by CAA | Sep 5, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
It has been reported that the morale of the Police is at an all-time low. Contact with serving members by the CAA confirms the low morale issue; however, if the morale issue is to be addressed, it will not be solved by pay increases; that is not a silver morale bullet; the problem will still exist.
To understand the issues at play better, the Hawthorne Experiment sets out the issues well.
“The studies concluded that tangible motivators such as monetary incentives and good working conditions are generally less important in improving employee productivity than intangible motivators such as meeting individuals’ desire to belong to a group and be included in decision making and work.”
https://www.google.com/search?q=Thw+Hawthorn+experiment&rlz=1C1CHBF_en-GBAU710AU711&oq=Thw+
Although we strongly support the need to increase Police salaries, the underlying causes of low morale must be urgently addressed.
Whether a four-day week or an extra 15 minutes per shift, any move to decrease productivity has a knock-on effect, reducing staff availability and aggravating morale by increasing the load on on-duty members.
Looking from outside the force, the central issue seems to be not how many Police are in the organisation but how they are used and, importantly, how often good work is acknowledged.
It is evident that a significant shift in the current approach to policing is needed.
Around 2010, the force transitioned from a proactive force engaging with the community to a predominantly reactionary force, using arrests as a measure of success.
This shift in approach has clearly not served Victoria well. It has contributed, among other factors, to the increase in crime, particularly among juveniles.
Over fourteen years, which included in 2016, prophetic warnings from the CAA of a crime tsunami, particularly a youth crime tsunami, successive administrations have ignored or have been incapable of heeding our advice.
It is no wonder that morale is low with front-line staff so stretched as to make a very rewarding job into a drudgery with job satisfaction, a major job morale issue, almost eliminated.
No matter what the excuses, the reality is the problem must be shared amongst the force executive for poor leadership, and they should face the brunt of criticism.
The CAA believes that although a lot more can be done to address the issue, the current Chief Commissioner, Shane Patton, has at least tried to address some of the anomalies in management strategies and applications. However, it does appear that he is facing headwinds from a number of senior officers who have perhaps a Neanderthal inclination to Policing; a clean-out is absolutely overdue.
The morale problem must be adequately exposed so it can be addressed; to do that, an examination of the issues must be undertaken. Whether internal or external, it has little consequence as long as the process is totally transparent and capable of taking sworn evidence.
Some of the issues that must be examined are’.
- Force discipline – Policing is or should be a disciplined force given its dangerous function. Supervisors in the field and elsewhere must be respected and trained and, collectively, insist on discipline from their subordinates; being their best friend doesn’t cut it when a situation turns to muck. There are no problems with being friends off duty, but that relationship must change once on duty.
- Allocation of resources – There is something dramatically wrong with the management function when some Police stations can have high numbers of Police beavering away on computers. In contrast, neighbouring communities have no police to keep their local station open.
- Situational awareness – as often seen in the media, apart from police engaged in an incident, there always appear to be many police acting as onlookers. While it is not wrong to have the backs of the police directly involved, nobody has the backs of all the police audience to the action. This is dangerous and exposes the Police to unreasonable danger. The lack of supervision or poorly trained supervisors at incidents is a major failure.
- Organisational review/audit – there does not appear to be an effective review and audit process for the operations and management of resources within VicPol. This is a grave anomaly, and problems cannot be routinely identified and addressed, feeding into the declining morale problem.
Other issues need addressing; however, the most important is the Review as the most efficient path to not only lifting morale but also supporting the Chief Commissioner and bringing Victoria Police up to best practice standard of a modern police force.
by CAA | Sep 3, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Victoria Police Issues
BREAK THE NEEDLE 4 – CAA Comment
Another insightful article from Break the Needle in Canada. It is becoming uncanny as these articles relate to the identical issues and fallout from drug use and abuse in this state.
We can easily transpose Nelson for Richmond as the issues are not similar but identical.
They have both gone down the path of harm minimisation and are paying a very high community social price.
The power of these articles is they allow the obverse argument to be published, giving a balanced account of the situation, and allowing readers to form their own views, something the pro-drug lobby will not tolerate.
The tired old chestnut of “Drug addiction is a health issue, not a crime” was again trotted out, and its use is disingenuous.
Addiction per se is a health issue, and on that, there is no argument, but the behaviour of the addicts while under the influence is more often than not criminal, as is the sourcing of their drugs of choice. As are the behaviours that the addicts and all users indulge in facilitating their access to illegal products.
The problem with the Health argument is that it implies that all the other criminal and anti-social behaviours of users and addicts are somehow acceptable or excusable, arrant rubbish.
By Alexandra Keeler
“Just the other night, we had an intruder in our yard,” Kirsten Stolee recounted, her voice unsteady. Her two daughters often watch television with their windows open. “He easily could have gotten inside,” she said.
Stolee lives in Nelson, a picturesque, mountain-rimmed town in BC’s Southern Interior that is struggling with rising public disorder. Some residents, herself included, say that local harm reduction initiatives – which appear to be operating without adequate accountability and safety measures – are responsible for the decay.
Near Stolee’s house, one can find the Stepping Stones emergency shelter alongside the former Nelson Friendship Outreach Clubhouse, which used to provide support services for individuals struggling with mental health issues before being abandoned late last year.
When the clubhouse still operated, supporters claimed that it provided clients with a space to socialize and partake in “art, gardening, cooking and summer camp” – but critics countered that it was a drop-in centre for drug users. After the provincial government announced plans to open a supervised inhalation site at the clubhouse early last year, local residents protested and had the project, and eventually the clubhouse itself, shut down.
Although Stolee supports harm reduction in principle, she opposed the opening of the inhalation site on safety grounds. The incidents near her home were concerning: an assault just outside her window, a drug-addled individual stabbing a pole with scissors, people carrying weapons on the street in front of the site. When her daughter’s phone was stolen, it was eventually recovered from a man at the clubhouse.
Although the clubhouse is closed, Stepping Stones continues to operate and has been similarly chaotic. Stolee watched a suspected drug dealer attack one of the residents there, and learned that another resident had made an inappropriate comment to her daughter.
She has also observed fire hazards near local homeless encampments, including a burning electrical panel and abandoned fires, and says that local drug users “play with fires” on sidewalks and streets. She finds these incidents concerning, as BC and Alberta have recently been ravaged by large wildfires and Nelson’s downtown is filled with historic wooden architecture.
Calling the police seemed unhelpful. In one case, officers dismissed her concerns about a man who was carrying large rocks, considering him non-threatening. However, the man was later arrested for assault and for using these types of rocks to break into a gas station.
Gavin Halford, a representative of Interior Health, the provincial agency which oversees most of the region’s harm reduction programs, stated that his organization “does not tolerate or condone any form of criminal activity, including trespassing.” He claimed that Interior Health has taken “a number of steps to increase security at the Clubhouse,” including increased signage, lighting, video surveillance and on-site security services.
However, the acquisition of 24/7 security services was facilitated by Stolee’s partner, after Interior Health told him that no such options were available. The partner also alleges that he was told by local police officers that Interior Health asked them not to enforce the “No Trespassing” signs around the clubhouse.
Stolee’s family has since invested $1,000 into security upgrades such as video surveillance and fencing. “We have baseball bats and pepper spray by our front door and a bat under the bed,” she said, noting that she wrote a letter to BC Premier David Eby detailing their experiences, which received no reply.
Kari Kroker, another neighbour of Stepping Stones, said that downtown Nelson has experienced a noticeable decline as open drug use and trafficking have proliferated, including sales to youth. “The alley behind my house has become a place of screaming and chaos,” she said, expressing frustration at how some drug users have told local children that using drugs is a form of “play.”
“I’m all in favour of putting more money into this situation, but I think we’re going the cheap way,” said Kroker. “I don’t see the province doing much to solve this. I don’t see rehab and supports for people. We need rehab. Where are the facilities to support people?” She believes that the town’s social fabric is fraying and that “harmony has been completely undermined.”
Tanya Finley, owner of Finley’s Bar and Grill and Sage Wine Bar, is an outspoken critic of provincial harm reduction policies and a leading figure in N2, the local residents’ association. She says that human feces, drug dealing, broken windows and home invasions are daily issues in her community: “Our eighty-year-old neighbour, who had just had surgery, had a brick thrown through her window.”
Finley says that her activism has had personal and professional costs and that, after she wrote a newspaper article advocating that homeless individuals be relocated to more suitable locations, a harm reduction advocate urged for a boycott of her business on social media. This led to a decline in sales and caused some of her employees to worry about their job security.
N2 was formed earlier this year after the province attempted to open the aforementioned supervised inhalation site. Local residents believed that the location of the site was unsuitably close to several youth facilities and that health authorities had, in contravention to Health Canada guidelines, failed to adequately consult the community.
“We were lied to deliberately and continuously,” said Kroker. “We found out later that this had been in the works for almost a year.”
Early efforts to address public safety concerns were undermined by accusations of NIMBYism and inadequate responses from government authorities. After N2 was formed and took collective action – such as letters to officials and media engagement – officials began to take these concerns more seriously and temporarily halted the opening of the inhalation site.
Polly Sutherland from ANKORS, a local harm reduction organization, acknowledged friction with the community but said that deteriorating public safety is largely due to limited resources. “We need more staff hours… We have the expertise and compassion for these individuals. Just give us the resources to do our jobs, and we will get it done,” she said.
She said that high rents have worsened homelessness and dereliction, and that mobile services could mitigate the concentration of public disorder in certain areas.
Nelson’s Mayor, Janice Morrison, who has had 35 years of experience working in healthcare, emphasized that municipal authority over healthcare is limited and argued for improved communication with provincial and federal agencies, which she believed needed to provide more funding.
“I think ANKORS is totally correct in that they need more staff hours and more resources,” she said, while stressing the importance of funding existing roles, such as community safety officers and outreach workers. “Drug addiction is a health issue, not a crime,” she said.
Morrison also criticized Interior Health for its inadequate community consultation regarding the placement of harm reduction sites. “They’ve had a hard go of it in their area,” the mayor said, referring to these sites’ neighbours.
Despite public safety challenges, Morrison noted that Nelson has made progress with operating several safe injection sites and would soon be adding 28 supportive housing beds. She remained committed to finding solutions despite persistent funding difficulties. “I’m ready to hear the solutions, and to support anyone with viable ideas,” she said.
by CAA | Aug 24, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
CAA
The CAA has long promoted a similar scenario for this state, arguing that kicking those suffering substance abuse or any impairment that removes their acuity to manage themselves into the gutter and walk away is effectively what we are doing in this State and is a disgusting treatment and disrespect for human life.
The drug apologists try to falsely claim the moral high ground, claiming that Harm Minimisation saves lives. How does facilitating the pumping of some questionable drug into an addict’s veins help the addict? It may be okay for them today, but what about tomorrow?
We aggravate the situation by creating an alleged safe injecting room that does nothing to address the issues of the user. How perpetuating the adverse effect that drugs have on people by providing government support in the furtherance of their addiction or risk-taking is incomprehensible.
We can learn a lot from Ontario; they have been there and are now plotting a way back.
Ontario’s decision to close safe consumption sites near schools and daycares comes in the wake of a bystander’s death and class-action lawsuit.
By Alexandra Keeler
In a dramatic shift in policy, Ontario is closing 10 safe consumption sites located near schools and daycares, citing public safety concerns.
“Our first priority must always be protecting our communities, especially when it comes to our most innocent and vulnerable — our children,” said Ontario Health Minister Sylvia Jones at an Association of Municipalities of Ontario conference in Ottawa on Tuesday.
Safe consumption sites, which enable people to use illicit drugs with sterile equipment under staff supervision, will be prohibited from operating within 200 metres of schools and child-care centres after March 31, 2025.
The province also plans to introduce legislation to prevent municipalities from establishing new consumption sites, requesting the decriminalization of illegal drugs or participating in federal safe supply initiatives, a health ministry press release says.
Safe consumption sites have faced mounting scrutiny in the wake of community feedback highlighting their effect on public safety.
“We’ve noticed a real change from 2021 onwards,” Andrea Nickel, a parent who lives near a safe consumption site at Toronto’s South Riverdale Community Health Centre, told Canadian Affairs in May.
“At the beginning of last year it just escalated out of control.”
Unacceptable danger
Ontario opened its first safe consumption site in 2017 with the aim of reducing overdose deaths and providing users with a gateway to treatment. Today, there are 23 safe consumption sites across the province, 17 of which are provincially funded.
KeepSIX, the safe consumption site in South Riverdale, is among the sites facing closure. Last July, Karolina Huebner-Makurat, a local resident and mother of two, was fatally shot during a gunfight outside the site. Her death prompted Ontario to conduct two reviews of the centre and to also review the 16 other provincially funded sites.
A review of keepSIX conducted by the hospital network Unity Health Toronto and released in February recommended improvements in security, community relations, law enforcement communication and staff training. It did not recommend closure.
Drugs found by a child in the South Riverdale neighbourhood. (Photo provided by Andrea Nickel.)
The second review, released in April and conducted by former health-care executive Jill Campbell, also opposed closure. It advocated instead for expanded harm reduction and treatment, enhanced security and increased mental health support.
In March 2024, two South Riverdale residents launched a class-action lawsuit against the operator of keepSIX and all levels of government, Canadian Affairs reported in May. The lawsuit alleges the site has exposed the community to unacceptable danger.
The site’s proximity to daycares and schools and its role in exposing children to illicit drugs and used needles are at the heart of that case.
Reacting to this week’s announcement, South Riverdale parent Andrea Nickel said she is supportive of the site’s services. “[But] it is not unreasonable to ask that they are balanced with community safety, specifically kids’ safety.”
South Riverdale’s response cited the centre’s role in reversing 74 overdoses in 2023.
“Every overdose reversed is a life saved,” Anne Marie Aikins, a public affairs consultant at AMA Communications, said on behalf of the centre.
