patrols- it is inherently unsafe for members patrolling two up to walk side by side conducting their patrol.
They are often too easily engaged with their partner rather than the public, and their ‘situational awareness’ is severely compromised.
Two up or any multiple of Police on the beat should be spread out on either side of the street where practicable or at reasonable intervals.
This not only projects a wider Police presence but also preserves members’ safety and the effectiveness of their patrol.
Local Mobile Patrols – It is common for Stations that field a Divisional Van on the 24-hr rotation to be two-up, and that is sound; however, the additional resources that a Station can apply to their community can be substantially multiplied by general duty patrols being one-up.
How that can work safely is that each member of a local mobile patrol has their own vehicle. The Supervising Sergeant works one up, and the normal Supervisor’s driver could man yet another car, putting four cars patrolling and one supervising, 5, instead of just 3, increasing the visible Police presence substantially.
That means when a job is allocated, the capacity of 5 cars can attend. It adds substantial weight to the Police presence, reducing the likelihood of violence towards the police or the community.
It is not a matter of members attending dangerous situations on their own, but they are backed up by multiple members and units.
Moreover, the Supervisor can detail one of the single-member patrols to deal with reports at the scene when any danger has passed, and relieve the other vehicles, improving the capacity of the Force to respond to demand.
To make this work, the supervisor’s role and capacity to manage resources are paramount.
A new protocol needs to be explored in which jobs are assigned to the Sergeant for distribution to their units. Decision-making at the lowest operational level possible.
If this approach were extrapolated across every station, that would translate into literally hundreds more police cars projecting the deterrent effect of a highly visible police presence on crime and other anti-social behaviour.
Car manufacturers would jump with glee at the prospect of providing VicPol with hundreds more vehicles.
On a pragmatic note, providing two to three additional vehicles to a Station would be cheaper than recruiting additional police and more effective.
Cars generally don’t take sickies, come late to work or get bogged down with paperwork.
The issue of Patrol efficacy has not been addressed for some time and follows a pattern that has changed little over 50 years. A review and update are well overdue, if for no other reason than to improve members’ safety.
All Police work can be dangerous; every police member knows that, and denial would be inane. However, the risk must be considered in a historical context, and the murder of Police in Victoria is historically low. We categorically believe that any death of a Police member is one death too many, but we need to deal with the reality. Unfortunately, the Police Honour Roll is very short on detail, and we have to rely on estimates to determine the actual impact on Police members. What we can say for certain is that since 1853, there have only been 178 members who are recorded as losing their lives in the line of duty during those 173 years, and of those, there is a relatively small number who have died at the hands of a Felon. Best estimates have the number in the lower tens, rather than the hundreds. Motor vehicle crashes were the largest contributor to Police deaths. When it comes to Police on one-up patrols resulting in a member’s death, we could only identify 1 since 2000; therefore, most deaths have occurred when multiple members are involved in an incident. 17 Victoria Police members have been added to the Honour Roll for line-of-duty deaths from 2000 to 2025; of those, only 7 involved deliberate criminal acts. So that tells us where the danger lies, and it is not in one-up patrols. Having worked in traffic for a period during my career, I spent time in Metro Melbourne, predominantly two-up and occasionally one-up, without issue. I then spent time on the Hume Highway working out of Seymour, always one up. The closest police assistance was often 30 minutes or more away.
As an example, I was working the Goulbourn Valley Highway near Murchison East one-up when a call came through from Shepparton reporting two offenders leaving a scene with stolen property in two separate stolen cars, heading for Seymour along the Goulbourn Valley Highway.
I parked the Police car out of sight and waited.
Sure enough, the first car described went past, and the second car came past some five minutes later.
I advised Seymour by radio, took off, intercepted the second car, handcuffed the perpetrator without conversation to the steering wheel through the quarter vent, and took off after the first car.
I intercepted the first car quite a few kilometres down the road near Nagambie. I was able to convince him to comply while we waited for the Seymour Van, which took nearly 30 minutes to reach me.
With that crook secured, I retrieved the second one and my handcuffs.
It wasn’t until both crooks were safely in the Seymour Station that the crook in the first car admitted that, when I pulled him up, he had been waiting for the second car to arrive, hoping that the two of them would then effect an escape at my expense.
That I didn’t tell the crook in the first car I had already secured his mate saved my bacon; experience tells.
Later in my career, I worked one-up as a Patrol Officer in Melbourne, a circumstance I preferred, as working two-up always, in my view, increased the risk of getting distracted. The key to working safely as a Police member is not the number of colleagues you have around you, but your own survival skills, and that is predominantly ‘Situational Awareness.’ There used to be a strong emphasis on this skill at all levels of training, as it is an essential policing tool. Police graduates from training were assigned to Police Headquarters and were detailed for one-up foot patrols of the city. An invaluable learning experience for survival in a dangerous occupation. Unfortunately, many of the basic Policing skills seem to have been lost. Notably, we regularly see Police in the operational sphere in multiples, with their focus inward rather than on the environment they’re in, and that is dangerous, whether they are two-up or 10-up. The more Police that are grouped together, the bigger the target. It is clearly a lack of training and/or ineffective supervision that has been allowed to evolve in policing, making policing more dangerous. When you look at the hard numbers and compare them to the vast increases in the population and an apparent ‘laissez-faire’ approach as to who enters the country, police deaths are remarkably and thankfully rare. The voices opposing Chief Commissioner Mike Bush’s move to introduce one-up patrols are from the usual suspects trying to usurp the Chief Commissioner, as is the trend among naysayers and knockers. None of their criticism is based on empirical data. Their bleating is more about trying to exercise power over him than about looking seriously at the issues in a pragmatic way, something they are highly unlikely to succeed in, as they continue to underestimate the man. They are aggrieved that we have a Chief Commissioner who is a leader, not a head bobber. The decision is neither brash nor reckless, and what a Coroner may have determined many years ago. According to available research, the coroner was scathing of the Police Command about leaving in service a faulty holster, susceptible to gun grab, when they were aware of the issue. The problem with the police-issued holster was its gun retention ability. However, we were unable to find any reference in the public domain to the issue of one-up patrols in the Coroner’s findings. The CAA encourages the Chief Commissioner to continue with this pilot scheme and acknowledges that not all Police members would be comfortable working alone, with nobody to talk to, let alone any safety aspect. The opt-in of the one-up proposal recognises this and will allay any fears members may have. With this opt-in rider, the Police Association doesn’t have a role to play in this matter; it is up to each member. We encourage the Force to review its training and ensure that ‘Situational Awareness’ and other survival skills receive priority not only for frontline members but also in evaluating members for promotion to supervisory ranks, thereby saving police lives.
These new revelations in the Herald Sun of June 10 2026, under the headline
“’Shattered’: Data reveals Victorian areas with closed police stations also lost the most frontline officers.” is not big news to serving and former Police.
Fashionable activities like Task Forces and other special duties have been staffed at the expense of the Local Police Station.
What is often overlooked by Police management is that it may look good in the media that a task force or some other special unit has been created to deal with a particular criminal activity, but where are the staff drawn from to initiate the special unit – the Police stations, of course, where else?
There is an argument that the best and brightest are selected for these tasks, but this is talent and experience extracted from the Police Station, which can be very damaging to a Station and not only on the Roster.
