16th July 2021
Another of the very vexed issues confronting policing is the issue of police Service Delivery.
The Community Advocacy Alliance (CAA) has regularly received anecdotal reports of service delivery failure by police members.
We suspect some of the issues raised with us are because there is no mechanism that the public feels confident about bringing the matter to VicPol attention.
A couple of examples.
- The proprietors of an Asian Grocery in a shopping strip were so frustrated with the amount of blatant stealing happening in their store they resorted to enlarging pictures to paste on the shop front and throughout the store showing perpetrators clearly identifiable in the act. A shaming strategy.
The store owners had become sick of contacting the Police, who never attended. The local Station Commander was notified, and he contacted the shop owners and advised them to ring his station. The owners tried, but found that extremely difficult and time-consuming as they had to wade through the myriad of options offered. They had no idea which would be the correct option to select. This was a small business with usually only the owner present, so hanging on a phone line for what seemed like an eternity was just too hard with legitimate customers queued up for Service.
- A member of the CAA had to visit a police station. While waiting to be attended to, the person in front relayed a tale to the attending member on the not unsubstantial thefts that had occurred at his business perpetrated by an employee. The businessman was advised that those type of thefts are civil matters and was not a Police matter. No crime reports were taken.
At best, this was ignorance by the police member but more likely laziness and the knowledge that there would be no repercussions for his actions. Like in all matters involving behaviour, human or otherwise, unless there is a likelihood of a consequence for bad or non-compliant conduct, a correction is unlikely.
We have also received advice from a retired Chief Superintendent.
- Travelling along a major thoroughfare at a slow pace because of traffic congestion, a vehicle charged out of a side street, turning left, sideswiping the ex-members car. The offending vehicle did not stop but took off at speed, weaving through traffic recklessly like a fleeing villain.
Lo and behold, there just happened to be Div Van in the same traffic flow, and when the ex-member spoke to the members in the van, they claimed they didn’t see anything. Failing to even get out of the van, the members advised the ex to report it at the station as they were on their way to a burglary. The burglary was in the same area as where the offending vehicle had come.
The next day the ex, dutifully reported the incident at a Police station and handed over the number of the offending vehicle. The attending member made inquiries and advised the ex that the car that had sideswiped him was stolen. The attending member was clearly annoyed and did not attempt to justify the actions, or more precisely, the inaction of the van crew.
Any half-competent police member having only a moderate degree of situational awareness and experience should have suspected a link between the fleeing vehicle to the burglary. Of course, we have no way of knowing if it was, but most members would put a quid on it that it was the crooks.
Victoria Police has established a Service Delivery Command, and that is a very positive step; however, Service Delivery does not happen or is not measured at the command level but where the organisation interacts with the public, where the rubber hits the road.
There have been a number of corporate initiatives that seem to be of good value, but that is the wrong end to start to bring about change.
A couple of standout failures that, if rectified, would improve Service Delivery very quickly; the member’s attitude is one, but technology is the primary culprit.
Firstly, the telecommunications protocols set up of VicPol need a major overhaul.
We are strong advocates for the Police Advice Line (PAL), but unfortunately, the organisation saw this as a way to redirect all manner of issues away from the police stations.
Police stations got onto the wagon and designed answering services for calls offering a multitude of options to redirect callers within the Police Station. Always notably excluding the Officer in charge option.
The caller does not operate the station; the staff within it do, so all incoming calls must be answered by an assigned member, and they can redirect if necessary. In practice, this current approach has shades of the ‘send the fool further, and they will lose interest’ or alternatively ‘our work is too important to be answering phones‘.
The executive needs to make some calls to test the system. We suggest extending past Police Stations and try to ring somebody within the organisation using the police headquarters number. From a public’s perspective, a logical number in many circumstances. Provided the call is made during office hours and not during the one-hour daily shut down for lunch, they will find the operator unable to assist and, in our experience, exhibiting disinterest.
After hours, good luck. Not having an after-hours service is disgraceful in a State that now functions 24/7 and has done so for many years.
It may not be an issue for Police members; they have access to the police intranet to locate direct phone numbers. The public does not have a competent directory, online or otherwise. The online function at https://m.vic.gov.au/contactsandservices/directory/?ea0_lfz149_120.&organizationalUnit&6a9c1235-0bdc-401c-a080-dbbd19b5ac3c# only includes Command and refers only to the main switchboard. Bad luck if you want to talk to anybody else.
On the issue of a helpful directory, that is a matter that should be quickly resolved with accurate data with an online public directory.
The provision of mobile phones for members is another initiative strongly supported by the CAA; however, this has spawned a one-way communications system limiting effectiveness. Caller ID numbers should not be blocked from Police phones; argued as a security issue, but the member can block any inappropriate caller at any time. Many members of the public will not answer calls with blocked IDs as marketing companies often use this to interact and harass customers.
Unfortunately, this problem was caused by Police operating in a Police bubble not understanding the community they serve.
Another technology, albatross, is demonstrated in most patrolling police vehicles. It is far too common to see the observer not observing but being a passenger, head down assumingly using an electronic device. This makes it look like Police are disinterested, not focused on the community they are supposed to service.
It is also not uncommon to see a parked Police car with both members, head down, engrossed in the issue at hand. We accept there has to be an element of this, but the overuse regularly observed is very concerning. Not only is the engrossed member not performing the observer role, but the Situational Awareness, or lack thereof, puts both members at substantial personal risk.
This behaviour must be curbed, whether their distraction is addressing correspondence, undertaking online training or focusing on tips from The Marketing Heaven for creating successful videos and keeping up with friends on social media. The use of headphones may help?