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‘Devil’s in the details’
In Tuesday’s address, Ontario’s health minister also announced a $378-million investment to establish 19 new Homelessness and Addiction Recovery Treatment Hubs (HART hubs) across the province. These recovery-focused hubs will offer social support services and employment assistance to individuals struggling with addiction.
They will not provide supervised drug consumption, needle exchange programs or the “safe supply” of prescribed controlled substances.
“The devil’s in the details with these things,” said John-Paul Michael, an addictions case manager in Toronto who has extensive experience in harm reduction and lived experience with substance use.
“Everyone I know in the harm-reduction community is very much in favour of having better access to treatment, better access to detox, better wraparound care,” he said. “The problem becomes when it is at the expense of other evidence-based care.”
Michael says safe consumption sites are often the only form of health care available to individuals struggling with addiction. Eliminating them would leave these individuals without support, he says.
“Safe consumption sites are essential for saving lives, particularly for those who may never seek formal treatment,” he said. “Eliminating these supports disregards the value of human life.”
Michael is also concerned about the reduction of needle exchange services, which are crucial for managing HIV and Hepatitis C rates and lessening the burden on emergency rooms.
“Community-based nurses at [safe consumption sites] provide basic care that can prevent emergency department visits and potentially severe outcomes, such as [intensive care unit] stays,” Michael said.
The province will soon seek proposals to establish up to 10 HART hubs. Priority will be given to proposals that aim to transition existing safe consumption sites — especially those facing closure — into HART hubs.
“[T]he likelihood is that [these transitions] would happen very quickly,” Health Minister Jones told reporters on Tuesday. “The other applications — it will depend on what they bring forward.”
Linda B.
I’m not sure when the “ helping community” is going to get it through their heads that helping people stay addicted is not helping them. When addicts have their substance of choice freely available and someone to make sure they don’t die, what possible reason would they have for doing the hard work of getting clean? Users are interested in one thing above health, family, even food: the next dose.
by CAA | Aug 6, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
The evolution of Policing in Victoria and elsewhere has seen the introduction and division of policing function into two distinct genera. Proactive and Reactive. Prior to the 1980s, reactive policing was the norm.
When proactive policing philosophies were introduced, most police initially treated the proactive philosophy with disdain and distrust, claiming they were being made to go soft on crime; dogged police leadership prevailed.
Over a remarkably short period, in terms of policing history, the concept most derided became accepted as most thinking Police came to understand its effectiveness.
The definitions of the two theories are simplified by the National Institute of Justice in the United States,
The term “proactive policing” encompasses several methods designed to reduce crime through prevention strategies and stands in contrast to conventional “reactive” policing.
Example 1 – Proactive functions – foot patrols
Foot patrols are one of the most effective proactive strategies often maligned as old-fashioned; although if undertaken by experienced police, it has an outstanding positive effect on the community and an equally disincentive on crime.
Over the last decade or so, the effective foot patrol police appear not to have received the focus and training this policing tool deserves to maximise its effectiveness. Some police have clearly had no training in the art of foot patrol; they end up seeing it as an opportunity to stroll around engaged with their partner and not the community.
Apart from a lack of training, the ineffectiveness of competent supervision is a significant contributor.
This untrained, unsupervised approach raises the issue of Police safety. Being engaged with their partner/s dramatically diminishes the most important survival skill: situational awareness.
In the past, newly graduated police spent their initial policing on foot patrol of Melbourne CBD one-up. The only accoutrements were their baton and handcuffs, so learning situation awareness was a critical survival skill.
Whether it is two up patrols or more, as is now the norm, the public is excluded from contact as police-to-police interactions act as a barrier to public discourse and, in equal part, raises substantially the risk to the police by inattentiveness to their environment, increasing the danger of being targeted.
Whether it is a regular patrol, engaging with children in their schools, dealing with aged care issues, or interacting with community groups, allowing a spasmodic approach to develop reflects poorly on management rather than the members concerned.
The other key element of Proactive policing is consistency. So sometimes, management must ring-fence the proactive function to gain the effectiveness it can deliver.
For the most part, it responds to crime that has occurred.
Example 2 – reactive policing.
A good example is the current media dubbed ‘tobacco wars’.
There is no argument that this requires a reactive response, and that is occurring; however, the ‘wars’ have escalated to a level where, despite their best efforts, regional reactive approaches are not stemming the problem, and the demand for a more assertive and a more coordinated approach was needed.
A Task Force has been established to target the problem.
The response is appropriate in the circumstances as the problem exceeds the capacity of a proactive approach; however, the claim that this Task force-targeted approach is proactive is a misnomer.
Targeting a crime that has been committed is a reaction to the crime; therefore, this function is reactive and should not be confused with proactive.
Unfortunately, the cause of this ‘war’ has not been addressed, so the chances of police ending it are minimal at best.
The problem has evolved through the greed of successive governments, which raised tobacco excise to exorbitant levels under the guise of a health initiative.
With the loss of excise and the costs associated with the criminal activities of the black market, it is probable that the government may end up earning more income from the sum of the majority of tobacco sales at a much-reduced excise than from only a small proportion as it currently does.
From a health perspective, it is highly improbable that smoking will rise to the levels of years ago; the community has moved on from that social habit.
This would disrupt the black-market business model. Additionally, coupled with a licencing scheme for retailers to sell the product, it could sound the death knell of this criminal endeavour overnight.
Remove the profit from criminals and solve the problem.
Reluctance to implement a solution must draw our attention to who benefits, and whether corrupt practices are at play, and by whom.
From a community perspective, the concept of eudaemony is better achieved through proactive policing supported by reactive policing than the other way around.
Focus on stopping crime before it happens rather than picking up the pieces after.
The proactive model in policing theory has and always will have its detractors. The temptation for Police leaders to use proactive resources to focus on reactive functions is often too great to ignore. What they fail to understand is that proactive policing is a slow burn.
Interruptions usually set it back considerably, and the overall benefit for short-term reactive functions is questionable and lacks management foresight. The price of these interventions can be just too high and reflects poorly on the understanding of the proactive philosophy.
Piecemeal proactive activities will produce piecemeal to mediocre results. A management-focused commitment to the principle is needed for the proactive function to be effective.
In the past, every police member seeking promotion had to demonstrate their understanding and contribution to the proactive philosophy.
Those police who have been involved in Proactive policing during their careers will vehemently defend the concept, having experienced first-hand its effectiveness in reducing crime and social disorder.
When proactive policing was introduced, management found that the police’s eagerness to become involved led to many initiatives driven from the bottom up rather than those imposed from the top down. These initiatives were highly successful and contributed substantially to police welfare at the time, as they owned the programs. Blue Light Discos is a prime example. They were conceived at a local police station to become a National and International policing phenomenon.
Coincidentally, police Post-Traumatic Stress, although referred to then as just Stress, diminished compared to post-administrations that have stifled these initiatives. Read into that what you will.
Enlightened management encouraged and guided the initiatives, but sadly, two decades ago, an ill-informed and incompetent administration all but dispensed with those programmes.
We are confident that if you asked the community that police serve, they would encourage police to expand the prevention policy and prevent crime.
Proactive vs. Reactive is not an either-or proposition but an overarching police philosophy that, if managed correctly, will benefit the community and the police by delivering the services of a modern approach to law enforcement.
There is a tendency for Policing to default to the pre-1980s style of policing, a trend that must be altered.
by CAA | Jul 30, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
Magistrate Brett Sonnett, as reported in the Herald Sun, has strongly criticized the Police for charging offenders accused of serious offences on summons. This practice could potentially impact the safety and security of the public.
However, the current revolving door in relation to bail in some courts poses a far greater safety risk for the public.
His Honours blast was misplaced.
We have no knowledge of any organised stance or policy within VicPol to use summons more widely. Still, it must be remembered that the Constables’ decision in this process is exercising their Common Law right of discretion.
Police constables are not soldiers working to the beat of the Courts or anybody else’s drum, and the Courts must be more careful when challenging the right of a ‘constable of police’. Common law discretion is territory the courts may find has a sting in its tail.
The issue of bail has been contentious, with the community expressing significant concern about the courts’ interpretations. The public is disturbed by the frequent release of violent offenders on bail, to the extent that the chances of a prisoner being remanded in custody are akin to winning Tatslotto.
The most current example of a seventeen-year-old allegedly responsible for the death of a young doctor was granted bail and within hours breached the bail conditions and, then returned to court, was inexplicably granted bail yet again. Apparently, allegedly killing somebody is insufficient reason to refuse bail.
As much as some in the judiciary see the hierarchy of courts as boundaries not to be crossed, the public sees the Courts as one entity. If one jurisdiction develops unacceptable practices in the community, all court jurisdictions are tarred with the same brush.
His honour should have a good look at the performance of Magistrates and Judges relating to the bail issue across the Court system. Where there is a propensity to bail violent or other serious offenders in a high proportion of the matters before that jurisdiction, take action, and then the Police may have more confidence in bringing them before a Court by arrest.
The police’s propensity to use a Summons rather than apply to a Court for remand is a symptom of the court’s failure to read the public’s concern.
The government blames the Courts, and the Courts blame the Government, but like the Police, the Courts have discretion in interpreting the legislation.
Mr Sonnett should show more respect for the police, as they deal with these offenders and their victims on a daily basis. This contrasts with the judiciary, which only sees perpetrators in the sterile Court, and even then, the defendants are represented by their Lawyers.
The judiciary is generally shielded from the public, and they are not generally exposed to the community outrage over the bailing processes currently in vogue.
Therefore, it is inevitable that the police will continue to exercise their discretion to proceed by summons until the Court’s do not so readily bail recidivist and violent offenders.
It is clear that the Police have lost confidence in the Courts. In the collective years of experience of the former Police members of the CAA, amounting to some four hundred years, this is the first time in memory that the Courts, by their actions, have caused Police to lose confidence, not so much in individual Judicial officers, but in the broader court function.
The police’s lack of trust in the Courts reflects the community’s attitude as a whole; the police are just opening the window.
Mr Sonnett could do well directing his energy toward rebuilding the long-term trust the Police used to have in the Courts; repairing that will go a long way to rebuilding community trust.
The current media discussion of placing cameras in all courtrooms to remove the judiciary’s anonymity and create accountability for their work has some merit.
Letting the light in is sometimes the best sanitiser.
by CAA | Jul 22, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
Pic. Courtesy Herald Sun
The community is tired of this continual waffle about getting tough on Youth crime. They want action, not words.
As victims accumulate at an alarming rate and the youth cohort becomes more violent and brash, the government’s rhetoric becomes more hollow and meaningless.
How many times do we hear that there is no problem, it is just a small cohort, or we have the lowest youth crime figures in Australia only to be told the next day that the independent Crime Statistics Agency has debunked the government claims?
Yet again, this headline – appeared in the Herald Sun on July 21, 2024
ALLAN GOVT SET TO STRENGTHEN VICTORIA’S YOUTH BAIL LAWS IN A CRACKDOWN ON CRIME
Suggesting that the government is dithering would perhaps be an understatement because the changes they are considering will be to the Youth Justice Bill before Parliament.
If passed, this Bill, some 900 pages long, will make the current situation look benign. Yong people will have no barriers or accountability to control their criminal behaviour.
Astoundingly, the drafting of this Bill took five years: five years to rewrite the laws regarding youth offenders and five years to mess it up completely.
The CAA has examined the Bill and were shocked at its ineptitude, particularly,
- not one reference in the 900 pages to any effort or strategy to avoid children becoming involved in crime in the first place,
- a focus solely on diverting children from the legal system no matter what they do,
- victims only received very scant references and no consideration,
- children are treated like disposable commodities as there is no mention of protecting a child for themselves, a concept too difficult for the architects of the Bill to contemplate,
- the real kicker was the complete avoidance of any reference to accountability by young offenders.
This Bill is so bad that our critique ran to ten pages,
The bill also lifts the age of criminal responsibility, initially to twelve and later fourteen, currently ten years. This alone makes the bill a joke as while the ideological dreamers may hold sway over the government, the Crime Statistics Agency has children aged 10 or 11 years old recording a 52.6 per cent spike in the number of offences committed, and they want to make those offences go away by classifying those perpetrators as exempt from prosecution.
The age changes may help the shocking statistics but won’t help the children or the victims, but neither of them matters much when statistics are under pressure. One result that can be guaranteed is that the number of victims will increase exponentially.
Try and explain this drivel to a victim of weapon-wielding children in this age bracket or explain why there was no intervention of the younger children to steer them away from further crime. By age thirteen, their behaviour will be entrenched and nearly impossible to divert.
To aggravate the incompetence, the government proposes legislating the Police Cautioning Program, which has successfully diverted thousands of children from its inception many decades ago.
This program is arguably the most effective mechanism developed to divert young people from crime, but being good makes it a target.
The proven adage of ‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ should apply.
by CAA | Jul 16, 2024 | Drunk, Family Violence, Library, Road Safety, Victoria Police Issues
Police arrest the thieves, and courts release them. There has to be a better way.
That way is what the CAA calls the G-Tag (Electronic Vehicle tracking).
If the Government won’t bring the Courts into line to do their job, then the community will have to take action.
Every day, we are told of yet another shocking crime or string of crimes to which a Motor car is central, but the government sits on its hands and takes no action apart from the odd manipulation of statistics to deflect criticism.
First and foremost, the judiciary has failed, and its role now must be evaluated based on the ineffectiveness of its penalties by Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
The Key indicator is the primary function of a sentence: general deterrence. However, this has been lost in the mire of so-called diversions, few of which divert the offenders from more crime.
If a judicial officer’s adjudication is below a benchmark performance (KPI), and particularly if the sentencing fails to achieve the primary objective of deterring others, then they need to explain their failure, and where that failure is consistent, they should be removed from the bench.