These strategies damage, sometimes irreparably, the fabric and effectiveness of a Police Station. And members taken prematurely from Station rosters before they have gained essential experience will rarely evolve into useful leaders if they only know the Special Duty/Task Force genera of Policing. Good policing is more than just catching crooks.
Members overlooked for these positions, justifiably or not, can become despondent and lose their enthusiasm for policing. This can affect swathes of a Station’s staff adversely. A demoralised workforce, even if only a percentage, adversely impacts the overall performance and output of the infected unit and the most impacted is the community.
The visible Police presence (crime prevention) is continually eroded as any Police extracted from a station roster quickly adopt the dress-up look of the American Special Forces.
There is a concept decried by experienced police –we must build a Police force of specialists generalists, rather than a force of specialists, the trend of the last decade.
Not only will it build a more efficient Force, but job satisfaction will be elevated substantially.
By way of a practical example, we are aware of a Police response to an attempted car theft from a vehicle parked on the front lawn of a suburban residence.
Two Uniform Police vehicles attended, with one member speaking with the vehicle owner, taking the report, and the other three members standing in a group talking (with situational awareness, at zero, police at any scene are in the danger zone).
About 20 minutes after the first police car arrived, a Crime Scene vehicle turned up with another two members, a total of six for an attempted car theft during the previous night.
With the arrival of the Specialist Crime Unit, the group chatting increased by one, the member taking the initial report, and they all just watched as the Crime Scene crew fingerprinted and photographed the vehicle subject of the attempted theft and the crime scene crew then proceeded to do a door knock in the neighbourhood, not the other four police just hanging around.
Traditionally, one of those number would be responsible for investigating the crime, or in this new modern force, are all investigations just passed off.
If this is how modern policing is supposed to function, therein lies the key to the problems the Force faces.
The first of the two crews of General Duties should have been well capable of dealing with the crime scene and doorknocking, but they obviously do not see that as their role; it is a job for a specialist – that is absurd.
The time and resources wasted were incredible, and all the while, if other people were waiting for a police response in the area, bad luck, and as for crime prevention patrol- forget it.
This is but one incident that highlights poor supervision and the need for the Police to become specialist generalists rather than report takers.
Add to that, how can it be useful for policing to have operational members dressed up out of uniform, wearing all the normal police paraphernalia? A Police-Issue ballistic vest (usually emblazoned with POLICE), a utility belt with the full range of equipment, O/C spray, including a firearm often strapped to their leg, wild-west-esque.
There can be no tactical or other advantage in this dressing down or dressing up to mimic American Special Forces (ASF) for members performing a police task. Excluding covert operations, this half-in, half-out approach must be reined in – it’s one Force. Police members must learn to be proud of their uniform, which portrays professionalism.
Anybody in the vicinity of, generally, a large station, around lunchtime, will regularly see police in this dress-up rig going to buy lunch wearing full kit.
We didn’t know buying lunch was so dangerous. Do you really need all your trinkets to get a chicken sandwich?
Competent Police win the respect of the community, wearing their uniform with pride, and it shows.
A previous Chief Commissioner told a CAA meeting once that new members these days break their necks to get into the uniform, and after 2-3 years, do everything they can to get out of it.
We assume he experienced severe headwinds trying to resolve the problem and failed.
Perhaps the uniform itself is less than fit for purpose; it looks scruffy on many police, but more likely, the junior members, barely out of probation, are seeking status or the supposed thrill associated with specialist work. If that’s their motivation, they will never make a good Police member, as we continue to remind the Force that there is more to policing than catching crooks; crime prevention is a greater priority, just ask the community.
When the free-for-all of taking staff from Police Stations grew dramatically under previous police administrations, those leaders forgot one imperative – all crooks and their families live in a Police Station area of responsibility, so it should therefore be no surprise that areas where police numbers have been decreased, the crime rate has grown proportionally as a direct result, just like night follows day.
Importantly, the number of Police at a station can be misleading with the allocation of Police to a Special Duties group, usually hidden under a number of aliases, District Support, DSG, etc. (A force Inspectorate would sort this in short order), while the position still remains on the Station Roster, it looks like there are more Police than there are. On paper only.
We are the first to acknowledge that there is a need for specialists to focus their efforts on a particular crime or criminal, but targets must be selected with great care, and each task Force must have an end date, weighed against advances in their inquiries.
Chasing one crook with a team does not stop any group, whether loosely or formally organised. As the police knock off the kingpin, there is a conga line of deputies to fill the void, so the net gain for the community is close to zero; not always, but often enough to instil greater care in Police strategies.
Furthermore, it appears that being incarcerated does not interfere with a criminal’s criminal endeavours; it’s just a bit more inconvenient.
And all that time and effort does nothing to stop more young thugs from being recruited from the local police areas, and the local police are so busy just responding to the community’s direct concerns that they cannot take action to redirect some of these junior thugs from crime.
Police can do that; they did it regularly in the past.
A solution is not easy, but the Chef Commissioner could do no worse than a recommendation of the CAA to establish a Police Inspectorate attached directly to his Office that will ensure his policies are implemented.
The Inspectorate would field a team of senior Officers who would actually visit Police operations and locations to ensure policy is being implemented and that the operational supervisors of all ranks are providing adequate supervision and support for the front line. If they are not, they should be immediately removed from their position.
Patrolling and checking young individuals or groups is a powerful tool that is underused because of poor resource management and a lack of members’ skills.
Interestingly, police managers could learn from the Ukrainian conflict.
Ukraine is currently having some success in its defence against Russia to prevent it from capturing more of Ukraine’s territory, early days, but the tide is turning in favour of Ukraine, because they deal with the frontal assaults in a conventional manner and focus on the logistical support that maintains the enemy. They have changed strategy from focusing on eliminating the Russian leaders to focusing on the logistics. That is not to say that if a Russian General is stupid enough to put himself at risk, he will more than likely be eliminated. But focusing on Logistics will grind the enemy army to a halt. Severely depleting food, fuel and ammunition, forcing capitulation
Any army, no matter its size or strength, cannot operate effectively without a reliable logistics supply. According to reports, the effectiveness of the Ukrainian Army in severely hampering logistics has had a large adverse effect on the Russian ability to attack further.
There is an argument for a similar approach in the war against Crime, particularly crime that is organised.
Like Ukraine, VicPol’s effectiveness in reining in crime lies with the development of new innovations, both technically, administratively, and in personnel/resource management. A role coordinated and managed by an effective Force Inspectorate.
If a Police member is promoted to a new rank, they must accept accountability for their subordinates’ performance, and the current practice of blaming them must be substantially tempered.
A system to reinforce accountability across all ranks will go a long way toward creating Force-wide improvements in operations and staff morale.
The reality is that the community’s discontent with Policing will continue to grow with the inevitable pressure on Politicians to implement a Royal Commission into Policing in Victoria, if only to take the heat off themselves.
A Royal Commission will take years, and the management of Policing will inevitably be impacted and wrested from the Chief Commissioner’s control.
That outcome will be a bad day for Policing and the Victorian community.
We are not adverse to a Commission of Inquiry to assist the Chief Commissioner
We have already seen the adverse impact of political interference in Policing during COVID, and it must not happen again.
We have a competent Chief Commissioner; we should do everything to support him.
The Herald Sun journalist Grace Frost has ‘blown the gaff’ on the crime impact of Police Station Closures, in another embarrassment for Victoria Police.
