Pic. courtesy Herald Sun

The Herald Sun headline on the 9^th of August ‘24 gives hope that Victoria Police are entering a new phase where clever resource use reaps outstanding results, but more can still be done.

We don’t know whether this means that the media have more access to police-community operations and are privy to what’s happening. Still, either way, it is a positive change and will boost the community’s confidence in the Police.

The current operations in the City of Port Philip demonstrate what can be done when Police management applies itself.

The real test, however, will be when the major Operation ends.

This Police Operation, with multiple arrests, will wrest the streets back from criminals, making the area safer for a time determined by the Courts, not the police.

With current court experience, most, if not all, offenders will be back on the street within hours.

The Police can’t do much about that but what planning is underway to ensure the regular policing response maintains the edge that the major operation archives? Or will it revert to business as usual until the community again raises concerns about a lack of police action in their locality? We hope not.

It was reported that the Commander of this operation said,

“ Remanding offenders in custody for low-level drug offending would only choke the courts further.

“We don’t want to tie up the courts; we don’t want to tie up the criminal justice system with what needs to be a health-led response,” he added. – HS 9^th August ‘24

This raises two critical points.

• Police are not responsible for Court management or the Justice system; they need to remain focused on the police function and not be influenced by the inefficiencies of another Government function. The Courts are renowned for being super inefficient, which is a matter for the Courts, not the police. Police have enough to do.

In many ways, the Courts’ overload may be a positive, pushing them to take a greater responsibility in reducing recidivism among perpetrators. Much of this recidivism is hidden by so-called ‘Diversions’, which obscure the effectiveness or otherwise of the Courts.

Shut the Justice revolving door.

• Secondly, the issue of a health-led response. This much-bandied concept has been hijacked by the pro-drug activists pushing the incorrectly interpreted strategy of ‘Harm Minimisation’, which has been manipulated into ‘Harm Facilitation’.

The dug injecting room, free supply of drug injecting equipment (instead of the needle exchange program)and Pill testing are classic examples where the government has given up on proactive discouragement of illicit drug use, moving to actively promoting drugs by facilitating their use and abuse.

The issue we have with a health-based response to date is the past experiences, particularly Covid and Harm Minimisation.

We are not comfortable with the government directly collaborating or even conspiring in the illicit drug process, an illegal activity, giving drug use credibility it should not have.

We do, however, strongly support a health-based approach. Essentially, that would involve the Police having the power of a Health Officer to issue a Health Notice to anybody whose cognitive skills are compromised and who has recently consumed drugs, illicit or otherwise, that can adversely affect their cognitive ability or are likely to compromise their health.

These people can then be transported to a secure facility, where the Health Department manages the suspect’s health and avoids clogging Hospital ERs and tying up Ambulances. Contracted transport can move the drug-affected people around as they do with Drunks.

The facility must be secure so that when the person is detained, they can be released back to the police when their health is stabilised to finalise any pending criminal matters or the police have nothing else pending they can be discharged without further action provided the Health professionals sign off that it will be safe for the person to be discharged.

We must, however, remain eternally vigilant as efforts to de-power police in recent history have accelerated at a pace never before experienced in this State.

Police have lost the power to manage social disorder by various Summary Offences being repealed, the power to arrest and charge young thugs, even some committing unspeakably cruel crimes, has been severely curtailed, and the Force actions have been further curtailed by imposition of functions to tie up Police resources gathering data for other government agencies.

The next target for the ideological zealots will no doubt be the common law power for police to use discretion.

There are already signs of inroads being made to curtail this power, evident in the legislative provision regarding Police caution in the new Youth Justice Bill currently before the Parliament.

It is a program that has served the community very well for many decades, ensuring young people are diverted, not from the justice system as the Bill intends, but from a life of crime, a much more effective and desirable outcome.

Over the decades, many, many thousands of young people whose only brush with the law resulted in a Police caution for some indiscretion have since developed into very worthwhile members of society, which may well include some of our community leaders.

Removing Police discretion will be a significant win for the ideologues, and it must be resisted with vigour.

The days of the Courts simply processing those charged and issuing a penalty appropriate to the conviction are past. Society now looks to the Courts to take an active role in crime prevention beyond their traditional role.

When crime statistics are released, the police are inevitably judged by them as a measure of their performance; this must also be extended to the Courts and individual jurists as Key Performance Indicators (KPI).