The reality is that if the circa 20,000 cars and other vehicles that are stolen annually and used by criminals were made unusable for their criminal activities, the theft of cars would drop dramatically, and with it, the crime the vehicles facilitate.
There would not only be a massive crime drop but also a massive impact on car owners’ safety and reduced cost, as the dramatic drop in Victorian fleet thefts would force insurers to lower premiums as the risk factors diminish.
The Courts have failed to reign in crime and blame the government, which, in turn, accuses the Courts.
Additionally, the Government has been made aware of an alternate plan since 2016 but considers the plan not even worthy of discussing with the CAA.
The problem with the plan we agree, challenges the status quo, but the status quo doesn’t help the thousands of victims; the G-Tag will.
See,
https://caainc.org.au/g-tag-a-new-paradigm-in-community-safety
https://caainc.org.au/?s=G-Tag
There is, however, an alternate option: bypassing the government.
The alternative is providing the private sector with the opportunity to implement the G-Tag.
A subscription service to protect vehicles would be cost-effective for owners who could offset some of the cost with reduced premiums from insurers and provide a disabling capacity for vehicles if they are stolen, which could be a viable alternative to waiting for the government.
The money this would save the State purse by reducing crime and processing criminals would justify some relief for those who subscribe to the G-Tag service.
The security industry already operates control rooms that monitor security equipment, and some companies monitor the movement of ankle bracelets, so providing a G-Tag service would not be a significant technological step.
Although technology is unlikely to stop a vehicle from being stolen as soon as the owner is aware, the car can be disabled, making it useless for the crooks.
Most high-end vehicles already have the technology built-in, and other vehicles are relatively cheap to equip.
The disruption to the crook’s plans would deter them from stealing any vehicle with a G-Tag sticker on the window.
The G-Tag can put a vehicle into ‘limp home mode’, reducing its maximum speed to 80 KPH, and then disable the engine when it is safe.
The police can be notified of the incident and organise an interception coordinated with the use of the vehicle’s disabling capacity.
One distinct advantage is that thieves are unlikely to have the opportunity to torch the vehicle, destroying evidence.
A negotiation with the E-Tag operators could make this concept more viable.
It is a big challenge; however, if we wait for the government, it will never happen, and the crooks will continue to operate with gay abandon, and victims will continue to be put at risk because of government inaction.
Whether you are an Uber Driver or a Mum on the school run, we must lift their protection.
The CAA calls on entrepreneurial businesses who might be interested in exploring this concept to contact us at info@caainc.org.au
by CAA | Jul 8, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Victoria Police Issues
Yet another insightful article from Break the Needle.
We are thankfully not at this stage yet, but the efforts of our politicians and the trajectory they have put in place lead to some inevitability that we will as they push the failed ‘Harm Minimisation’ approach they have embraced – ‘Safer Supply’ will be the inevitable next step after safe injecting facilities and pill testing interventions that promote drug use.
The Canadian experience highlights the failure to recognise or accept that early
intervention is the only process that can reverse this trend from ruining lives.
…CAA comment.
………………………………….
Addiction physician Dr. Sharon Koivu has seen the effects of safer supply programs in her clinical practice and personal life — and is sounding the alarm
Having worked on the front lines of Ontario’s opioid crisis, she views these programs as a catastrophic failure.
In an extended interview, Koivu explained the unintended consequences of these programs, which offer free tablets of hydromorphone — an opioid about as strong as heroin – to vulnerable patients with a history of addiction. While advocates of safer supply claim it mitigates the use of more dangerous illicit substances, there is evidence that most users divert — that is, sell or trade — their hydromorphone to acquire stronger substances.
Safer supply was first piloted in London, Ont., in 2016, before being widely expanded across Canada in 2020 with the help of generous federal grants. While the program looked good on paper, Koivu, who provides comprehensive addiction consultation services at a London-based hospital, saw a different reality: her patients were destabilising, relapsing and fatally overdosing because of safer supply.
Koivu says that “one hundred percent” of her colleagues working in addiction medicine have noticed safer supply diversion. Some patients have told her they have been threatened with violence if they do not procure and divert these drugs. She estimates that, because of safer supply, tens of thousands of diverted hydromorphone pills — also known as “Dilaudid,” “dillies” or “D8s” — are flooding into Canadian streets every day.
For context, just two or three of these pills, if snorted, are enough to induce an overdose in a new user.
This influx has caused the drug’s street price to crash by as much as 95 per cent. While 8-milligram hydromorphone pills used to sell for $20 each several years ago, they can now be bought for as little as a dollar or two. These rock-bottom prices have ignited a new wave of addictions and relapses, and lured opioid-naive individuals into experimenting with what is essentially pharmaceutical heroin.
Koivu estimates that 80 per cent of her opioid-using patients now take diverted hydromorphone.
“The biggest harm is that we’ve turned on the tap and we’ve made everything cheap, which is leading to a large increase in the number of people becoming addicted and suffering,” she said.
“It is the most serious issue that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
Safer supply programs seem to regularly overprescribe opioids without considering patients’ actual needs, Koivu says. Patients have come into her hospital with prescriptions that provide 40 eight-milligram hydromorphone pills a day, even though they can only tolerate 10 pills.
‘That attraction is horrific’
Throughout the first few decades of Koivu’s career, almost “everyone” in her patient pool developed addictions due to childhood traumas or from mishandling opioids prescribed for chronic pain.
Since the advent of safer supply, the origins of new opioid addictions have shifted toward social or recreational exposure. Concerningly, this exposure often occurs in patients’ adolescent years.
“I’m seeing an increase in youth becoming addicted,” said Koivu, who has had patients as young as 15 tell her their addictions began through diverted hydromorphone.
“Almost everyone I see who’s started since 2018 started recreationally. It started as something that was at a party. It’s now a recreational drug at the youth level.”
Parents often seem completely unaware of the problem. Some have told Koivu they overheard their children discussing the availability of “D8s” at their high schools, only to later realise — when it was too late — they were referring to opioids.
“You can’t walk into your house with a six-pack of beer. If you’re smoking weed, people can smell it. But you can walk into your house with a lot of [tablets] in your pocket. So, it’s cheap, really easy to hide, and is even called ‘safe’ by the government. I think that attraction is horrific.”
“Our youth are dying at a higher rate … and we have a lot more hydromorphone found in [their bodies] at the time of death.”
While safer supply programs claim to make communities safer, Koivu’s lived experiences suggest the opposite. She used to reside in London’s Old East Village, where the city’s first safer supply program opened in 2016, but moved away after watching her neighbourhood deteriorate from widespread crime, overdoses and drug trafficking.
“I moved there to support a supervised injection site,” said Koivu. “Then I watched that community drastically change when safer supply was implemented. … I would go for walks and directly see diversion taking place. Homelessness is very complicated, but this has absolutely fuelled it in ways that are unconscionable.”
Koivu characterises the evidentiary standards used by advocates of safer supply as “deeply problematic.” She says many of the studies supporting safer supply are qualitative — meaning they rely on interviews — and use anecdotal data from patients who have a vested interest in perpetuating the program.
While Koivu has been blowing the whistle on safer supply programs for years, her concerns largely went unnoticed until recently. She has faced years of harassment and denigration for her views.
“When I came to say I’m concerned about what I’m seeing: the infections, the suffering, the encampments … I was literally told that I was lying,” she said.
Last month, the London Police Service provided the National Post with data showing that annual hydromorphone seizures increased by 3,000 per cent after access to safer supply was significantly expanded in 2020. The newspaper has since raised questions about why this data was not released earlier and whether the police stonewalled attempts to investigate the issue.
Koivu considers herself a lifelong progressive and has historically supported the New Democratic Party. But she is concerned many left-leaning politicians have ignored criticism of safer supply. Many seemingly believe that opposition to it is inherently conservative.
“I went to a hearing in Ottawa of a standing committee to talk about addiction,” she said. “We had five minutes to give a talk and then two hours to answer questions, [but] I didn’t receive any questions from the NDP or the Liberals.”
Although Koivu believes safe supply can play a role in the continuum of care for opioid addiction, she says it must be executed in a meticulous manner that prevents diversion and emphasises pathways to recovery.
“It needs to be part of a comprehensive strategy to help people get their lives back. And right now, it’s not.”
Above all, it is Koivu’s experience as a mother that drives her to criticize safer supply. One of her sons struggled with opioid addiction as a young adult. Although he eventually recovered, the experience could have killed him.
“Had this program been around … my family could have been another statistic from an opioid death. That drives me. Because it’s very real, and it’s very personal.”
by CAA | Jul 6, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
To say the CAA has deep concerns about this Bill and the adverse impact it will have on raising youth crime in this state is a gross understatement.
What is generally not well understood is that this Bill is ‘the foot in the door’ for further introducing the concept of ‘Restorative Justice’, a monumental change in how Justice is dispensed in this State.
A plan that promotes ideology over pragmatism.
Significant changes included in this Bill include the plethora of conferences and committees required to manage each offender instead of the concept of punishment and accountability, which has been whitewashed out of this Bill.
Preventing young people from committing crimes in the first place is not even mentioned.
Effectively, a child can take a position where they will not comply with any processes available to the Courts or any other authorities under this Bill, and nothing can be done about it. No punishment can be applied, regardless of the child’s actions.
We suspect that the majority of the community and many politicians do not understand the consequences of this Bill, and none of them are good.
Why wasn’t the community advised of this change? We are unaware of where the Government of the day achieved a mandate for such a severe and monumental change to the principles of Justice.
It took five years to draft, underscoring the difficulty and, given the outcome, incompetence displayed in the principles that have evolved to form this Bill.
This Bill will continue to stoke crime, not diminish it.
‘A committee was formed to design a Horse ( the Bill to Reform Youth Justice), but they came up with a camel ( no ordinary Camel but a two-humped Bactrian Camel with three legs).’
With all the effort of five years, the Bill as presented does not address the issue the community now faces and is riddled with extreme socialist ideology and drafted by a committee that has no understanding of the people they are supposed to be protecting. It will feed the crime wave.
The Bill misses the mark by a long way.
Central to the flaw in this Bill is the assumption that children under thirteen (13) cannot form criminal intent.
This assumption isn’t based on any empirical data and flies in the face of the reality of the evolution of human development.
Over the last two decades, the development of young people has accelerated faster than any other preceding era.
The speed at which this has occurred is most evident in the last ten years when evolution achieved warp speed, driven by two significant factors: Nutrition and Technology.
The ‘canary in the coal mine’, the juvenile crime surge, generally ignored, has seen the accelerated crime rate by Juveniles and the failure to recognise the changes that were occurring in front of us all.
Nutrition
The impact of a higher level of nutrition in recent times must be seen as positive as young people will probably grow up healthier than their predecessors, but with that nutrition comes increased physical development. It’s not an issue until you realise that young people, on average, are taller and better developed physically than their predecessors. A phenomenon that immature minds can and do exploit.
Technology
Technology continues to accelerate at warp speed, and young people born in this era are the ones who maximise its use. They are more connected and have access to more data than previous generations ever dreamed of. This massive influx of good and bad information has developed young people’s mental acuity well beyond the perceived norm. This has happened without comparative life skills development.
They, therefore, lack the ability and maturity to process and analyse this physical development effectively, leading them to emulate others without understanding the consequences or ignoring the consequences because there are none.
Impact
Today, a 10 – 12-year-old is the equivalent of a 13–15-year-old ten years ago.
The Bill is headed in the wrong direction and should instead be lowering the age of criminal responsibility, not lifting it, particularly when the child understands what they did was criminal.
Lifting the age of criminal intent to 12 years before children can be charged with a crime, irrespective of their development, is a recipe for increased crime. Waiting until they are older before any legal intervention can occur entrenches the child further into crime, making efforts to rehabilitate them from crime much more difficult.
Early intervention will reduce crime and improve the chances of young people developing without the stigma of exposure to Legal processes.
Why do we have to wait until a young person is climbing the hierarchy of crime before any action is taken?
by CAA | Jul 5, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues, Youth
Remnants of the stolen car after Burwood fatality. Picture: Nine News/Today
It was a needless and shocking fatality, avoidable on a number of levels, and probably would have had more significant consequences had the thieves not taken a top-end car with all its advanced safety features to protect them, but not the innocent and hapless victim.
This needless loss of life is the direct consequence of a government ignoring advice, and unfortunately, the trajectory the government is on will only increase the risks, not mitigate them.
The government response was reported as:
A state government spokeswoman said what happened at Burwood was an unthinkable tragedy.
“Our thoughts are with the loved ones of the man who lost his life,” the spokeswoman said.
“Details about the incident are still being investigated and we are in close contact with Victoria Police. We are confident police will apprehend those who are still on the run as quickly as possible.”
She said Victoria had more police on the beat than any other state of territory and that the force targeted the worst young offenders, making 2700 arrests in the past year.
This statement attributed to a spokesperson is heartless and disrespectful to the victim and insulting to his family. We are not sure how the thoughts of the government can be with the Victim’s loved ones when they don’t even have the courtesy to use Ash Gordon’s name. However, the revelation in this statement should worry every Victorian when the spokesperson bragged of the 2700 arrests in the past year.
Again and again, this government ignores the simple concept of prevention, which is the only tried and proven way to stop this growing crime tsunami.
Arresting offenders is essential, but it will not reduce crime as the perpetrators are as inane as their actions. Still, they believe they won’t get caught, so the whole concept of deterrence is lost, exacerbated by the current judicial practices that obviously fail miserably to address the real issues.
The CAA has long argued that there are mechanisms that have been tried and worked in the past that could be reintroduced. A serious investment of money and resources into provocative policing is required to stem the tide.
The problem is set to become much worse as the government processes its latest effort, the Youth Justice Bill.
This 1100-page Bill that took five years to write doesn’t herald any innovation but is an extension of all the bad aspects of the current system. All the current flaws are further entrenched.