Rather than accepting the fact that there was a simple error in the calculations that VicPol was relying on to justify the Police Station closures, VicPol doubled down initially until the journalist forced an admission that the figures the Force was relying on were not only misleading but blatantly false, feeding a false narrative that closing police stations had no negative effect on crime.
The Force response suggests that the error could have been deliberate rather than accidental. “It was just a typo”, doesn’t wash at all.
Typos get checked if anybody cares to take accountability for their command/management responsibilities.
It was reported that the response to the error being identified to VicPol indicates that this was no accident.
The response from the VicPol or Government spin doctors was,
“Reducing counter hours ensures police can continue patrolling each of these communities to prevent and quickly respond to crime.”
The truth is actually the direct opposite. Doh!, as the Simpsons would say.
Graphics courtesy Herald Sun
No matter how the spin doctors might try to fudge the numbers, a 22% increase in crime in areas where stations are closed or have reduced opening hours is a monumental law-enforcement calamity.
It also goes some way to reinforce the problems faced by the Chief Commissioner when this sort of thing is allowed to occur under the watch of his senior officers.
The executive officers who presented the argument of closing police stations to the Force Command, on the basis that it will allow police to reduce crime, is a completely ill-informed crock, and they must be held to account.
It also shows how out of touch the Executive can become when ensconced in the Command environment, losing sight of the realities of the police role in the community.
This incident is a gross failure of the Senior Command responsible, and there is just no coming back from the conclusion that these nefarious data claims were either politically or internally created to justify a failed policy shift. Trying to cover someone’s exposed buttocks.
Most disturbing is that the authors of this blunder or mischief do not understand the community they serve and the role the local Police Station plays in crime prevention.
It cannot be dismissed that the introduction of Super Stations, generally around the early 2000’s, and the demise of smaller community-based stations coincide with the start of the crime tsunami we now endure.
We would have thought most senior people would be aware of this trend; if not, they should have been.
.A simple explanation of the roles of Police Stations and how they have changed gives proper insights.
.Super Station:
Often referred to as the Fire Brigade approach, where Police exit the Station to attend events, similar to how the fire brigade responds, and return after the matter is resolved or they are redirected to another problem.
Less “front counter centric” a “less service delivery strategy”.
Focus on backend policing capability. Whatever that means, is clearly not working.
Public contact may be centralised, reduced or eliminated to favour electronic contact (the impersonal call centre approach). Dealing with traumatised citizens by a call centre is an unconscionable and cruel policy.
Standard Station:
Strong local visibility, connection, and ownership of their community.
Community-facing (reports, walk-ins, local issues) “Increased service delivery”.
The problem with the Super Stations and the demise of the Local Station breaks the contract between the Police and the community.
The bridge between the community and the police has been fractured, and we are now paying the price.
The impact of 22% increase in crime, reasonably attributed to Station closures or restricted hours, takes the heat off the Judiciary, as this number, a 22% increase in crime, is something the Courts have not achieved, although by their performance, they seem to be trying to.
There is a role for a Super Station or a Headquarters Station, but not at the expense of the Local Station, where the community has ownership, and there is a reciprocal connection between the Police and their community, a sense of ownership and responsibility for their community, not achieved in Super Stations, which are often many kilometres away from the fringes of the area they are required to Police..
The problem is that decision-makers within the Force and the Government lack a clear understanding of the immeasurable impact that an open Police Station has on the community, particularly on those involved in the commission of crimes. Equally, the importance of having somewhere to go if in danger cannot be dismissed as inconsequential; having the option is the key.
The argument that the Stations are not really closed but only the front counter is flawed, as what the community, including the crooks, see is what faces them.
The solution is blatantly obvious and has been at the forefront of CAA recommendations for many years. The move to recruit former Police as Force Reservists will provide an opportunity to reverse the current strategy.
It must be introduced as a matter of urgency.
Moreover, the Reservist postings must also be open to serving members who are struggling with operations and can move to the reserve list after an initial period of 5 years of front-line operations – a better option (and cheaper) than having them crumble and be boarded out.
Although unlikely, the Police Association should be very vocal on this issue, supporting struggling members.
The Chief Commissioner must put pressure on the Government to remove an upper limit on the number of reservists that can be employed. The numbers would only be limited by the overall Force authorised strength.
The current allocation of reservists is 200+, whatever that ‘+’ means, and the functions for Reservists as part of Service delivery are only a third-tier priority.
So, the likelihood of substantial gains in the number of Police Stations opening is very problematic.
The anticipated work for reservists includes:
Front desk enquiries
Non‑urgent reports
Public assistance and referrals
Victim follow‑up contact.
Add to that, telephone inquiries and their impact may be more substantial; however, the numbers are of great concern and need to be closer to 1000 to enable 24/7 functions to cover reservist leave and rest days rather than just 9-5 pm. This will allow more reservists to be attracted and accommodate part-time commitments.
Simply providing the low numbers anticipated will have little material effect on Police Station opening hours.
This raises the question of at what stage in the growth of crime will activate the Government and the Force to address the problem with the available resources sitting in the community, the ubiquitous Reservist.
The annual Police Community Survey has opened, but you need to be quick as it closes at the end of this month. See https://engage.vic.gov.au/vicpol-2026
The strategy for these surveys has been carefully crafted so that there is a guaranteed minimal response, the important questions are omitted, and there is very little marketing of the Survey’s existence. You may find out about it if you are in the know, but it’s hardly a reliable strategy to monitor community sentiment.
The 2025 Survey only attracted measly 7,600 responses, a number not far from less than half the overall strength of the Force and with a population served by the Force of 7 million people, the best they can do is this meagre amount. a number so small that it is statistically useless.
Although equally useless, it would have looked better if the whole Force had taken the survey.
We are not suggesting that the Police themselves provided all the answers, but it certainly looks like they may have had substantial input; they knew of its existence.
Outside of the Police employees, the reach would have been very limited.
With Law and Order, such a topical issue in the community, this response number is embarrassingly pathetic.
The 2026 survey is the 4th annual one, and it is generally a waste of time and money. Money that could be well spent elsewhere.
The same top two priorities from the initial 2023 survey have remained consistent every year. The top 5 issues raised by respondents in 2025 are the same as those in 2024, and surveying and achieving results that are already, or should already be, bleeding-obvious, is also an embarrassment and the next best thing to pathetic.
An extract from the report on the 2025 survey reinforces the issues raised in this piece.
Key safety concerns (2025 survey)
‘Safety in public places’ and ‘safety of my property and possessions’ have remained the top two safety concerns for Victorians since 2023. The top five safety concerns in 2025 remained the same as those reported in 2024.
Victorian residents have told us their top five safety concerns in 2025 are:
Safety in public places
Safety of my property and possessions
Drugs and alcohol
Road safety
Serious and organised crime
Your ideas
Respondents were given the opportunity to share their ideas on how to make them feel safer. (Putting the responsibility on the community, diverting from the Force is weakness personified) The top theme that emerged from these comments relates to visible policing, including a desire for increased foot patrols, night patrols, 24/7 station staffing, and more Protective Services Officers on various types of transport and at community locations. Other themes that emerged relate to judicial and legislative reform, community engagement, road policing, and infrastructure improvement.
But what did the Force do with all these ideas, and what was the success or community feedback?