When addressing the Service Delivery issue, little progress will be made at the coal face while less than efficient members can take shortcuts and fail in delivering the police service with impunity, as is currently the case. It is not purely a supervision issue as Supervisors cannot be everywhere; this needs to be addressed culturally. Pressure from colleagues (concerned for their own safety) is the most effective way to solve this issue.
The Service delivery test is to identify if a member of the public experience’s dissatisfaction with the Police service and it be bought to the attention of the organisation in a measurable way.
Until that is achieved, all effort to fix the problem will be futile. A Police complaints or Service Delivery line is essential to identify where the weaknesses are occurring so that remedial action can be taken.
There is a long-held misconception, often trotted out as a quaint old-fashioned rationalisation, that has held policing back for decades. The belief that anybody that complains is ‘anti-police’.
We thought this nonsense was assigned to the Ark a long time ago, but behaviours today suggest the philosophy is alive and well.
A priority must be to establish a mechanism where members who fail can be held to account. Notations on their PDA would work. It would not take long for the Service to achieve substantial improvements if a member knew that they might have to explain their actions and there are possible consequences for failure.
Good material in evaluating members for promotion or appointments.
I believe that overall police in Australia are endeavouring to provide quality service to the community. However, sometime they fail their duty to the detriment of the community’s faith in their police. The following story illustrates my point:
Do you remember the Somerton Man case? This is an unsolved case of an unidentified man found dead in 1948 on the Somerton Park beach in South Australia. The story was widely reported in the media in May this year. SA Police evidently re-opened the case in their desire to identify the man whose body was recently exhumed in order to obtain a DNA sample. That proved to be a challenging task as the body was embalmed. Media speculation pointed to the possibility of the man being a Russian spy.
I am a student at U3A. Shortly after the media reports on the Somerton Man case, my U3A colleague, a gentleman of Iranian background, about 84 years old, approached me and told me that he knew the identity of the Somerton Man. He was keen to pass his information to the police but was unsure how to go about it. I offered to contact police on his behalf.
Foolishly I believed that a phone call to the Police HQ would suffice to pass the information on. No, the time when it was possible to ring the Police HQ switchboard and be transferred to the appropriate section, is well and truly over. These days one has to go through the Crime Stoppers which was exactly what I did, leaving them with the name and contact number of my colleague. I was issued with the Caller ID number and was assured that my call would be followed up. When my colleague did not hear from anyone for about a week, I called SA Crime Stoppers and eventually I was able to contact SA HQ as SA Police was the authority investigating the case.
My call was answered by an anonymous female who, to my surprise, did not know about the Somerton Man case despite the national media coverage and the SAPolice investigating the case. Listening to my information she then indicated that she would pass it on, agreeing that it should be followed up in the course of the investigation.
Guess what! To this date, that is almost two months after my initial call, my colleague has not been contacted by anybody! I wondered what he must have thought about this lack of action and professionalism of the police. I would not be surprised if his faith in police ability to investigate crime was rather shaken.
And no, the Somerton Man was not, according my trustworthy and wise colleague, a Russian spy. He was a Nazi agent! It would be interesting to know what conclusions did the SA Police come up with in their investigation.
IVAN –
TODAY I DROVE PAST OUR LOCAL P.S. ABOUT 1130HRS AND GUESS HOW MANY BLUE/WHITE VEHICLES WERE PARKED OUT THE FRONT ON THE KERB? SIX!
AND I DID NOT SEE ANY OF THOSE [12?] TWELVE MEMBERS WALKING THE STREETS ANYWHERE DURING THE NEXT HOUR WE DROVE ABOUT THE PLACE.
AT ANY GIVEN TIME ANY DAY YOU CAN SEE THREE OR FOUR, OR MORE, VEHICLES PARKED THE SAME – I’VE SEEN NINE!
AND YOU WILL NOT SEE ANY MEMBERS WALKING ABOUT THIS TOWN ON FOOT.
LAST TIME I SAW THAT WAS TWO SKINNY FEMALES, POORLY DRESSED, EACH CARRYING A TAKE-AWAY COFFEE, BEFORE COVID, CLOSE TO A YEAR BACK, HEADS DOWN, WALKING SLOWLY BACK THE FEW HUNDRED YARDS TO THE P.S.
THAT’S SOME OF WHAT’S WRONG WITH VICPOL!!!!
Ivan, this small item [in caps,above] is a part of another comment I wrote to you, back on 19.02.21, a reflection on your topic “Victoria Policing – A New Beginning”.
You might not be too happy to find out there has been NO VISIBLE change in member activity here, in the several months since then.
For Service Delivery to occur externall surely members must actually become active and deliver?
I suggest that if those many police vehicles are typically still parked outside the front doors of our large regional police station there has not been any increase in our local [supposed] Service Delivery.
More obviously, our much smaller local police station, which appears to work small single shifts, has NO cars in its driveway, nor out at the kerb when I drive past, five or six days each week.
True, they MAY be hidden out the back behind the driveway fencing; entry is in fact at the rear of the Police station, as is vehicle entry to our major regional station.
But at our local police station, if there is NO interior lighting visible, it would be a fair presumption to think there was no-one home, and “no vehicle visible” more likely doesn’t mean the members are out delivering service…
Your “Service Delivery” improvement doesn’t seem to be a part of “Victoria Police – A New beginning” just yet!
One only has to look at the way police have handled the ICook investigation in Victoria. It is nothing short of abysmal. As a retired investigator I feel ashamed and embarrassed at the way the matter is being handled. I strongly suspect that if they do not buckle down and do their job high ranking officers could find themselves in the Supreme Court trying to justify their lack of action.