So, more of the same, only worse. More people will die, and more lives will be ruined, including devastating our young, because the government is focused on an unproven experimental concept, Restorative Justice, which nobody can indicate where this process has worked.
The government’s current and future strategies do not deal with diverting young people from crime.
Unbelievably, their new Youth Justice Bill regularly mentions diversion as one of its central planks. However, that is not a diversion from crime but from the legal system.
The two concepts are not mutually inclusive; they are different and seek different outcomes, which, in our view, are counterproductive objectives. Under the government’s new Bill, when a child commits multiple offences or a series of offences, there is no intervention or effort to have the child accept accountability or be subject to consequences. The Bill aims to put the child through a series of meetings and conferences, assuming that will solve the problem.
The recommendations of the CAA would have gone a long way to avoiding this tragic situation. See:
https://caainc.org.au/youth-crisis-a-solution/
https://caainc.org.au/crackdown-on-crime-the-wet-lettuce-leaf-approach/
https://caainc.org.au/you-cant-be-serious-premier/
A necessary and effective process of reducing the crime associated with cars is to ensure the vehicle, when stolen, can’t be used for the crook’s intended purpose. Take away their tools of trade; in this case, the stolen car, and the crime of Aggravated Burglary and car theft will plummet. Moreover, there are a raft of other serious crimes that stolen vehicles are currently used in commissioning; this initiative will curtail overall criminal activity. Crooks may have to resort to public transport or Uber.
An upgraded and relocated (within the vehicle) G-Tag could replace the E-Tag and perform that function to enable authorities to turn off the car, thwarting the crook’s ability to use the vehicle for criminal activity, including driving recklessly.
There will also be a perfect chance the car can be recovered intact, a blessing for those of the lower socio-economic strata, and the reduced losses of vehicles should reduce insurance premiums to benefit us all.
A number of cars already come with this capacity, and the owner can activate the disabling function; however, this assumes that the crooks didn’t take the victim’s phone and the victim is in a state to make sound decisions. Totally temporarily disabling the car at the wrong time could cause more significant risks to the community.
Imagine if a car was disabled at speed on a freeway without warning; this would cause carnage. With control of this resource by authorities, the vehicle could be monitored and disabled safely. With the owner having control, the consequences for their partner driving the car during a domestic dispute could have disastrous consequences. See:
https://caainc.org.au/?s=G-Tag
https://caainc.org.au/?s=The+G-tag
One problem the government has is being briefed by people who are not in touch with reality. The government was recently given a confidential briefing on youth-related matters only to have the staff from the Justice Department responsible for writing strategy for the government complain that the presentation was too graphic and stressful.
It is interesting how the victims of this crime may view this sensitivity, and it goes a long way to show that those drafting government policy are out of touch with the reality of the issues, perhaps living in a bubble of fantasy. Given some of their recent contributions, fantasy appropriately categorises their efforts. Unfortunately, the tragic death on Tuesday involving a stolen car is a portend of more to come. Lives are wasted by inaction. See:
https://caainc.org.au/woke-joke-meets-reality-shock/
It is fast heading in the direction that the only option for Victorians is to demonstrate against the Government’s direction as it is not only ruining people’s lives now living in fear but also ruining the lives of young Victorians coerced into crime.
The first action is to sign our petition at: https://caainc.org.au/petitions/
Then contact your local member of Parliament and make your views heard.
by CAA | Jun 6, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
“Just 58 per cent of those surveyed said they were ‘satisfied with policing services’, a massive fall from 73.1 per cent from the year before.” – HS 6th June ’24.
As indicated by our chairman, former Chief Commissioner Kel Glare, the issues stem from the inconsistency and, in our view, a poor police response to COVID-19. Still, some solutions can be implemented if the organisation is serious about lifting the community’s confidence, which should be a given.
The Victoria Police response was,
“the drop in public confidence is due to the survey being carried out online.”
The community is not looking for excuses; they are looking for action.
Puerile, ‘the dog ate my homework’ type excuses exacerbate, not diminish, community feelings. It’s time to step up and address the issues at hand.
Perhaps VicPol would be better off looking outside their management bubble to determine and implement solutions that may give the public confidence in their Force.
Here are a few suggestions,
- Review the CAA 100.3 https://caainc.org.au/?s=Plan+100.3&doing_wp_cron=1717636142.282346010
- Make policing at the community level the force priority over everything else,
- Re-prioritise Proactive policing as the force’s main activity.
- Undertake an extensive review of upgrading and modernising policies to be fit for purpose.
- Review urgently upgrading policies. A senior officer sneezes, and the repercussions are felt at the coal face as the upgrading practices push up members to fill the gap. Creating specialist relieving positions at all levels is cheaper and more efficient.
- Create a Force Reserve following the Military model. Releasing hundreds of members for general operational duties.
- Introduce KPIs for all ranks above Constable, which are reviewed monthly and compared against actual performance. Failure to adjust should instigate sanctions. Hard-working Police should not have to carry poor performers.
- Review all apparent Service Delivery initiatives to identify those that are Service Efficiency, not Service Delivery, and when the two collide, Service Delivery must prevail.
- Review the number of Executive positions as cost savings in that area can be reallocated to the frontline. Many have been created without a business case to justify the position.
- Reintroduce the intermediate officer ranks to provide more significant operational support, freeing up inspectors to actively provide leadership in the field. This can be done at little to no cost by not increasing the Officer ranks numerically but by realigning existing Officers.
- Review recruiting processes to avoid applicants waiting excessively for results and call-ups. At a time when numbers are down, creative measures are required to train more recruits, and if that means introducing shift work during training, so be it; trainees need to adjust to shift work immediately after they graduate anyway.
- Take a Force stance on the introduction of Electronic Monitoring of perpetrators to reduce police demand and achieve greater compliance, particularly in the area of Domestic Violence and Juvenile recidivist management.
- Ensure that the 50,000-eye road watch is implemented as an urgent initiative to reduce road tolls. https://caainc.org.au/50,000-eyes-road-watch/.
- Ring fence the Highway patrol so they can concentrate on the Road toll and not be purloined for other extraneous police duties.
- Take a leadership role in public issues like drugs and other community issues. This is not to encourage the Force bleating on these issues from one political side or the other of any public discourse but rather purely on the facts and the practicalities police face.
- Police should take a strong victim-centric stand and support the implementation of reparation as a Force policy.
- Additionally, the Force should also adopt a policy of not supporting plea bargains in all prosecutions undertaken by the Force. A criminal charged with an offence should not be something that can be traded away for convenience. The guilt or innocence of that particular matter can only be determined by the Court.
- Ensure the Force responds to all groups potentially intent on disrupting public order in an even-handed way. https://caainc.org.au/police-pride-march-a-valuable-lesson/
- Urgently review the uniform dress code, ensuring members wearing mufti hybrid with police paraphernalia revert to the uniform. If the uniform is not fit for purpose, modify the uniform. Emulating American Special Forces is churlish and dangerous. If there are legitimate reasons for plain clothes, all weapons, etc, must not be visible to the general public. permission should only be given on a case-by-case basis. When Special duties and the like, move around in uniform rather than mufti, they increase the visible Police presence an imperative to build community confidence.
Victoria Police is an independent entity and must be free from the ideological pressure of the politicians of the day. It can and should provide leadership on social issues based on the facts.
Moving the Force priority to the frontline uniformed specialist general Police locally, impacteing their resourcesas an absolute last resort will go a long way to improving public confidence in Police. If additional police are required for specific events, the resources must be drawn from non-operational areas.
That a swathe of non-operational Police are taken from their tasks for a day will have little long-term impact, but removing operational vehicles from their patrols can devastate service delivery to the community, which should be the priority.
The Chief Commissioner once said words to the effect that recruits break their neck to get into uniform and, after four years, apply the same rigour to get out of it.
Our response is that force management has to apply itself to creating creative initiatives to stop this phenomenon, as these factors bleed the frontline from experience and expertise where they are most needed. These members are the Force’s leading and most important resource.
Above all else, the community wants you to be there, even when they don’t need you, as the reassurance is invaluable and coincidentally helps prevent crime and disorder.
Deal with the issues before they manifest rather than picking up the pieces later.
by CAA | May 14, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Investigations, Library, Tobacco, Victoria Police Issues
They both make criminals very, very rich and make the Government look very, very silly as they continually fail to implement the tried-and-true strategies that will bring about solutions.
Both issues are intrinsically linked, and one of them could be resolved overnight, greatly affecting the operations of the other.
Removing or greatly reducing the excise on cigarettes/tobacco would seriously damage the criminal elements and destroy their marketing model, plus save many millions of dollars on enforcement.
The Government is not learning from its mistakes as it now moves to curtail and legislate against vaping, which will potentially create another opportunity for criminals to expand their black-market activities, this time predominantly with children, and that is incredibly dangerous. Associating children with the criminal element will inevitably lead to increased crime by children.
Crime entraps our young people, attracted by the lure of wealth, notoriety and excitement, ruining many of their lives and the lives of their families, who are the silent victims.
Additionally, the problem breeds and encourages criminal activity as the addicted and the desperate, some of whom were recruited as children, are forced to commit crimes to fund their addiction.
Although Tobacco and Vapes are still legal, where illicit drugs are not, the CAA is not proposing a prohibition on those products as with illegal drugs for several very good reasons. Smoking tobacco and Vaping affects individuals but does not generally affect others. Illicit drugs potentially affect everyone.
A classic example is the road toll, where evidence shows many drivers involved in collisions, including fatalities, are drug-affected. Violent and anti-social behaviour of those affected by illicit drugs is also very common.
However, there are similarities in how the black markets, which run in parallel, should be handled.
The tried and successful strategies we refer to are the Quit campaign and the Sun Smart, Slip Slop and Slap, which are outstanding examples of the power of marketing that achieved exceptional success in reducing smoking and sun exposure in the community.
It is a pity, bordering on wanton incompetence, that the same weapon has not been used in the Clayton’s Drug War. Because of its potential to succeed, and it is somewhat bothersome that this strategy is avoided, perhaps indicating that dark forces or corruption are at play.
Both initiatives succeeded because the Quit campaign used marketing to target the demand side in marketing parlance. Whether your house, car, or workplace became a smoke-free zone, the impact on the tobacco demand plummeted.
The Sun Smart campaign focused on changing public opinion to change social norms and the bronze Aussie persona. It successfully targeted parents and children to reach a high degree of compliance with the concept.
The Quit campaign worked remarkably well until the government dramatically raised taxes to make cigarettes unaffordable. This spawned the chop-chop tobacco market first, followed by packaged cigarettes smuggled in by the container load.
Criminals’ ability to afford to enter into supply contracts by the container load indicates the enterprise’s profitability. As the gulf grew between the cost of legally purchased tobacco products and what the black market could supply tobacco products for, the back market flourished.
The intent to make tobacco products too expensive and reduce tobacco usage, as a result, has dramatically backfired.
The government flipped the successful targeting of the demand to try and rely on law enforcement tackling the supply side as the solution. That strategy has failed through no fault of the Police but a failed government approach.
Rather than realising what they had done, they continued to raise taxes on tobacco, aggravating the situation by increasing criminals’ profits.
As the gap between what the Cartels can sell illegal tobacco products for and what their retail price is widens, the black-market price can increase, and that is pure profit for the criminals.
Marketing, in its simplest iteration, is all about supply and demand. If there is no demand, the supply side quivers as profits drop, but if the market is solid, there will always be a supply side to service that demand, precisely what has happened with drugs and tobacco.
The black-market enterprise is so lucrative that they are prepared to risk serious jail time by firebombing Tobacco stores to gain market control.
Gangs involved in the illicit drug trade have expanded to include the illegal Tobacco trade because the profits are more significant and the penalties, if caught, are likely to be much less.
The drug market’s primary customer base is drug addicts, and the high rate of dealers needed to distribute the drugs to support their habit, is akin to a pyramid scheme. Most participants support their habit by being a dealer selling the product, but that absorbs a significant share of the profits and becomes less attractive as gang leaders who find their income adversely impacted.
But the criminal elements had no need to fear as the government came to the rescue and provided them with a better alternative with more profit: Tobacco: a golden goose for when your market strategy is not as profitable.
If the government had targeted the demand side and relied on marketing instead of tax income from tobacco, it would not be in its current predicament.
Illicit Drugs are very similar; the government wants to assist addicts to be better addicts; this is a non-strategy to reduce the shocking impact drugs have on our society.
In this area, the government has, in part, been conned.
Drug apologists have convinced the government that the best strategy is Harm Minimization; however, they have manipulated that concept as part of a strategy to achieve acceptance of illicit drugs as the community norm.
How any government can fall for the trick of providing an Injecting Room, which has been empirically determined to be a failure, is beyond comprehension.
The Government has been diverted from the real solution, the four pillars of Prevention, Enforcement, Treatment, and Rehabilitation (PETR). Facilitating drug use in an injecting room as a stand-alone response without the other pillars is a recipe for the disaster we are experiencing.
One Pillar will not stand up without the others supporting it, and it is time for the government to take a more realistic approach to addressing these problems, using PETR principles as the basis.
To date, this government has tried to rely on law enforcement to solve the issue, but plainly, that is not working despite the best efforts of Police and Border security measures.
It is a problem that cannot be resolved by enforcement alone.
Obversely, to assumed norms, the best thing the Government can do in the short term is to drop the tax applied to tobacco products significantly. That will not considerably cause a rise in the number of smokers. But those who do smoke will likely return to legitimate retailers (increasing Tax revenue) and cause a significant blow to the illicit traders, who overwhelmingly are also illegal dealers of drugs.
Addressing these issues properly will have a profound beneficial impact on all Victorians.
by CAA | Apr 30, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
‘The legal system needs to catch up’: A push to abolish suspended sentences for child sex offenders was the headline in the Age Newspaper on the 28th of April 2024.