Although we are not privy to the relationship or consultation that occurs between VicPol and Engage Victoria, the Government quango responsible for the survey, it might be an idea to have a statistician represent the Force in the design of a decent survey to make it more meaningful.
Additionally, the way the Survey is marketed seems aimed squarely at Police apparatchiks, making its data output highly questionable.
We have not seen the use of general media to reach the broader community (yes, paid ads); however, what is a huge embarrassment for VicPol is that, in their 4th year, nothing has improved.
There are quite a few waffle words on the website implying success, but we all know that there has been little improvement, but rather deterioration in how safe we feel.
Do not, however, assume that this is the fault of the Police altogether, as we have a Chief Commissioner with a Herculean task of bringing a demoralised and deteriorated Force up to an adequate standard, and this sort of garbage survey doesn’t help him or the Force.
A fundamental tenet of any survey should be to help guide the organisation toward effectiveness.
So why were there no questions about Service Delivery?
Why wasn’t the role of other agencies that influence community safety measured?
Why wasn’t the role of the Courts included?
There is a plethora of other issues that should be measured; however, the whole exercise should have one focus, and that is to identify mechanisms to implement measuring techniques of Force outputs, Members’ and Management performance at all levels measured against a process of benchmarking all aspects of the Force’s functions.
Catching crooks is not the only role of policing, but it is the easiest to measure, hence things like a sense of safety and well-being in the community are ignored and, in part, seen as not a police function; arrant rubbish, preventing crime is far more desirable for the community than the alternative, ask them.
And when you start measuring the organisation’s performance, an adage comes to the fore:
‘What gets measured gets done’.
As is our normal practice, when we solicit, we always provide solutions for consideration.
If you want to build community trust, you need to engage.
For many police officers, unless they are dealing with a crook, to some extent, engaging with the community can take a long time to master and can be very difficult. You cannot assume successful engagement is automatic. However, there is an easy and extremely effective way to bring the community on board.
Design a series of one-page B5 handouts on how to make your house, your car, and your family safe.
Provide them to Stations to be handed out by foot patrols or left with retailers for distribution.
As important as simple content is, the design must be capable of attracting the reader. The flyer also needs a phone number that citizens can call to reach their local Police Station for further advice.
To further benefit Policing overall, the newly recruited Reserve Force members should be deployed alongside Probationary Constables to deliver the flyers.
This has the benefit of experienced reserve members with their community knowledge and experience imparting to newbies engagement techniques, as well as issues around their personal safety in the public space.
Members who are used in this exercise need to be given ownership of the area they are allocated, which allows easy and accurate measuring of the program so that it can be modified if necessary to improve efficiency, and the bonus is that the probationer can devote any of their spare patrol time to their community.
This program provides Probationers with the opportunity to begin learning job satisfaction, an outcome for the community that they can own and be proud of. This will serve them well when they face the less-than-savoury matters the police must deal with during their careers.
This is called Crime Prevention, Community Engagement, or whatever title somebody sees fit; however, one thing is for sure: it will work with minimal impact on resources.
All the Force has to do is manage the nay-sayers within.
This survey doesn’t need to be a secret, but a useful tool if done properly.
It is now essential that Victoria Police review their operational approach to the prevention and detection of crime.
We accept they are working under staff pressures; however, the time for using that as an excuse has passed.
A St Kilda Chemist was assaulted in his shop in the middle of the day, trying to protect his staff and his property, the shop stock, from a light-fingered, aggressive male many years his junior.
Several things are very disturbing, not least of all, it took twenty-four (24) hours for the police to respond to the 000 calls for help.
That makes the ambulance ramping times look positively rapid in comparison.
But if the police were doing their job well, this incident would probably not have occurred at all, and that is the frustration with the current mindset of policing.
The Chemist shop located in St. Kilda has been targeted on many occasions by apparent drug-affected individuals, over a very long period, and the behaviour necessitates the owners to use 000 very regularly. This was the longest no-show of police, and it was just good luck rather than good police work that the assault did not continue to escalate further.
The injuries sustained by the Chemist are bad enough, but do they have to wait until it is a fatality before the Police respond?
Given the age of the victim, he is extremely lucky not to have suffered fatal one-punch injuries.
The CAA membership is well aware of the trauma associated with a one-punch death as experienced by another of our members, who is a strong advocate for legislative change.
The two owners of the business have made every effort to encourage the police to make their neighbourhood safe for everyone and have been regular attendees at the Police information forums to provide feedback on the issues.
We note that, when interviewed by the media, Charlotte, Russell’s wife, corrected the Secretary of the Police Association, who was claiming the percentage of Police unavailable was much lower than the truth, which is closer to 25%. A very embarrassed Secretary had to admit on live TV that her figures were more accurate. Charlotte is a member of the CAA and actively works for the good of others in her community.
But the situation that they found themselves in is aggravated by the amount of effort the couple put into making St. Kilda a safer place.
VicPol has made as many promises as they have had management turnovers, and each wants to put their own stamp on the territory.
The promise of more patrols (proactive crime-prevention strategies) can happen for short periods if they are lucky, but are generally ineffective, as this incident demonstrates. It begs the question: where was the foot patrol when this incident happened, and why did it take 24 hours for the police to attend?
Had the Police attended when the first alarm was made, it may have prevented the assault.
But if there had been a foot patrol doing its job in the vicinity, then the assault would not have occurred at all.
The answer probably lies with the attitude of local police and their command, with a questionable attitude to preventing crime. They can’t see past reported crime.
They haven’t worked out that they can reduce what may be a serious work overload by reducing crime in the first place.
The numbers game will again be trotted out as a defence. Still, the community is sick of hearing this mantra and wants the Police management to provide leadership and exercise creative strategies to reduce crime.
The available Police resources can be used to maximum efficiency to address problems like this, and there are a plethora of options open to police commanders to use resources more effectively, but little public knowledge that they are even trying.
They just keep playing the same staffing refrain.
The public would accept some problems in resourcing if they are satisfied that management is trying to resolve them, and this hinges on open and frank discussions with the community, not on the traditional excuse mantra.
It looks very much like nothing much will happen until the Chief Commissioner issues directions to achieve the reduced crime environment.
It will need some Police managers to be held to account for failing to manage the volume of reported crime under their geographical area of responsibility due to a lack of proactive measures.
Being held to account and sanctioned would change attitudes overnight for the betterment of the Force, the Police members and the community.
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One Policing art that has been disappearing over the last decade has now reached a point where it poses a real and ever-present danger to Police on the beat, extending to Police mobile patrol units and is reflected in the crime statistics that show clearly that the proactive function of police patrols is ineffective.
The Art of the Police foot patrol has all but disappeared, replaced by a quantitative approach that is endangering the lives of the police involved.
Central to this new, increased danger is the loss of the skill of Situational Awareness.
Today, you are more likely to see a gaggle of police walking along a city street than police members on patrol. Still, the gaggle is in response to a perceived need by management, mistakenly believing that numbers create a deterrent rather than an individual well-trained police member properly performing Patrol with well-tuned situational awareness and community engagement skills.
To increase the deterrent impact, if there are four or five members detailed for patrol, they must be spread out to cover greater areas, and that is effective deterrent Policing, metaphorically a police presence on every corner.
An effect achieved by properly trained supervisors.