This article relates to proposed legislation by the Opposition to push to abolish suspended sentences for convicted child sex offenders that will go to the state parliament as part of a bill to overhaul punishments for paedophile rapists and abusers.
If this report is accurate, it raises concerns, including encroaching on the independence of the judiciary.
This approach to sentencing directs the courts through legislation on specific offences. It should be approached by a system of accountability of the courts rather than legislation.
This particular article refers to historical sexual offences, and we have no issue with the conviction, just the blanket sentence approach.
Legislating sentencing issues can have unintended consequences.
To understand why the judge might deliver a suspended sentence without wading through the judgment is not appropriate, these sentencing issues must remain within the bailiwick of the presiding judge, irrespective of the crime, as overarching rules for a court without the ability to nuance the conviction sentence to the case when every one of them is different is a step too far.
However, courts are trending towards avoiding reflecting community values and performing optimally. There is no effective mechanism to correct this behaviour, as there is no mechanism to review judges’ performance, whether that is their conviction rates when sitting alone, sentencing outcomes, recidivism of those convicted by that court, or the behaviour of the jurist in or out of court.
However, rather than the proposed legislation as reported, there is a desperate need for judges’ performance to be made accountable.
In Victoria, we have a Judicial Review and a Judicial Commission. Still, where these entities allow issues to fall through the cracks about performance and accountability for judges, there seems to be none.
The Judicial Commission investigating panel consists of three members appointed by the Commission: two former or current judicial officers or VCAT members and one community member of high standing selected from the pool of people appointed for this purpose.
Judicial reviews are heard in the Trial Division of the Supreme Court. The review examines whether the person who made the decision:
- Had the power (was allowed) to make the decision.
- Obeyed all aspects of the law in making the decision.
- Considered everything that was legally relevant.
A judicial review does not re-consider the facts of the matter or focus on whether the decision was correct.
These arrangements could be considered as putting the fox in charge of the hen house.
There are excellent reasons for the judiciary’s independence from the government. However, improvements can still be achieved without compromising the autonomy of the jurists.
We employ the judiciary and reward them handsomely for their tasks; however, we need to be confident that they are performing to benchmarks and reflecting the values of the public in their determinations.
Victoria desperately needs a Judicial Review Commission similar to the model in New South Wales that…
‘Publishes information about criminal law to assist the courts in achieving consistency in imposing sentences and, more generally, in conducting criminal proceedings.
The Judicial Commission of NSW’s work is designed to enhance public confidence in the judiciary by promoting the highest judicial behaviour and decision-making standards. We:
- Provide a continuing education and training programfor NSW judicial officers.
- Criminal law and sentencing assist the courts in achieving consistency in imposing sentences and, more generally, in the conduct of criminal proceedings.
- Examine complaintsabout judicial officers’ ability or behaviour.
To these functions, we would add,
-
- To ensure the judiciary applies and takes responsibility for crime prevention and the deterrent effect of sentencing on perpetrators and the wider society.
- Create and manage benchmarking for court administrative efficiencies and case outcomes.
- Advise the executive arm of judicial officers not performing to the established standard. The executive arm and the parliament can decide on remedial action or discipline for jurists.
This will protect jurists and make the law more effective; consistency in applying the law is a cornerstone of a democracy.
We will never see relief from the current crisis in crime if jurists fail to take responsibility for the problem they contribute to in a significant way.
by CAA | Apr 27, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
When the Government gets something right, it needs to be acknowledged, and Premier Allan has just done that in spades, rejecting the Ken Lay report to install a second injecting room in Melbourne. However, Lay’s report recommended not just an injecting room but a “small (four—to six-booth) and discreet” -injecting service.
That incredible assertion attributed to Lay shows what happens when someone who knows so little about an issue is charged with making recommendations.
Small and discreet in this context belies reality.
As in Richmond, the injecting rooms are honey pots for addicts, dealers and other lowlifes to assemble and trade. Whether it is small or otherwise, the area will become a haven for dealers and addicts.
The majority of the addicts around Richmond do not always use the room but shoot up and perform other bodily functions in lanes, parks, streets and people’s gardens; many others drive to the area buy their hit and shoot up in the car. More often than not, driving away under the influence.
“Why is it acceptable for the citizens of the Richmond area, including a primary school, to be exposed to the full impact of having an injecting room nearby, while the citizens of the City of Melbourne are not?
This is an obvious question that needs to be addressed.
The Government, until now, has effectively turned a blind eye to the problems caused in Richmond, and the Premier’s pushback against this crazy injecting nonsense will save more lives than the injecting rooms ever will.
The Richmond injecting room hides behind the myth that it saves lives,
https://www.drugfree.org.au/images/pdf-files/library/Injecting_Rooms/Over-representation_of_overdose_Melbourne_MSIR.pdf
Drug deaths researched after 18 months of operation are based on empirical data available from the Coroners Court.
That the Richmond facility saves lives has never been confirmed, but what has been confirmed is there are a more significant number of deaths in a community serviced by an injecting room than without, and Richmond is no different.
The facility’s claims are no more substantial than misleading perceptions, but proper research disproves the claims that injecting Rooms saves lives.
Addicts regularly use the facility to experiment with higher dosages or different drugs, knowing that if it goes pear-shaped, the facility will resuscitate them.
Those incidents cannot be counted as positive results by the facility as the injecting room facilitates the practice. Without the room, the addicts are less likely to experiment as the risk is well known to them.
Notably, the Premier has announced that the Yooralla Building in Flinders Street will now be developed into a wraparound service dealing with the health and well-being of not only addicts but also other socially marginalised in the City of Melbourne.
This is not dissimilar to the drug strategies published by the CAA over many years.
As laudable as this is, we caution the Premier that the Harm Minimisation brigade, which has hijacked the principle, must be kept from this initiative; otherwise, it will become a de facto Injecting room by stealth.
These proponents are the enemies of addicts and the community trying to normalise the use of illicit drugs without any effort to help addicts get clean and regain their health.
Now that the Premier has taken this step, we must now turn our attention to Richmond and look to close this facility that promotes and facilitates drug use.
All of the rationales applied to the rejection of the city room are multiples of 10, the quantum of the negative aspects of the Richmond facility that must be closed or be converted to follow the Yooralla model.
Helping addicts and users, not promoting and facilitating their addiction, is the only humane way to go.
It has also amazed us that in this litigious society, an addict has not taken action against the State for the injecting rooms encouraging their drug use.
The Government must now move to close or repurpose Richmond or be accused of applying double standards.
The CAA has long expressed concern and offered alternatives to Injecting Rooms; below is a selection of our submissions published on our website:
DRUGS AND ALCOHOL ABUSE – A MANAGEMENT SOLUTION
- DRUG QUARANTINE – A NEW PARADIGM.
https://caainc.org.au/drug-quarantine-a-new-paradigm-2/
by CAA | Apr 14, 2024 | Investigations, Library, Victoria Police Issues
14th of April 2024
The shocking event at Bondi Westfield and the horrific outcomes impact every Australian; our hearts go out to the families and friends of those who lost their lives or were injured in this vicious attack.
Equally, the horror of those thousands of people in the shopping complex hiding from evil in fear of losing their lives must never be underestimated, and we also grieve for their loss. While their loss may not be physical, however, the mental impact can be as severe.
The outstanding bravery of individuals must also be acknowledged. Seeing the perpetrator avoiding direct confrontation with the males who stood their ground really shows the weakness of the perpetrator, who was not prepared to confront his victims but attacked softer targets, usually from the rear.
The response by emergency services, particularly the Police, appeared to be outstanding and a credit to the New South Wales Police Force.
But no matter how good the police response was, it took one very brave and competent Inspector to end the horror and save many more lives.
Inspector Amy Scott, working one up, confronted the killer in a textbook response and put the perpetrator down with one shot.
Her actions will always be recorded as heroic as they should be, but would that same response have occurred in Victoria?
This question will spark substantial debate, but this brave member exposed some worrying anomalies in any comparison.
First and foremost, the effectiveness of any Police member is greatly influenced by the environment in which they work. If the organisation, as it is in Victoria, does not instil confidence in its members, then they are not likely to take risks, albeit that the risks are part of the job. The members need to know who has their back.
The defence of police acting in good faith must be reinforced and rebuilt in Victoria’s police culture. The citizens of Victoria would wholeheartedly endorse that philosophy.
In Victoria, a culture of doubt, driven by an administration intent on finding fault, has damaged the Force and its capacity to protect Victorians; poor leadership.
The most significant comparable incident in Victoria that comes to mind is the James Gargasoulas rampage in 2017 over two days, culminating in the death of six innocent Victorians and endangering the life of 27 others.
This carnage was avoidable, as the Police had known the perpetrator’s whereabouts for a considerable time during his escapade.
Glaring omissions were the lack of executive or high-ranking Police leadership intervention and the lack of confidence in Police to intervene when opportunities arose, and quite a few did.
It wasn’t until after the murders were committed that the Police took decisive action.
We would argue that this initial inaction was caused by a police organisational cultural problem. During that whole incident, no member was confident enough to act decisively, primarily for fear of internal retribution; nobody had their back.
The other significant takeout is that Amy was working one up, demonstrating the folly of Victoria’s strict two-up policy.
We doubt the same outcome would have been achieved had the Inspector had a partner of equal rank, proving the situation and the need to act in that case would have been clouded by second-guessing of the partners’ reactions, directly adversely affecting the safety of the member.
Victoria needs to dump the strict two-up policy and leave resource allocations to the discretion of the operational commander in any situation or function. Making unilateral operational decisions undermining front-line supervisors is counterproductive to efficient management.
This will coincidentally free up many more police and increase ‘boots on the ground’, improving the visibility of police presence and reducing crime while improving community safety perceptions.
A police Station that mans a Divisional Van, a Station car, and a supervisor, with a driver,= three cars; by changing the station car and using the Supervisors driver, that would equate to five vehicles rather than three, a dramatic increase in police visibility but under the direction of a supervisor. Multiple cars would attend high-risk situations, but once the problem is stabilised, the vehicles can all be cleared, leaving just one to complete any administration.
Service Efficiency substantially improved as will, Service Delivery.
We are not advocating reducing Police numbers, but by allowing one-up patrols, operational supervisors can put more cars on the road.
Providing additional cars is cheaper than additional Police.
This system works very well in Los Angeles.
Inspector Scott demonstrated that unfettered situational awareness is the most potent weapon in a police member’s arsenal. It leads to positive outcomes and increases the member’s safety.
Whether a Police member works alone or with others is a fine-line operational decision influenced by the member concerned, the circumstances, and the risk evaluation.
Engaging with their partner and distracting their situational awareness is the most significant risk to any police member in the field.
We call on Victoria Police to delegate the decision of Operations crew configurations to the Operational Supervisor of that shift.
by CAA | Mar 20, 2024 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
We have always found the relationship between victims and the Courts an anathema.
In a civilised society, compassion for perpetrators is laudable, but the pendulum has swung so far in favour of criminals that it borders on insanity.
The Herald Sun reported ‘A new deal for Victims’ on March 18th, including 55 recommendations and findings of an inquiry by Fiona McCormack, Victoria’s Victims of Crime Commissioner.
There is a lot to like in the report; however, the problem will be the implementation of her recommendations because it tackles hitherto untouchable and archaic practices of the Courts, and the noise of the legal fraternity seeing their rivers of gold challenged will be loud and vitriolic generating spurious arguments to avoid altering the status quo.
Looking at just two of the recommendations gives an insight into why her work is so important and how ruffled the legal fraternity feathers will be.
Abolish the committal hearing process.
- Abolish court committals for some cases, prioritising sex offences and family violence,
There are about 3000 pre-trial or Committal proceedings in Victoria each year, and as best we can determine, at least 95% of those hearings commit defendants for trial.
As an estimate, discarding Committals could save over 12,000 court hours annually.
The only benefit derived from these numbers is that they assist the defence in preparing their case. Receiving a copy of the Prosecution case, the Hand-up Brief should adequately serve that purpose.
A new model must be designed to eliminate committals and the old argument that the risks to the defendant being convicted if innocent is disingenuous. There are significant checks and balances without the Committal.
In the present system, the arresting police officer must prepare a Brief of Evidence capable of providing evidence that prosecution is warranted. Senior police must approve the hand-up brief and provide the accused with a copy. The Director of Public Prosecutions then determines whether a prosecution will proceed.
The Victorian Law Reform Commission recommends,
4.3 The Commission concludes that the test for committal should be abolished and cases transferred from the jurisdiction of the lower courts by a magistrate making an order that the accused appear in a higher court for trial or sentence. Magistrates will no longer be required to apply a test for committal based on the evidence in a case. Instead, the accused should be able to apply for a discharge, and the lower courts should be empowered to discharge the accused if the Court is satisfied that there is no reasonable prospect of conviction.
4.4 An outcome of the proposed change is that the language of ‘committal’ will no longer play a role or be necessary. In place of the present test for committal, a case would move from a lower court to a higher court by an order of the lower court that the accused:
- appear for plea and sentence in a higher court on a date to be determined or
- stand trial in a higher court on a date to be determined.
McCormack’s recommendations disappointingly do not go as far as the Law Reform Commission; nevertheless, she adds weight to the argument for abolishing committals.
The Government can no longer avoid addressing this major issue, although the legal fraternity, which has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, will substantially oppose it.
When we talk about many thousands of hours of court time, and our estimates are very conservative, addressing this issue is now urgent and must be prioritised.
Criminals are scamming the system.
What has been overlooked is the impact on Court time and the flow-on effect of long delays adversely impacting the victims as well as perpetrators.
Adjournments are the tactics of perpetrators and their Legal representative’s weapon of choice, and every excuse that can be imagined is used to gain an adjournment from gullible Magistrates.