It is surprising that the Police Association (TPAV) is not very vocal on this issue; in fact, their silence is deafening. The skill of patrolling directly relates to Police members’ safety, an issue we presume is of critical interest to the TPAV.
What we don’t know is whether these patrol skill deficits are a lack of training of members and or supervisors, or just the easy way out for supervisors.
We would hope this is not Force policy; we credit the Police administration as being smarter than that.
What you will see with these skill deficits is police engaged with each other, perhaps talking about babies, station gossip, or football, who knows, but what we do know is that this practice is very dangerous. These groups, inwardly focused, are a bigger target for terrorists or organised crime gangs, or rogue individuals, and these risks should not be discounted.
The gaggle phenomenon should be known as the ‘non-patrol ’.
The members in conversation have no Situational Awareness, so they will not see danger coming.
You can’t dodge a bullet (metaphorically) if you don’t see when it is coming.
In this era of heightened risk of terrorism, the Police groups make easy targets all bunched together out in the open, walking at a leisurely pace, not concentrating on their function, is a recipe for disaster in lost Police lives.
One of the most dangerous activities reported to us has been groups of members convening a meeting, perhaps by a supervisor, in public places with their backs to where any threat may eventuate.
Sitting Ducks is an appropriate analogy.
Probably the misguided two-up policy of years ago has never been fully corrected.
Policy Introduced in 2015:
Near-total ban on solo public policing.
Now:
Two-up is strongly enforced for high-risk and Highway Patrol duties. Multiple exemptions based on risk assessment, location, urgency, and staffing realities—functionally a risk-managed policy, not a universal rule.
The problem is that members have become entrenched in the need for the company rather than ensuring operational effectiveness.
And while on members’ safety, supervisors must intervene to manage gawkers at incident scenes.
Far too often, we see in media footage at incident scenes, gawkers standing around, apparently enjoying the event, and we are not talking about the public, but other police.
Gawking, not keeping an eye on the background to protect themselves and the members directly involved, must be addressed before any real harm occurs, apart from being unprofessional.
It will take strong leadership to turn this around. Something we are confident Chief Commissioner Bush could provide.
It does not seem logical that a well-trained police officer cannot undertake foot patrol or mobile patrols one-up.
If there are two members available, one should patrol either side of the street, multiplying the visible Police presence.
This allows for community engagement, the most potent proactive Police function. And when it comes to mobile patrols, the same logic should apply.
When a supervisor is tasking their shift, vehicle availability is a critical consideration.
It seems illogical to have one or two vehicles two up when the Station has other vehicles idle.
Three or four vehicles, one up, are far more effective than the apparent holy grail that Police vehicles must be two-up.
The concept of an observer in a Police vehicle in practise means the passenger has eyes down on a phone or other electronic device, making the role of observer moot.
The role of the supervisor is to manage all vehicle crews, so the allocation of resources to a public call may require two or three, or more, one-up vehicles to respond.
Often, as the case may be, once the matter is under physical control, resources can be peeled off, making patrol more efficient in any geographical area, reducing initial response times and increasing patrol visibility, thereby reducing crime. On many occasions, leaving just one member to complete the administration.
The two-up policy, even though it has been diluted since its inception, must be rescinded so lame-duck excuses cannot be used to maintain the status quo.
Although introduced as a safety issue, the risk to members has not diminished since its introduction but has increased.
More members have paid the ultimate sacrifice during the two-up period than at any other time, including multiple deaths not seen since the Kelly ambush of 1878 at Stringy Bark Creek near Mansfield.
The most effective safety strategy to reduce fatalities and injuries to Police in the Patrol environment is Situational Awareness, but what is it, and why is it so critical for Police?
Simply put, it is the art of looking at the bush and seeing the trees.
Ask anybody to look at the traffic and explain what they see. Usually, the answer is a lot of Cars.
Ask a trained Police member what they see, and they will report the types of vehicles and any obvious anomalies, such as passenger-side windows wound down when all other vehicles have them closed, erratic driving, avoiding being blocked in, a very young driver with similarly aged occupants in a high-end car.
And the real giveaway is that all occupants are paying attention to the police vehicle.
All these things, and more, justify checking out the vehicle.
A trained member on patrol will engage with the public, but, more importantly, will focus on the faces of every individual they pass. They are looking for body language that may indicate unlawful intent.
These are just a small part of the many aspects of Situational Awareness.
None of this happens when a gaggle of Police, or even just two, stroll around, talking amongst themselves.
We are confident that the Chief Commissioner is across this issue, and we hope, for the benefit of members, that the Police Association becomes proactive in this approach, given the benefits to members.
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The announcement in the Herald Sun, 12th of April 2026, ‘Victoria is haemorrhaging police officers’, by the Leader of the Opposition, Jess Wilson, to increase the Police numbers by 3000, is very welcome news indeed. Long-suffering Victorians can at least have hope that, with a change in government, the issue of law and order, particularly the Police capacity, in this once fine State would be seriously addressed. At last, our safety is a priority.
What concerns us most is the methodology the Opposition proposes to achieve its targets.
Establishing overseas recruiting centres and the associated marketing to attract recruits could be a very expensive option, especially if no suitable ‘sunset’ clause for this process is included.
It also has the potential of the Force, believing the problem is fixed and fails to address the problems within, the root cause of the current issues.
It is worrying that no real effort has ever been made to recruit Victorians.
It is true that well-trained personnel from the countries listed and interstate will help, but it is not the solution; rather, it is a welcome stopgap.
The problem, as we understand it, is that there are plenty of Police applicants; it is the training and processing that is the bottleneck.
The CAA has raised this issue before and proposed a solution.
The first step before we head overseas is to examine and review the selection process of Recruits to ensure they’re fit for purpose from selection to retirement.
Failing to do that adequately is kicking the can down the road.
Poor recruitment selection today creates the problems of tomorrow.
The epidemic of resignations as Police exit in alarming numbers is more than likely to be, in large part at least, the manifestation of poor selections in the past as much as poor management today. Perhaps focusing on a quantitative rather than a qualitative outcome is the problem.
It is critical that applicants are screened more effectively to minimise the risk of non-physical injuries during their service, and investment in this area would be money well spent, provided the outcomes are monitored.
It would also be a good investment to properly examine the exit avalanche to identify causes and address those. Failing to do that will only mean the causes are still there, and the problem will reignite at some point in the future.
One of the major failures is that VicPol has outsourced recruitment application training, so the potential recruits are not being evaluated on their merits but ona taught response from independent contractors.
That is a major recruiting flaw, regardless of how dedicated the applicant trainers may be.
Outsourcing this process is the result of the Force seeking greater efficiency, rather than understanding that effectiveness should never be compromised for efficiency.
We are advised that a potential recruit may need to pay up to $2,000 to complete the application process and training before assessment.That has to be a major disincentive for many suitable people considering a career with Victoria Police.
Victoria Police must take back control of this process and be responsible for all aspects of it. It seems disingenuous to ask people to join and pay for the privilege of being considered.
The Force must also review management accountability, not only for staff functional performance in the field but also for their ability to deal with the non-physical stress that the police service exposes them to.
In summary, there is a need for overseas recruiting, but recruiting in Victoria should be the first priority, as it will be substantially cheaper, enabling world-class training to be developed and implemented across the Force to improve the organisation’s overall performance and the conditions in which personnel are forced to work.
We have seen in recent years vast improvements in the employment conditions of Police in this state, but this has been overshadowed by the large numbers leaving the organisation. So simply improving tangible benefits of themselves is not the answer without the non-tangible benefits being developed.
Although we do not begrudge any improvements, given the conditions that police work under, the provision of new buildings, better equipment, and improved conditions can be counterproductive to the organisation’s efficacy.
Tangible rewards do not replace effective management; however, rewards used judiciously may solve the current problems.
Rather than spend millions overseas, why not invest in the current staff to slow the retention exodus?
Retention bonuses will go a long way to stem that tide and encourage others to join. It would also attract interstate serving Police seeking a reward for service.
Additionally, this scheme, which can be spread over many budgets, would be easier to maintain.
A bonus system starting with Graduation, then two years of service, five years, then ten-year increments would overtly reward service and discourage those considering an exit plan from Policing.
Investing in the current members, showing appreciation for their work, can be a cost-effective strategy as the scheme has many attractions, particularly if the bonus is linked to performance.
It would be disheartening for hardworking members to see lazy, incompetent members rewarded simply for turning up for work.
Senior Police and political leaders should have a look at the Hawthorne experiment undertaken by Elton Mayo, although it was many years ago; it is as relevant today as it was then and relates to Policing, as is currently evident throughout the Force.
The Hawthorne experiments at Western Electric’s Hawthorne Works plant demonstrated that worker productivity increased not only because of physical conditions (such as salary, leave and other conditions) but also because workers felt valued when observed and given special attention, a phenomenon known as the Hawthorne effect. Led by Elton Mayo, the studies highlighted the importance of social relations, employee morale, and management attention over strict physical working conditions.
By all means, we encourage overseas and interstate recruiting of serving Police officers as a short-term fix, but what is desperately needed is a serious effort to recruit locally and retain existing staff.
We would like to be assured that if the Opposition wins government, they can walk and chew gum simultaneously.
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With all the boo-hoo-hah about our wonderful city and how it is being overrun with druggies and the homeless, it has taken Steve Price, a Melbourne Herald Sun journalist, to really nail the issue and perhaps indirectly provide a solution.
Steve recently got himself down to the alleged epicentre of the Melbourne problem to see first-hand what is going on.
This was what gave his article (Herald Sun Saturday 4th April 2006) real authenticity and demonstrated to decision-makers that they should also get off their butts and go down and get firsthand experience.
Then we might get some strategies and decisions that actually work.
“A couple of weeks ago, during mid-morning on Elizabeth St, a confrontation between a couple of police officers and three obviously drug-affected people outside a liquor store had a disturbing outcome.
The three had decided paying for booze wasn’t necessary, so they simply walked out of the shop with any expensive alcohol they could lay their hands on.
Sadly, for them, there were two police on foot patrol right out front. One of the three had already collapsed onto the pavement and was swigging away at whatever she had stolen, one of the others – a bloke – was shirtless, clutching a bottle along with his mate.
What happened next, though, shows there is more than one way to solve a crime problem.”
To avoid confronting this issue, those responsible jump to the avoidance fallback, with great enthusiasm, ‘this is a Community Health problem’. Effectively diverting the focus from the reality that this problem is primarily one of Law and Order, the health component, although important, is secondary.
First and foremost, the community leaders need to accept that there is a problem and that none of the current strategies is working.
Moreover, the problem is not isolated to Elizabeth Street but also affects other areas in the city, inner-city, metropolitan, and rural areas. In other words, it is a Statewide problem.
It is also arguably a National problem; however, shifting responsibility to the National approach only ensures that nothing effective will be done, other than blame shifting.
Recognising the depth and breadth of the issue is but part one, and no solution can be achieved if those who are our community leaders don’t accept reality but remain blissfully oblivious in their comfort zone of denial.
But back to Steve Price’s work.
“As I stood listening to the exchange between the police officers and the thieving druggies, I was amazed when one of the uniformed officers got into the face of the two that were standing and pointed toward a stationary tram at the stop on the corner of Elizabeth and Flinders streets. He told the pair, “Go and get on that tram right now, and catch it to the end of the line and f— off out of here”.
Tactically, not strictly out of the Victoria Police handbook and not doing much for the idea that if you are a homeless druggie, you shouldn’t be stealing from Liquorland, but it solved the immediate problem.
The moral of the story is that despiteall the promisesfrom the state government and Melbourne City Council, they still haven’t addressed theissues haunting Melburnians,desperate to claim their once great city back. Broken promise after broken promise and useless media spin-driven solutions are a joke and simply don’t achieve anything”..
The actions of the Police member involved were laudable, exercising his lawful discretionary power in that it immediately resolved a problem, but unfortunately, only relocated it, albeit temporarily. We cannot help but wonder whether the Police member was unduly influenced, given that, in the current administrative climate, charging these thieves was a waste of time.
Which raises the issue of whether it is right both morally and legally for the three druggies not to face court for their thievery.
The theft is distinct from their drug sobriety and must be treated independently, and the impact of drugs on their behaviour must be ignored; drug addicts must not be allowed to blame drugs for their crimes.
Deal with any criminal matters as the priority and then deal with their health issue as a result of their poor life choices separately.
The Courts are not the referral point for treatment, as that lies with Corrections.
In the unlikely event that they are jailed.
The Courts are responsible for instilling accountability. Corrections are responsible for rehabilitation and referring the addict’s health issues to the responsible authority, Health.
Being under the influence of any addiction must never be an excuse for criminal activity.
We have no hope of resolving this blight on society unless the Police can do their job and the Courts do theirs, and once those two sectors are working, then the issue of dealing with the perpetrators’ health can be addressed.
The health approach hasn’t worked and is not likely to, no matter what the apologists for drug addicts committing crimes may think and, unfortunately, espouse.
Compassion for addicts/users deprives those innocent of any wrongdoing, the victims, of justice. It’s the Victims whodeserve compassion from the courts, not the perpetrator of a crime.
The solution, as in the case witnessed by Steve Price, has become clear: the health argument has failed, and the only option is a law-and-order approach.
Unfortunately, the police member exercising his discretion failed the sector of the community most impacted by this activity, the victims.
The Police must be encouraged to charge any person associated with the drug scourge for even what is considered a minor crime. If they commit an offence, they must be arrested (assuming there is a power of arrest for that offence) and brought before a court.
If the offence is proven, then the Courts must be directed not to consider their sobriety at the time of the offence as a mitigating factor in sentencing.
This strategy will imbue accountability in the users, the lack of which is a major contributor to the drug epidemic.
Building up convictions for minor matters will eventually end up with the addict being sentenced to prison, if the Courts are doing their job, instead of trying to be social engineers.
This social engineering approach generally leads to failure, failure for the victim and the addict.
Unless there are consequences for unacceptable (criminal) behaviour, there is no motivation for the addicts to change their behaviour or seek help, remembering that they are as addicted to the drug lifestyle as much as their drug of choice.
Tackling the lifestyle by instilling accountability, there is a chance of substantial change for the better, and health outcomes will become effective.
Well done, Steve.
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While Police Command and the Police Association dance around each other, trying to score points, the crime rate is either stabilising (not according to the statistics) or that an injection of 1,500 replacement members will solve the problem.
It would be nice, and good for policing and the community if these two would at least adopt a common approach rather than lock heads. That approach does not provide solutions, just more grief.