It works like this – extending delays will often wear down the victim to convince them to withdraw their complaint. If not, when it seems any further adjournment is unlikely, a Guilty plea is entered with extenuating grief the perpetrator suffered because of the self-induced adjournments. That opens another avenue for adjournments.
These tactics clog the system and, coupled with the removal of committals, will unlock substantial court time to ensure that the legal idiom of “Justice delayed is justice denied” does not apply.
It is disgraceful that many examples of matters taking many years to process through the legal system are common, and often, not only is it Court management issues, but perpetrators scam the system with Magistrates too accommodating, allowing delays based on spurious excuses. ‘Magistrate shopping’ to achieve the result is not uncommon.
This is particularly hard and cruel in domestic matters where the person charged will avoid a court hearing by creating the need for adjournments, usually of many months, designed to break the Victim. Moreover, it often prohibits the Victim from accessing any property rights, even their own personal possessions.
It is not uncommon that because of the committal process, many victims are further scarred on top of the events that the offender perpetrated.
A sentence for being a Victim.
In one case, we know of the Victim suffering the ignominy of 14 adjournments secured by the defendant over five years. At the last adjournment hearing, the defendant asked to change his plea to guilty.
The case was again adjourned for sentencing. As reports impacting his sentence are gathered, it will be interesting to see if the perpetrator uses this process to gain further adjournments.
For five years, the victim has been in hiding, protecting her children, wearing a bracelet alarm. She is currently still in hiding and penniless because of the power the defendant has and continues to exercise over her.
The victim has suffered a sentence of 5 years of fear that has not yet been resolved. Yet it is doubtful the perpetrator will receive anywhere near this penalty for the crimes committed against her. Where is the justice in that?
The fault lies at the feet of the Law, bureaucracy, and, therefore, the Attorney General.
Specifically, the Court’s management processes, the weak, disinterested, or ideologically driven judiciary, and the need for more accountability in the legal system to rectify anomalies.
A Judicial Review Panel must be created, as in other States, to deal with the judiciary’s processes, behavioural, and performance issues at all levels with the ability to measure Judicial performance and legal balance effectively.
The current situation has evolved because of a need for more performance evaluation and accountability of the judiciary, which can be achieved while still respecting Judicial independence.
This is now a priority.
by CAA | Mar 13, 2024 | Library, Politics, Victoria Police Issues
We have been mulling over the recent arrest and release of a sex offender who was one of the 149 detainees released by the Federal Government.
It was reported in the media (HS and others) that Alfons Pirimapun, 44, was charged on Wednesday, the 28th of February 2024, with sexual assault, stalking and two counts of unlawful assault. This followed two incidents in Richmond.
The Prime Minister was under extreme pressure from all media because the suspected perpetrator was one of the detainees released by the Government. The story about the alleged offences was the lead headline in nearly every masthead in the country. Then suddenly, the heat was off. VicPol was backtracking without a reasonable explanation.
A Victoria Police spokesperson said on Thursday that “a process had commenced to formally withdraw the charges.”
The Commander sent out to front the media to mop up this apparent blunder has inadvertently raised the possibility that this was a political hit job to protect the government.
It was reported again in the HS, that Victoria Police Commander Mark Galliot apologised to Pirimapun at a press conference shortly after the charges were dropped while arguing,
“ It wasn’t a mistake to arrest him on Wednesday night.”
“I wouldn’t say it as a blunder; investigators had sufficient evidence to make an arrest,” he said.
“Yes, there was an error in arresting the person and remanded him, and as I said as soon as we found out, we rectified it and we apologise sincerely.”
What concerns us most is the speed with which an investigation has determined that sufficient evidence for an arrest and being remanded can be so quickly overturned that it sounds like a direction to withdraw the prosecution rather than a failure of the evidence collected.
The withdrawal of the charges provided substantial political capital for the Government.
If the error was so blatant as to be so obvious and so quickly acted upon, serious questions of political interference can be raised. Without the proper and full release of the circumstances, this view will persist.
Police take the arrest and charging of a suspect very seriously, so there are only two explanations: the Force was used politically to make this go away, or there was some catastrophic flaw in the evidence.
As far as political interference is concerned, there has been a strong whiff persisting for some considerable time about VicPol being politicised and the Police Force being used as a puppet by the puppet masters at Spring Street. This seems to have become more blatant, giving rise to the real worry that Policing in this state is an extension of the government and not an independent authority.
As for the flaw in the evidence, the indecent haste that determined the flaw leads to the suspicion that the brief could not have been adequately investigated. The statement by Galliot, “as soon as we found out,” can be reasonably interpreted as being told.
The who told what to whom is critical for community peace of mind and assurances that have some veracity. Given that Galliot also said that they had no other suspects, this gives rise, in part, to a lie about the mistake in identity hinted at during his press conference.
We have not heard a sound from IBAC, the watchdog, in months, but perhaps their chain is too short. Perhaps we don’t have an IBAC anymore; it’s just a bureaucratic malaise keeping a low profile to avoid criticism.
We have experienced first-hand VicPol dealing with crime in a partisan way. A serious crime supported by CCTV footage was reported, and overnight, a decision was made. The following morning, we were advised that no offence had occurred. This was done without interviewing any witnesses, and there were many.
Of course, there may be a new way to conduct an investigation; gathering the evidence and interviewing witnesses seems no longer the way, but what would we know, a lot actually.
What was particularly galling was that the report from the CAA was considered independently by no less than five former very senior Police investigators, who were unanimous that a prima facie case existed for serious offences.
The issue was that the perpetrators were most likely employees of the Richmond Drug Injecting room, a particularly political ‘hot potato’ where adverse public opinion could ensue.
There was insufficient time for even a rudimentary investigation, so the Investigators were undoubtedly told to make it disappear. The government had buried or withheld the Ken Lay report they commissioned into the injecting room function, and any criticism, particularly of a criminal nature, by the facility’s staff would be politically damaging.
Making the issue go away would ‘curry favour’ with the Government.
We have often raised the issue of the ‘Separation of Powers’ issue, and failure to do so feeds suspicion of partisan bias, which is a dangerous predisposition for any Police Force in any free society where the rule of law applies.
This suspicion is not just some wild conspiracy theory when you take into account the alleged political influence in the Red Shirts saga, the criminal travel rorts, the failed George Pell prosecution, many aspects of the COVID response, and making the Gobbo affair prosecutions disappear, and the most blatant, the Road crash involving the Premier.
From this list, two conclusions can be drawn. If you offend and are a mate of the government or the incident can embarrass the political class, your sins will be overlooked, and prosecution is unlikely; if you are politically and ideologically opposed to the government, there is every possibility, no matter how improbable, you will be prosecuted and pursued through the courts relentlessly, shades of a police state.
Given the way things are headed, a Royal Commission into Victoria Police and the role of successive Chief Commissioners in alleged Political influence would seem inevitable.
The underlying principle of the ‘Separation of Powers’ is our protection from a government ‘going rogue’ and engaging in criminal behaviour. When the police become joined at the hip to their political masters, the ‘blind eye’ principle becomes evident, a precursor to political criminality and the creation of a police state.
At what stage do the directions from Spring Street become. ‘a conspiracy, to Pervert the Course of Justice?
We would argue that it is probable that the line has been crossed multiple times.
All criminal activity, particularly in Government, has a habit of being exposed at some stage. All it takes is a disgruntled Prosecutor or Police member to find their conscience, and the walls will tumble down. It might not happen today, but it can happen at any time.
In this instance, the police must explain how this incident occurred, given their advice that there wasn’t a blunder and that ‘investigators had sufficient evidence to make an arrest.’
Some things just seem unfathomable.
by CAA | Mar 8, 2024 | Illicit Drugs, Library, Safe Injecting Rooms, Victoria Police Issues
The long-awaited report by former Police Commissioner Ken Lay into the possible location of another Safe injecting room for the CBD is now moot, having not seen the light of day.
There is now overwhelming evidence that the purpose of the facility, Called MSIR, to care for drug addicts has failed, and more addicts die as a result of the existence and function of the facility than happens without it.
An eighteen-month analysis of the MSIR overdose rates makes for a compelling read and reality check.
Not only is the facility an abject failure operationally, but the community impact has failed to be considered, and many of the locals and residents have been forced to live in a twilight of fear. Their crime is that they are unfortunate enough to happen to live in an area where the Government has placed the MSIR.
The two reasons alone that should force the Government to close the facility are:
- MSIR failure to perform its intended function. Intended to reduce the death rate of addicts, the MSIR overdose rates are 23.5/1000 or 102 times higher than the Sydney Medically Supervised Injecting Centre (MSIC); the MSIR doesn’t work and must be immediately closed to save the lives of addicts.
See PDF for more detail: Analysis of the Melbourne MedicallySupervised Injecting Room’s heroin overdose rates in its first 18 months.
Yes, you guessed it; the MSIR does not save lives and has not reduced the death rate of addicts but increased it. Not to mention providing the drug trade with a focal point for trading akin to a market.
2. The suffering inflicted on the residents is beyond comprehension for a failed social experiment. The MSIR is a magnet and has become the epicentre of the illicit street drug trade in Victoria, with addicts all over the state travelling to the MSIR not necessarily to use the facility but to access the rampant drug trade.
The addicts, having driven to the site to access drugs, do not drive home sober but pull up not far from the MSIR to consume their purchase before heading back from where they came. Metaphorically enjoying the trip.
That many of them drive to and from should be of enormous concern for the wider safety of the State.
The horror that the residents must endure is best illustrated by their experiences on March 6, 2024.
What long-term damage is caused to those 12-year-olds as drug apologists work to normalise Drug addiction? There are constant and terrifying stories that have become so regular the government dismisses them as a small number of disgruntled anti-drug locals intent on discrediting social advancement.
The objections to the injecting room concept are based in fact and will eventually force a rethink by the Government.
Let’s hope it is done before a local ends up the same way, as many of the addicts who use the facility – dead.
Or perhaps worse, there is an upsurge in young people being hooked on drugs because that behaviour is what they have grown up within a neighbourhood where the scourge has been normalised by the government.
The MSIR must be closed now; enough damage has been wrought, and there are alternatives.
by CAA | Feb 27, 2024 | Library, Uncategorized, Victoria Police Issues
The CAA has published a series of Plans aimed at identifying issues in the law and order space that adversely impact all of us. The current iteration is PLAN 100.3, updating the last version, published in 2019.
A lot has happened in the intervening years. This paper will update the community about the issues we identify and provide suggestions to decision-makers on how things can be improved.
We welcome any comments and hope this paper informs the broader community to pressure for change.
Plan 100.3 Word Doc
Plan 100.3 PDF
by CAA | Jan 9, 2024 | Industrial Action, Library, Victoria Police Issues
The iconic Notre Dame Cathedral, built in 1250 and located on the Île de la Cité (an island in the Seine) in Paris, was gutted by fire in 2019. French President Emmanuel Macron declared at the time that the Cathedral would be completely rebuilt.
The task, starting with the foundations and everything above, is slated for reopening in 2024, six years after what was criticised as a very optimistic five-year target set by Macron.
And what relevance does this dauntless undertaking have to Victoria Police and the current industrial relations issue? Quite a lot.
Given all the challenges faced by the French, this arduous task will be one of the most outstanding achievements of all time, demonstrating that given the right goals, an unwavering focus on the result and motivation, anything can be achieved.
The critical issues required to achieve this outcome are,
- Visionary and intellectually sound Leadership,
- Unwavering support from the political class,
- A committed artisan workforce who could see the goals set,
- and an equally committed citizenry.
Each of these components is of equal value to achieve the overall goal.
Those values directly correlate with how to address the problems of Victoria Police and how the issue must be approached – the Industrial action is but a symptom of a more significant issue that needs the application of the principles adopted by the French.
The first challenge for those with executive influence over the Force is to admit shortcomings and address them head-on rather than deflect them with spin. For many problems, Industrial Relations tops the list; solutions cannot be achieved with a series of band-aids but by addressing the core issues.
While the current IR issues must be resolved, unless authentic leadership comes to the fore and restoration of this once great organisation is undertaken to be the benchmark for policing in Australia again, IR issues will continue to plague the organisation and increase in frequency, sucking the energy that should be applied to its function, impacting adversely on the Workforce and Service delivery.
We will persist in drawing attention to the issues that require urgent consideration.
ISSUES
Policing is a proud and was generally a highly respected profession.
There is no doubt that the use of the police by the Government during the COVID pandemic has done enormous harm to the standing of police in the community. The current disquiet and much of the disastrous staff retention failures can be attributed to COVID. The damage done is seismic and will linger, reverberating for at least a decade or more.
The police have worn the brunt of much of the displeasure caused by the Government strategies implemented during COVID, mainly experienced in their private lives through friends, acquaintances and family, making it more emphatic than normal community disquiet.
We, as observers with some knowledge of the processes that should be followed and best practices in law enforcement, consider that the government’s strategy to scare the pants off the community coupled with overzealous and incompetent police leaders collided, trampling all over the Separation of Powers to produce some very ordinary policing of the type we usually only see in other undemocratic countries with authoritarian regimes.
We are still astounded that the person who authorised the use of firearms to disperse demonstrators has not been identified and charged with serious criminal offences or, at the very least, relieved of any command positions because of an appalling lack of judgement.
To this day, there has been no plausible deniability from VicPol.
Given that leaders, both Political and Police, are quick to apologise for anything historical, the failure to acknowledge the many COVID errors and commit to change shows abysmal leadership.
The CAA has long argued that the responsible use of water cannons to rapidly achieve law and order by dampening the spirits of lawbreakers in the first instance or forcibly moving demonstrators if non-compliance continues is substantially more appropriate than firing rubber bullets (capable of inflicting severe injury or death) or exposing Police to injury trying to restore order. This option must be put under earnest consideration.