The Herald Sun report on the 20th of March 2026 exposed this imbroglio.
If anyone thinks an injection of 1500 will solve the problem, they need to take a serious look at what they are saying. At current rates, the replacements will take longer than many of us will live.
At the accelerated rate of 70 + per annum, over attrition, the shortfall in Police graduating from training will be reached in about 20 years, provided attrition does not continue to accelerate.
Given the current realities of policing in this State, the chances of stabilisation are extremely low.
20 years is a long time to wait for sufficient police to attend to your problem.
Shortening courses is a band-aid fix, as less police training translates into poor police performance. If these few weeks were scuppered so easily, why were police trained to the full measure for so many years?
Probably because the Force collectively thought it was necessary to produce effective, efficient police. Surely it wasn’t being done for the hell of it.
You can see the claims coming thick and fast in the future, where members blame the lack of training that caused their mental health to deteriorate.
Additionally, VicPol’s argument that the crime rate will plateau is unrealistic, because how would they know unless their crystal ball works better than ours?
Telling the public that the Police Stations shuttered across the Mornington Peninsula has limited effect because victims ringing 000 is arrant rubbish, as there is no evidence that Stations weren’t being contacted before they were closed.
The problem with the Station closures is that they are misleading the public, as the majority of those stations are actively operational; they just don’t provide a forward-facing inquiry counter.
That people do not attend Police Stations during certain periods is well known, and closing the inquiry counter during these periods is reasonable, but a 24-hour approach results in the Force failing dramatically in an important function of Service delivery.
One of the most outstanding and embarrassing claims attributed to Deputy Commissioner Hill in this Herald article justifying the station closures was –
“and (officers) weren’t answering the telephone, because no one was ringing.” ‘Doh,’
It may well be more accurate to say that nobody answers the telephone, so nobody rings.
The Police Advice Line (not operated by Police)and the 000, also non-police systems, have major service delivery failures, frustrating callers. Police simply supervising call takers is not enough.
Add to that Crime Stoppers, which seems never to provide callers with feedback, and the whole of the forces and allied communications systems need to be reviewed and updated to be fit for purpose, whether you’re the caller or the recipient.
There is a desperate need for a change in attitude within the Force Command.
The Force is there to serve the community, not the other way round.
As to what can be done.
The Police Association and the Force need to be on the same page and come up with solutions, not more rhetoric, butting heads, and blame shifting.
Here are but a few matters to consider.
a) G-Tag
The spike in stolen vehicles would be dramatically reduced by implementing the CAA G-Tag project. A pilot run some years ago that failed because the onus was put on the car owners, and the police abandoned their role again, and the Pilot did not follow the G-Tag proposal.
b) Training efficiency
Training could be accelerated by accommodating training off campus from the Police Academy. Recruits start for a number of weeks at the Academy, then move to an off-campus facility for theory training, returning in the last fortnight of their training at the Academy and for graduation. When operated properly, this initiative could triple the number of recruits processed each year, and there would be no need to reduce training timeframes. Judicious planning may be required to coordinate this scheme, but the outputs justify the work.
c) Reduce Night shifts.
To alleviate personnel shortages, each member of every Task Force or other specialist group should remain on their station-of-origin roster for the night shift. With fewer night shifts, members’ overall welfare will improve, with little impact on the groups from which this resource is sourced. Additionally, the Task Force or Special Duties members can keep in touch with operations at their station of origin.
d) Administration efficiency
The streamlining of administration plaguing operational members is being addressed; however, the members are generally not aware of progress. Reporting on what is being done and accountability to front-line members will give them hope that things will improve. Reversing the negative effects of admin overload, particularly if a reporting mechanism includes opportunities for members to provide feedback, will help develop members’ ownership of the changes. Accountability to frontline members by those charged with fixing the problem will expedite results and improve overall morale.
e) Increase operational staff by 10,000 days.
Another mechanism to improve staffing levels is to introduce a leave buy-back scheme. All members currently enjoy substantial leave entitlements, whether they are working in the frontline or elsewhere. A voluntary scheme available only to frontline police, if it attracted 500 participants for four weeks, would create an additional 10,000 on-duty workdays per annum.
This scheme would be attractive to members trying to get into the property market, recovering from a financial hardship, or just the added income as a valuable tool to improve their lifestyle. A voluntary scheme such as this will be the most cost-effective way to increase the Force’s capacity in the short term.
f) Role of leading Senior Constables.
Our understanding of the Leading Senior Constable (LSC) was akin to that of a Master Police Patrolman (MPP), experienced and equipped, capable of any police operational undertaking, including the more difficult or complex tasks than the rest—a cut above the others.
They do, however, seem to be treated as just another member and their skills are not recognised.
LSC’s should be capable of one-up patrols as first responders to determine the additional needs required for the reported incident.
One key area that would have an immediate impact is the reintroduction of one-up Highway patrols, doubling the number of Police Highway vehicles on the road.
If implemented, it would increase the number of patrolling vehicles by a factor of two across the Force.
g) Two-up patrols
Rescinding the two-up patrol mandate of 2015, based on a heightened terrorism threat, was, in hindsight, an overreaction that has limped along, reducing the force’s capacity to respond to community needs for a decade. This policy coincides with the rapid escalation of crime over the last decade. Halving Police patrols was a major contributor to the crime spike, which would go a long way to impacting crime and the road toll.
The instruction has been debunked as a safety issue for police, as more Police have been slain in that decade in incidents involving multiple officers than any recorded death of a Police member working alone. Public records indicate eight Police deaths since the policy was introduced, none of them working one up. Therefore, it can be safer for members to work one-up. The additional Police freed up should be detailed to other vehicles (There seems to be no lack of them as you drive by Stations and see police cars parked doing nothing for hours) or other patrol functions to increase the Police presence by 100%.
h) Police proactive youth programs
If you want to make inroads into the crime statistics, then police working with children in targeted areas is the only strategy that will work. It’s no good relying on the Court system, and a piecemeal approach is problematic.
A revamped and targeted Police Schools program where Police are actively involved in Schools at the age target level of year 7.
Part of the industrial action currently being undertaken by Teachers and Principals is the danger they regularly face. A Police presence in schools will alleviate some of these concerns and make schools a safer place for staff; students will also benefit from a safe environment that promotes better learning outcomes. All contributing to a reduced crime rate.
The in-school work of the police, apart from building bridges on a personal level with students, is to deal with, assist, and guide any child who is heading toward a future in crime. What won’t work is random school attendance for students to play sports with the police. Perhaps enjoyable for both, but effectiveness is severely limited. A more formal approach with structured learning, however, would be a more effective use of Police resources.
It is time the pendulum swings to a proactive youth focus and stop blaming everybody else for the crime surge when creative planning would address the problem overnight. It’s called Crime Prevention.
These initiatives would go a long way toward creating a more functional Force, and the 1,500– 2,000 police officer number shortfall, depending on who you talk to, could be largely addressed by these initiatives.
And, more importantly, take pressure off members, slowing the attrition rate as the job becomes more result-driven, increasing job satisfaction.
For the Force and the Association to have a public spat is not helpful to either side.
The recent matter we became involved in with a member being forced back to the frontline with a serious health issue should never have happened, but shows that the Force has a long way to go to ensure the welfare of its police members and the Police Association must review their function, given those who helped the sick member, sought our help rather than the Association is embarrassing.
The welfare of Police must be the highest priority for both the Force and the Association.
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If “service efficiency” is relevant to how well VP trains its members, and “service effectiveness/delivery” relates to how well those members do the job they have been trained to do, it seems to me that there is a loss of memory and a big hole in the thinking of the senior VP management presently concerned.
Consider the older methods of training, way back before the rubbish about worrying how efficient the Instructional members of VP and the many public servants doing the training are, in turning out “street police” – what matters is the fact that police turned up to do whatever job was necessary. NOTE THAT – enough police turned up to do whatever work was needed at the point of intersection with the public. There were just about enough trained and operational members to cover the needs of the jobs.
Let’s go back to the training at the Academy about 1970: when I did it, it was twenty straight live-in weeks at the St. Kilda Road Depot. In those 20 weeks, we were SATURATED in POLICE work, behaviour, experiences, laws and structure – nothing else! With the two limited “outsiders” exceptions for Social Studies and Typing instructors, the only people we dealt with were POLICE members, all of whom were senior in rank and experience to us trainees. Nietzsche said, “What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”, and that was appropriate when the POLICE Depot was active.
We learnt only from POLICE persons, thus we knew and learnt only POLICE behaviours – there were NO outside opinions from biased Government-body “teachers” or other politically-motivated do-gooder opinions to change or challenge proper POLICE learning behaviours and beliefs.
Therefore, POLICE recruits graduating from the Depot acted and thought like POLICE. At the Depot, the Squad Law Instructor was God, and from him, [a carefully-selected and very experienced, properly-trained POLICEMAN], we learnt the LAW and POLICE beliefs, and were examined on our knowledge depth, and breadth of subjects, many times during those twenty hard weeks.
Then we went out, mostly to POLICE Stations, and learnt more the hard way from our superiors in rank and experience, on how to do the job properly. AND in two years’ time, we went back to the Depot to do what was known as RETENTION – many more weeks of POLICE learning, instruction, and knowledge updating, and exams, to make sure we were really doing well enough to be kept on as REAL POLICE, and if we passed, we were confirmed as POLICE!
I would argue strongly that, unlike the “woke” ideas currently used, this idea and system turned out REAL POLICE!
BUT in later years, training moved to Glen Waverley, and the learning system changed a lot.
Firstly, it went over to a program called PCETS or Probationary Constable Extended Training Scheme – that was the start of VP going downhill, because by then, non-police “outsiders” were brought in to “teach” recruits, and thus the POLICE attitude was beginning to be lost!
Members being produced from then on were not really POLICE; mostly they were nice, kind persons trained to help little old ladies across the pedestrian crossing, and to speak politely and kindly to motorists, and were also hatless persons wearing irregular or poor uniform clothing standards who sometimes walked down the street, whilst not looking at anyone! (a euphemism for foot patrol)
Being nice to people was more important than being an actual POLICE member, and operational performance figures, even before the change of this Century, began to show this. The job kept slipping downhill… and has kept on digging downwards since then. It may not have reached the bottom yet!
Hard, efficient work by some police members wanting to be POLICE has plainly been affected, even negated, at all levels since then by poor VP management not biting back. This has allowed interference by Legal persons and the media, and allowed Court rules to prosper fully on the side of offenders.
Hamstrung and frightened police, caused by obstruction, negative mobile phones, and media interference that is everywhere at public demonstrations, have themselves added to the widespread weight dragging current VP members down.
Internal low-grade support from self-aggrandising VP management and gutless operational supervisors has limited and worsened the abilities of operational members. Lowered VP standards of recruitment acceptances, TAFE and other non-police outside study and examinations, external video and phone influencing, TV and print media interference, even writing “Police” on vehicle doors instead of “POLICE”, and political interference affecting police recruits, have all been allowed by senior VP management to drag REAL POLICING down to the low stage VP now is!
Back about the late 1990s, the print media in general, video influencers, TV media and the general public had absolutely no say or effect in POLICE training. A loud and blunt return to those rules and behaviours might just return VP to the way it needs to be to do the policing job properly. Just as it’s taken years for police to dig and slide down to the poor standard VP has now reached, sadly, it will take years to improve and repair, assuming CCP BUSH is left alone to do his job, and that he actually has the capability to renew VP.
No longer is it the once-proud Victoria Police Force – and until it’s repaired, it can only be known as Victoria Police SERVICE!
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“ Jacinta Allan has repeatedly conceded the crime crisis that has gripped Victoria is unacceptable. She’s tried bail reform, tougher sentencing, and machete bins, but it now appears there’s a new hunt for someone to really fix it.
The Department of Justice and Community Safety is on the hunt for a Director, Police Policy and Crime Prevention, a senior executive role paying up to $298,488 if you don’t mind, to provide “expert policy and strategic advice” on policing and community safety.
The five-years fixed term position will oversee crime-prevention programs and help guide policing policy across government. With crime dominating the political agenda and continuing to rank chief among the concerns of Victorians, the new recruit might quickly discover the job description could be shortened to just two words: good luck.”-Herald Sun 15/013/2026- Backroom Baz
This proposed appointment is downright offensive, not only for all police, but also for the broader community. We definitely don’t need another high-paid expert telling the Police what to do. A function that may well be illegal, as VicPol is an independent authority or is supposed to be.
But it is interesting who this position may attract, but given past performances, the Government has already offered the job.
It surely wouldn’t be one of the former Chief Commissioners, given that of the eight, still around, the field is very narrow. Of those that aren’t already in highly paid jobs, there is only one or perhaps two at a pinch who would have the ability to do the job, but probably wouldn’t want it.
Dropping down the hierarchy, there is more to choose from, but if they couldn’t, as senior executives address these issues when they held the executive positions, what would make any clear thinker imagine that they could do any better, even with a big salary?
The salary package would cost the government somewhere North of half a million per year. When adding operational and functioning costs of staff, this little venture is going to cost the taxpayer somewhere north of $1-3 million.
For a government of its fiscal knees, this is outrageous.
If this is so, then for a fraction of this cost and far more effectively, the funding of a formal curriculum-based Police In Schools Program across the education system, which, apart from anything else, will make the schools safe for our kids.
It could also fund the redevelopment of the Blue Light Discos, a favourite with the kids (and parents) that gives them somewhere to enjoy themselves free from the tyranny of violence and intimidation. Learning how to enjoy themselves safely is a critical skill.
Operation New Start could be expanded to have a real impact. A program designed by teachers and the police to ensure all children get an education. Closed down by Police management, on the basis that it was not efficient and didn’t deal with large numbers of young people.
That it worked brilliantly was seen as irrelevant, go figure?
The new role will be Director, Police Policy and Crime Prevention, to ‘oversee crime-prevention programs and help guide policing policy across government.’
The Chief Commissioner may just tell the Director to but out, and would be well justified to do so, as the position directly conflicts with the role and duty of the Chief.
This appointment is a flat-out opportunity for nepotism, and the return on investment for Victorians is extremely questionable; it certainly does not reduce the pain and suffering of the many crime victims – the Directors’ spin will only aggravate them.
Paying somebody a huge salary does not always guarantee success and is not all that clever by one important metric: why start all over when programs that have an undeniable advantage over what may be dreamed up; – they actually work?
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