As is not unexpected, given the reaction by the Police and the Politicians (if they ever care to comment constructively), there is much-feigned handwringing and teeth-gnashing over the shocking road toll. Victoria has recorded its highest number of lives lost on the roads in 15 years, with 296 people killed. The death toll of almost 300 easily eclipsed the 241 who died in accidents in 2022.
One would have thought strident gains in policing our roads would have improved markedly over fifteen years, but apparently not.
These figures support the regular anecdotal claims that there are never Police on the road.
This statement in response to the carnage was attributed to Victoria police by the Herald Sun and shows the narrow thinking of VicPol –
Police allege,
“Single acts of non-compliance or people making basic driving errors”, such as failing to obey road signs and red lights, using mobile phones behind the wheel and low-range spee
ding, have accounted for more than half of the deaths, while stunts such as high-range drink driving, illicit drug driving and excessive speeding made up about a quarter of fatal collisions.
Further, about 10 per cent of people killed were not wearing a seat belt”.SEO
What they don’t say, and is not in their DNA to admit, is that they have failed. Just blaming the public; it’s always somebody else’s fault. Although there is a modicum of merit in their allegations, the Policing function of preventing offences and prosecuting offenders cannot be abrogated and has clearly and dismally failed. Many of these offences would dramatically decline with adequate visible enforcement of the rules.
Although there is still an Assistant Commissioner for Traffic, it is our understanding that line control of these Police rests with the Operations Command and has, in effect, absorbed the specialist Traffic Police to support the Operational General Duties. They must be allocated to their own command to meaningfully target areas that can deal with some of the ‘non-compliance issues’ and be accountable.
The Traffic police have lost their deterrent effect, which must be fixed. Just painting ‘Highway Patrol’ on their vehicles doesn’t cut it. The average driver no longer keeps an eye on their rearview mirror in case the police check their speed; technology (Speed Cameras) has its advantages but has nowhere near the deterrent effect of a patrol car in real-time.
Using Highway Patrol for general duties should be a matter of last resort. As should the use of these Police in special operations unrelated to traffic.
A functional adjustment will dramatically improve productivity and a sense of worth and appreciation for what they do. It will also counter attrition issues from these members, considerably improving Industrial Relations.
The only caveat we put forth is that the nine-hour rotating roster could be dangerous to apply to these members as the challenge of nine hours of driving reduces the safety of members and, over consecutive days, may put them in danger of fatigue, an OH&S issue.
- 000 calls from the public reporting dangerous drivers is a monumental Service delivery failure in that there is minimal follow-up of reports of poor driving, arguably aggravating an already dire policing failure on our roads.
mpressive until you look a little further and realise that without plausible explanations, it is smoke and mirrors, a deceitful and shocking attempt to con the public by VicPol or the contractors.
The other notable figure is that in 2022, 51,305 events were recorded. Now, that is odd and a 14,519 discrepancy. Fourteen thousand five hundred nineteen times, jobs not registered as incoming were despatched via the system.
Where did they materialise from?
We don’t know who is to blame for this statistical bleep. However, when you add to that, there is no assignment accountability; it does need proper investigation.
Once the call from the public is received, the CAD system enters the job, and an operator either assigns or despatches a unit.
We know that the vast majority of these calls are never attended and marked off on the CAD System as Gone on arrival (GOA), No Offence Disclosed (NOD), or the most usual response is Keep a look out for (KALF), a generic broadcast of the details reported or the other classic Unable to Locate (UTL) which can also mean we did not look.
There is no accountability, follow-up or feedback, even by SMS, of the outcome to the 51,305 publicly-minded community members doing their civic duty.
Only about 1,000 calls resulted in any real action, and as a result, 906 offences were detected, 117 offenders were apprehended, and six stolen cars were located.
This last statistical matrix should have every dedicated and competent Police member, irrespective of rank, salivating at the potential and furious that this opportunity to make a real difference has been ignored for so long. Over 50,000 sets of eyes working for law and order is getting close, to policing nirvana. (Buddhism)
Examples of the CAD system as it should be,
- Two vehicles were seen “dragging” along Ferntree Gully Road Glen Waverley; theregistration numbers of both cars were provided. There was no police vehicle available to attend, and the outcome was recorded as AAC (All Apparently Correct). A check of police records indicated that the probable driver of one vehicle had accumulated 19 demerit points and had recent criminal convictions for serious offences. He was into high-performance drag cars. The caller was contacted and stated she was a nurse at the Alfred Hospital and constantly saw people in emergency involved in vehicle collisions. The drivers were ultimately interviewed and later pleaded guilty to driving offences in court.
- A Vehicle was seendriving dangerously on the Monash Freeway towards the city. The supervising sergeant requested that a unit be directed to investigate. The supervising sergeant replied shortly that the registered owner and the reporting person had been contacted. The registered owner stated that her granddaughter was driving the vehicle. A further check revealed that the granddaughter has numerous prior convictions associated with drug use.
Contrasted with
- An example of tragic consequences was a drug-affected driver who was later convicted of culpable driving. In 10 days before he caused a fatal collision, numerous calls were made to 000 reporting his erratic driving. Any of the incidents reported to police could have amounted to Conduct Endangering Life or Serious Injury, in which case it would have been open to Victoria Police members to arrest and bail him with conditions, thus providing an immediate response and saving a life; it never happened.
Can you imagine what impact VicPol could have on crime and traffic issues if the efforts of the public were respected and pursued? Not even a return ‘text’ with a note of thanks and the outcome to the instigator of the original call. So much for nurturing public help.
One would think having over 50,000 Victorians providing eyes for law enforcement would be respected and built upon, not treated with disdain.
Another example where it’s not how many police the force has but how they are used that is the key.
This is critical to improving industrial relations as an organisation is respected for its ability to deliver its services. Hence, its staff reap the benefit of working in a rewarding environment and management is duly rewarded.
The problem for VicPol is that they seem not to understand what Service Delivery is, and it is regularly confused with Service Efficiency and masqueraded as Service Delivery. A good organisation constantly tests Service Efficiency proposals through the prism of Service Delivery, which always trumps efficiency.
Something more efficient is counterintuitive if it adversely impacts Service Delivery, the organisation’s primary function, and its purpose.
The lifeblood of Policing is information, and an area with the most significant conflicts between the two disciplines has collided to the detriment of good policing practises.
- Telephone communications, much to our surprise, and we might add to the surprise of a Deputy Commissioner, who didn’t know you cannot ring Police Headquarters, the Police Headquarters phones have been disconnected. The switchboard has been closed. So, unless you have a particular member’s phone number, you will have enormous trouble communicating.
This example is just one of many where the decisions are made based on efficiency at the expense of service.
If you have ever tried to use the 113444 police assistance line, you are more likely not to be assisted but around as to make the effort a waste of time. But never fear, the police assistance line provides service efficiencies, albeit it fails dramatically in providing an efficient service.
An efficient switchboard would ironically save time and improve service both internally and externally. Improving both service efficiency and service delivery.
This is magnified throughout the Force, even down to local Police Stations ( -who at least have a Phone number), where several options will be given in answer to your call; the quantity varies on each station but can be a substantial number for the caller to determine which one they should use.
The responsibility to determine whom the caller should talk to has been placed on the caller, who is supposed to know the intricacies and duties within the station and who will deliver the required Service, not the service provider, VicPol. Often, much time is wasted bouncing a call around within a Station, and the one left frustrated, the caller, is supposed to be the person to whom police are required to provide a Service.
This approach is based on the flawed assumption that all callers know whom to talk to about their issues, but unlike the police, who have access to a detailed directory, the public is left to flounder. Blatant and entrenched Service Efficiency at the expense of Service Delivery as it allegedly saves Police resources and time, or does it? The answer is only an obscure maybe, but what about delivering the police service, an abject failure?
- Tactical deficiencies affecting IR.
We have been concerned for some time about the lack of tactical expertise that unnecessarily puts the lives of police and the public at greater risk than they should otherwise. This issue is central to IR or should be.
With a heightened international upsurge in radical extremism, the risk to police has markedly increased again.
The blind adherence to two-up patrols translates into Police never being one-up, irrespective of the task. That effectively reduced police capability by up to 50%.
Police patrolling by vehicle or on foot in two-up or more patrols face greater danger than patrolling by themselves because,
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- A partner or partners distract members from their crucial defence mechanism, situational awareness.
- Having to manage professional relationships and colleague dynamics can cloud the judgement of when to pursue an issue or back off.
- Multiple Police involved in performing patrols can provide multiple attractive targets for the radicalised, and history has shown fewer police have been killed working one-up, making one-up patrols less dangerous.
- The risk factors are exhibited by unnecessary police congregating to minimise their risks. Poor or inadequate supervision leads to Police being spectators (the most dangerous situation for any police member)and not performing any particular role at incidents. A spectator generally has no situational awareness and is in danger.
Again, anecdotally, we see the less stringent application of the two-up policy, which is good; however, any move in this direction must be taken with care as less experienced members may have no situational awareness policing skills. This should be the priority of Training and a skill that must be developed.
More often than not, the concept of one-up patrols is misunderstood and rapidly dismissed as some archaic policing practice when, in parts of the world, the idea is seen as cutting-edge for the safety and efficacy of the Policing role.
One-up patrols do not mean fewer police but more police vehicles, heightening the visible police presence and reducing risks by attending to calls simultaneously with other patrol vehicles.
As a station that might, on an average shift, field three vehicles, under this scenario, they would probably field five or six, substantially improving the efficacy of the police function for that shift. Once the initial phase of an incident is controlled, it may only require one member to finish collecting information for admin purposes or any other reason. The other police, who are not directly engaged, can be available for different tasks. It can be very effective with active and competent local supervision.
The issue of police safety working one up or with one or more partners was closely examined at https://www.aic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-05/tbp049.pdf. The findings did not provide sufficient grounds for abandoning one-up patrols based on police safety or efficiency.
- Technological agnosticism
This seems to have a substantially negative effect on Victoria Police. Everything in this area appears piecemeal and developed by a series of add-ons that do not achieve overall application cost-effectively.
The most recent issues involved the attempt to have all members issued an iPad, and the increased service efficiency sounded great until somebody woke up and that an iPad was a liability in the operations area and a risk to employees ‘ safety. Wrestling suspects while holding an iPad became an evident and terminal flaw.
The answer was to provide members with an iPhone, but instead of developing an iPhone that can perform the tasks of a body-worn camera, it is used as an add-on to the existing cameras.
Microelectronics Technology has developed miniaturised cameras that are currently used in medicine and other applications, so why not policing?
Micro cameras worn by Police connected to their iPhones would not be a giant leap technologically but would be welcomed by the members and improve their safety.
The cameras could then be used with facial recognition to scan suspects, establishing identity and other relevant police data on-site. This information can be vital for members’ safety during an interaction in the field.
A proposal long pursued by the CAA to apply technology currently available, to the police function.
Fitted to all vehicles, the G-Tag can,
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- Minimise the risk to police and the community by disabling moving vehicles remotely. The capacity to render a vehicle inoperable will dramatically reduce the need for ‘police pursuits’, the dangers to the community and police, and the inevitable property damage. The technology has been available for some time and has already been installed in many newer vehicles.
- Provide more material of evidentiary value in prosecutions where a vehicle is involved,
- Locate missing persons, reducing loss of life by self-harm,
- Reduce the theft of vehicles and affect recovery before the ubiquitous torching of vehicles.
- An aid to identifying perpetrators using vehicles.
- Linked to the 000 reporting of dangerous driving, the G-Tag can verify that report and take action immediately. Using the current 50,000,000 calls coupled with an ability to respond immediately if the danger exists would have a monumentally positive impact on Road safety, criminality, and civil compliance.
There are other advantages set out in the proposal at https://caainc.org.au/?s=G-Tag .
We know that VicPol ran a pilot of an abridged version of the concept in Dandenong; however, given the approach adopted, it is a little wonder that the pilot failed. We suspect this was more about a deliberate attempt to discredit the idea rather than any effort to evaluate the proposal properly.
It was telling that at no stage did the management running the pilot attempt to contact or consult with the CAA so as to run an unbiased pilot.
What little information we have on the pilot indicates that those responsible for it had little idea of the concept and were piloting a system that removed all responsibility from policing, a trait we have seen in other approaches to other issues – avoiding responsibility, masked as Service Efficiency, and or lacking the ability to apply visionary and intellectually sound Leadership.
The critical issues required to achieve positive outcomes are lacking in Victoria Police, and leadership needs to follow the French model,
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- Visionary and intellectually sound Leadership,
- Unwavering support from the political class,
- A committed artisan workforce who could see the goals set,
- and an equally committed citizenry.
These and other issues need attention, and we do not underestimate the task ahead, but if the French can do it with Notre Dame, then VicPol should have no problems achieving what seems unachievable; it just takes ‘Visionary and intellectually sound Leadership’.
The opportunity exists for VicPol leadership to create a seminal moment in Victoria Police history.
by CAA | Dec 3, 2023 | Library, Media, Politics, Victoria Police Issues
The breaking down of law and order in Victoria has been evident for some time, but recently, this concept has accelerated to a very worrying level.
The past is only relevant to identify patterns; the future is the worry, as it seems nothing is being done to arrest the decline.
Currently, the situation where demonstrators, seemingly with impunity, do whatever they can to intimidate another sector of the community, instilling gross fear on any part of the community, is unacceptable on so many levels.
Worryingly, is that the intimidation is so vitriolic it is only a ‘hair’s breadth’ away from violence.
The seriousness of the situation cannot be downplayed, and yet the Police, who are responsible for maintaining law and order, seem ineffective through bias.
This is not the Australian way.
The bias by Policing has been developing for some time, and we suggest it has a lot to do with the failure of the principle of the ‘Separation of Powers’[i], a long-held presumption that has been eroded, and the management of public order is where it most obviously manifests.
The failure of this principle, where the decisions and responses to public order are tainted by Political bias, is a two-way street.
The blatant direct involvement of politics in decision-making has become far less obvious, but we are sure it still occurs; what has evolved is a far more insidious, unconscious bias. A will to please political masters or those who support the government without direct interaction.
The Police have no role in allowing partisan views to influence responses but must respond on the basis of maintaining law and order, and that includes protecting vulnerable groups and all citizens; the issues and reasons for disquiet must never influence the operational response.
Some of the disquiet in police ranks that has provoked industrial action recently has been attributed to the Forces’ obvious bias.
This move toward partisanship with the government of the day has been an attempt by Governments to own police powers and have a far greater say in the operations of Policing, a repugnant concept that might seem fine in theory, but, as we have seen, makes Policing ineffective.
The current demonstrations against Israel by pro-Palestinian groups supporting Hamas are a case in point.
The basis of the demonstrations is those allegedly opposed to Israel’s response to the attacks, hostage-taking and murders committed by Hamas. The role of Victoria Police must not be influenced by the reasons for the demonstration but by providing a Police response to maintain Law and order and should be as concerned with protecting the abused Jews as they should be for those who identify as Pro-Palestinian.
The accusation of police bias is a ‘hot button’ issue sure to raise the ire of Police executives. Be that as it may, the matter is immensely serious, and the issue of the breakdown of the ‘Separation of Powers’ and biase must be corrected.
To ignore the issue will be a blight on the capacity of Police Senior management as this issue lies at their feet.
The following list of incidents indicates beyond doubt that bias is at play and must be addressed.
- Black Lives Matter – passive police response acting as spectators.
- COVID-19 – aggressive police response including use of firearms on demonstrators – aggressive role extending over numerous occasions for two years, including chasing and dispersing demonstrators using defensive weapons like pepper spray as an attack weapon. Tea bagging protestors to make them breach the COVID rules.
- Sundry environmental demonstrations – passive police role acting as spectators.
- Pro-Palestine (Hamas) demonstrations -passive police response acting as spectators.
We do not support unnecessarily aggressive responses but demand the Police apply the law without fear or favour, malice or ill will, absolutely, irrespective of the issue at hand.
Following this principle will rapidly improve and rebuild the image and confidence that the community had in its Police, and the police members will be able to return to the non-partisan positions they once were able to hold in their professional capacity, improving the morale within the organisation so that the workplace again becomes non-partisan.
We acknowledge, however, that the government has a lot to answer for by diluting the Police power to manage these issues by repealing the ‘move on’ Laws.
It has seriously diminished police authority to perform their task.
By removing those powers, the closest analogy is a law to remove the ability of doctors to carry a stethoscope when working in Emergency Rooms (ER).
The Victoria Police can and must do better operationally, free from Government pressure and interference.
[i] In Australia, the power to make and manage laws is shared between the Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary. The separation of powers avoids any person or group having all the power. https://peo.gov.au/
by CAA | Nov 26, 2023 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
The State of Victoria is in a terrible mess and is deteriorating before our eyes; not a day goes by without more bad news.
We have a rapidly climbing crime rate in the worst categories.
- A Road Toll is off the Richter scale,
- Domestic Violence is out of control,
- Youth crime is at levels never seen before,
- The burgeoning drug problem ruining lives on an unprecedented scale,
- Rampant Cybercrime,
- Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs (OMG) and Organised Crime gang strategies failing, all operating with a degree of impunity,
- A broken legal system, taking years to resolve straightforward cases and with little or no empathy for victims,
- A biased legal system with serious crimes going unprosecuted based on who the perpetrator is rather than impartiality applied,
- If you need Police in a hurry, any chance of a response is problematic.
A crisis seems an understatement.
Additionally, the mooted Police industrial action currently confronting the community aggravates the overall perception that this State has an ineffective Police Force, which feeds into accelerating the further decline of the issue being confronted by us all.
The government must do what it takes to resolve this industrial matter quickly.
We do not criticise the Police members, and although we oppose the Police industrial action on principle, there are compelling issues that have caused this current industrial dispute.
Amongst the issues,
- High levels of staff turnover,
- Poor recruiting outcomes,
- The Force being overmanaged – top heavy at the expense of the front line,
- Unrelenting repetition of certain policing demands without solutions,
- Police members over-committed to non-core functions, reducing their ability to perform the task of policing,
- Understaffing of frontline policing,
- Staff burnout,
- Lack of support from the Courts and the Government,
- Unnecessary tasks sapping resources,
- The breakdown of the ‘Separation of Powers’ politicising Policing.
We should also include management capabilities as that is no doubt a contributor.
We do acknowledge there are pressures on police management due to outside factors. It is hard in an operational sense for management to service all competing demands with insufficient staff who have generally become less motivated by the nature of the irrelevant tasks they are required to perform.
Police are continually attending domestic conflicts at an alarming rate, sapping the majority of Police resources, and whilst there was a Royal Commission into the problem costing many millions, the outcome has not achieved any reduction in the levels of violence or frequency of police demands to attend domestic disputes but rather the issue has exponentially exploded in demands on Police resources.
Causing substantial negativity among Police members, their plight is generally ignored, with more demands on their time with fewer police to do the policing and no appreciable effort to arrest the decline.
These problems did not manifest overnight but are a consequence of factors that should have been dealt with a long time ago.
The issue is complex, but the reality is that the rising crime rates are the consequence of sustained inaction by the state and, in particular, the denigration of effective Proactive Policing that has all but disappeared. Although portrayed as functional, the police proactive strategies have failed to play a fundamental or effective role in policing.
Failure to stop crime before it happens has fed substantially into the current community malaise.
The issue is plain and simple: we are becoming a more lawless society, not a more tolerant one, as pundits try to portray.
An ideological bent towards a more progressive ideal is actually a misnomer. Generally, progressive philosophies create regression, and we all suffer, particularly the most vulnerable in society.
Examples that stand out,
- Medically Supervised (Safe injecting room) Injecting room,
- Decriminalising public drunkenness,
- The Koori parallel judicial system,
- Abuse of the ‘Separation of Powers’ convention,
- Weakening of various criminal statutes,
- The failure to modernise the archaic legal system that is now unfit for purpose.
There is a void in leadership in this State, across a broad spectrum of management, fed by an insatiable appetite to never accept blame for failure. A sentiment throughout Government and also now appearing in the corporate sector.
This all leads to a lack of accountability, the nemesis this State faces.
If you have had enough like us, sign our petition demanding these issues be urgently addressed. https://www.change.org/p/when-is-enough-is-really-enough
Enough signatures and we can demand change.
by CAA | Nov 18, 2023 | Library, Victoria Police Issues
The debate and allegations of police bias in the management of demonstrations have again been raised.
Bias concerns have indeed been more frequent and strident over recent years, and central to the community angst is the reported different responses to different causes.
The unavoidable comparisons of the police response are drawn between pre-COVID, Black Lives Matter (BLM), COVID Demonstrations, Pro Woman’s Rights and more recently, pro-Palestinian/Hamas demonstrations.
Police acting as spectators to the BLM demonstration, as opposed to Rubber Bullets and O/C Spray against COVID Demonstrators, a scenario VicPol will not be able to move away from for many years, if ever.
Hence, the CAA’s position on water cannons which are at least consistent.
Now, the issue relates to the police response to the pro-Palestine/Hamas anti-Jewish demonstrations.
The first principle of Policing demonstrations is consistency so that an allegation of bias cannot be levelled at the police; irrespective of the cause, people are exercising their right to assembly and free speech.
It is understandable that many in the community have doubts and feel Victoria police show bias, influenced by the subject matter of the demonstrations.
These latest demonstrations could become more problematic and facilitate anarchy by extremists hijacking the demonstrator’s actions from either side of the debate. A lack of Police action toward demonstrators who are breaking the law is a major cause of violence escalating because the behaviour is unchecked.
What has occurred seems to be inconsistency in applying the law as it stands. This inconsistency implies that the police policy moves with the subject matter of the demonstration, hence the allegations of bias.
It was widely reported that a Senior Police spokesperson said, “Protesters could not be stopped from unfurling hateful banners and performing anti-Semitic rallying cries”.
But there are specific laws to deal with these matters.
In Victoria, it is against the law to vilify a person or group of people in public because of their race or religion. Vilification is behaviour that ‘incites or encourages hatred, serious contempt, revulsion or severe ridicule’ for a person or group of people because of their race and/or religion.
It is also against the law to behave in public in a way that is racially offensive or abusive to a person or group of people because of their race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin
. https://www.legalaid.vic.gov.au/racial-vilification-and-acts-racial-hatred.
It is, therefore, not a question as to whether the perpetrators, and there were many exposed by news services, have committed Vilification in breach of the Law, it is only their individual guilt or innocence that is the question, necessarily determined by a Court, not the bias of individuals within VicPol.
That the crime has been committed is beyond doubt.
Another statement attributed in the media to the Senior Officer was,
“Police are aware of recent chants and banners at these rallies, and while they might be offensive to ‘some’, unfortunately, they do not always constitute a criminal offence.”
So, the police pick and choose the ‘some’.
That is bias and not police exercising discretion, which individual Police have the power to do.
The further claim that “Police can only act within the confines of the law” is a truism. However, it implies that the actions we see are within the confines of the law – a highly debatable proposition because, equally, the police have an obligation to enforce the law. There are a number of potential offences that the Police can take action against for those breaching them, which in part supports the politician’s views that police have adequate powers.
Offences regularly committed by demonstrators that are not prosecuted,
Obstruction, Trespass, Unlawful assembly, Anti-mask laws, Offensive behaviour, Besetting, Offences against emergency workers, Violent disorder, Affray or property damage.
https://fls.org.au/law-handbook/rights-activism-and-fair-treatment-at-work/community-activism/common-charges-associated-with-protests/
We accept that at times, for operational expediency, some minor offences should be overlooked (exercising police discretion); however, when demonstrations occur without any arrests and blatant offences are being committed, beamed into our living rooms on the nightly news, the authority of the State and the Police is undermined as is the confidence of the community, something from a policing perspective that is essential for the overall effective policing function.
That some perpetrators are prosecuted post-event is not a disincentive for participants where an arrest during the demonstration is. The lack of arrests can promote an attitude that police are weak and ineffectual, the deterrent effect is lost, and more social unrest is guaranteed.
While weasel words to attempt to justify police inaction and or bias may placate a minority, the vast majority of the community sees through the spin.
Fair, impartial and effective policing without fear or favour is an underlying foundation principle of policing.
by CAA | Nov 17, 2023 | Corruption, Library, Victoria Police Issues
16th November 2023
The Victoria Police ‘Prior History Guidelines’ published on their recruiting website https://www.police.vic.gov.au/police-entry-requirements raises considerable doubts about the integrity of the Police in this State.
The guidelines are an exhaustive list of offences that a person can be convicted of and still be recruited. This list will shock many.
Albeit that there are exclusion periods attached to each conviction. It is wrong on so many counts.
Not the least the lack of empathy extended to victims who may be confronted with their perpetrator in Police uniform.
Five or ten years may seem like a long time, but to the victims, their pain can be an eternity.
Simply having an arbitrary exclusion period does not mean that the applicant does not still hold a biased disposition to the values they held when committing the crime.
At best, it only determines that during the exclusion period, they have not been caught, not that they didn’t continue to offend.
The application of this policy, which has been in place prior to the appointment of the current Chief Commissioner, may go some way to explaining the difficulty in securing and retaining staff and the lack of confidence that has evolved in policing generally.
Police were once looked up to as pillars of society; this policy trashes that notion.
It allows people with pre-dispositions, attitudes and values not consistent with the high integrity expected by police to negatively influence the culture of the organisation.
Amongst a raft of offences, it is possible that the police member attending to investigate your issue has been previously convicted of that same offence and could have served jail time for that indiscretion.
Irrespective of time elapsed, that police member will have a disposition that may be counterproductive to good policing and affect their judgement. It would definitely not instil confidence in victims that this possibility exists.
Not too many people would be pleased that a convicted felon is the police member dealing with their issue. The principle of ‘set a thief to catch a thief’, is a principle that is unacceptable by any measure in policing.
An example of offences that applicants to VicPol can be convicted of and still be approved to join the police Force,
‘Theft, deception, criminal damage, serious assault, or other serious offences.
Dishonesty, assault, property damage or any offence against an emergency services worker, trafficking, possession or using illicit or illegal drugs.
Driving in a manner or speed dangerous, DUI, drug-impaired driving including refusing to undergo an assessment or refusing to comply with the requirements of testing,’
Surprisingly, the list also includes Insolvency with a five-year exclusion period. This shows scant knowledge of the realities of business. We have just come through and are still feeling the effects in the corporate sector of the COVID pandemic and now fiscal headwinds with Government policy responsible for many insolvencies, not poor character by directors.
Many businesses face insolvency through no fault of the Directors.
This policy is counterintuitive, discouraging these people, who are generally highly skilled people of very good character, from the Police Force.
Probably the most inane offence is the inclusion of ‘any offence against an emergency services worker.’ What sort of ‘numb nut’ would include the possibility of approving an application of somebody who has been convicted of belting a Police or emergency services worker?
It may be that this list is moot because it will conflict with the new legislation for Spent convictions. A person whose criminal offending has been ‘Spent’ will not be required to disclose the prior conviction in the first place. Unless Victoria police have secured an exemption, it will mean that they will not have to disclose spent prior convictions irrespective of Police policy, which says they must.
The number of people who are accepted into the Force with prior convictions for any crime, let alone serious offences, is irrelevant.
That they can be accepted is the issue that undermines the integrity of all Police and the Force generally, community confidence and the culture of Victoria police.
It is incumbent on the Chief Commissioner to rescind this Policy and require the Government to provide an exception to police on the issue of Spent Convictions.
Integrity is the cornerstone of effective policing, if not it should be.
