NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller vows to overhaul Force
After years spent trying to foster female leadership in the “masculine” NSW Force Force, Commissioner Mick Fuller asked former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick to investigate the culture among his staff. The findings have left him “embarrassed”.
NSW
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Detective Inspector Gretchen Atkins clearly remembers the excuses that were rolled out when she tried to move up the police ladder.
It wasn’t her time. She wasn’t experienced enough to relieve as a detective sergeant.
There was someone better suited for the role.
Ironically, that someone often ended up being a male officer, who had less experience than she did.
“I didn’t progress into detective world when I thought I would have,” she said.
It was through dogged persistence that the 42-year-old managed to achieve a rank in the NSW Police Force made up of only 17 per cent women.
“I’m exceptionally stubborn,” the mother-of-two laughed.
“I have never taken no for an answer very well.”
Starting off in Parramatta Police Station 20 years ago, Det Insp Atkins rose through the ranks with stints at the NSW Crime Commission, in the detectives unit at North Sydney before her current role at the transport and safety command.
Despite her success, she had to overcome sexist attitudes.
“I’m not going to say its all been rosy,” she said.
“I joined at 21. I was a country girl who moved to the city, I’m also a short, blonde female.
“It was something I wasn’t prepared for. I had three brothers and a dad … I always thought there was nothing I can’t do as a girl.”
While Det Insp Atkins concedes the culture has shifted since she was a senior constable, the long, arduous application process to become an inspector was exhausting with two children.
“When I was contemplating the role of inspector, it was ‘well you can’t do that part time’,” she said.
“It is not written anywhere to say it’s not an option but anecdotally it just isn’t.”
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An “embarrassed” NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller will overhaul the way officers are promoted in the wake of the investigation over the past 12 months by former Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
After years spent trying to foster female leadership in the “masculine” force, Mr Fuller, a father of three girls, commissioned the project after seeing little cultural change.
The damning report found a third of female officers have been sexually harassed by police colleagues while women are overlooked for senior roles and having children can be a career killer.
“We are there to protect the community and to read that there were women and men who had been potentially sexually assaulted and one in three women experience sexual harassment in the workplace … I found to be personally embarrassing as the Commissioner of Police, ” Mr Fuller told The Sunday Telegraph.
More than 32 officers, 20 women and 12 men, reported anonymously that they had been the victim of attempted or actual sexual assault during their employment in the past five years.
One in three female officers reported being sexually harassed at work.
“We are police, we are meant to be protecting the victim from those types of crime,” Mr Fuller said.
“So to think there are potential offenders in the workplace turning police into victims is something I have to stamp out.”
Ms Broderick has been canvassing the views of thousands of police officers in reviewing the force’s promotion system.
Her report found that while male and female officers were equally ambitious, women weren’t putting themselves up for senior roles against an undercurrent of sexual discrimination.
While some female officers reported being supported and encouraged right through their careers, others said their progression stalled after taking time out to have children.
One officer told the review: “there is an assumption that women will drop the standards”.
Another said: “when I got pregnant, I was told ‘what are we going to do with you?”
Serious criticism was also raised about the force’s promotion system for senior ranks, which can involves months of study, which many officers take annual leave to do and what part-time working mothers have little time for.
Mr Fuller said the view was the system was clearly biased towards men “who had very little to do on the weekends and could invest an enormous time to study” and so the police force had missed out on strong female leaders.
While 34 per cent of police graduates are female, only 17 per cent are inspectors, nine per cent superintendents and 19 per cent assistant commissioners.
A very small percentage of the NSW Police Force is on flexible working arrangements, a figure, which at first glance, Mr Fuller thought wasn’t too bad.
But to keep the “strong, intelligent and capable” female cops in his ranks, he needed to foster a more flexible workforce.
When Det Insp Atkins made the plunge to go for a promotion in 2015, she studied after her kids went to bed, before they woke up and on the weekends — a feat only made possible with the support of her husband.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Leanne McCusker, who has worked at police stations around Sydney for most of her 31 years career, also attributes her rise through the ranks to supportive bosses and an understanding husband.
“Throughout various stages of my career there was different points in time in our careers (including her husband) where family needed to be the focus,” she said.
“At other times you might need to focus more on work. I feel as though I navigated that and worked through that so it did all fit.”
Some of the force’s most distinguished senior women have left in recent years, including Deputy Commissioner Cath Burn, Assistant Commissioner Carlene York (who are both on secondment to other departments) and homicide squad Detective Chief Inspector Pamela Young.
At the end of the year, Detective Superintendent Deb Wallace will retire leaving only one female commander at the State Crime Command.
The number of women who applied for a sergeant promotion had also dropped by 5 per cent over the past five years.
“We found that you can’t be what you can’t see,” Ms Broderick said.
“For a lot of women looking up, there is not a whole lot of women at senior levels.
“If you can’t see someone who is doing it really successfully, and particularly someone who has a caring responsibility, then ‘why would I imagine I could do that?’
Ms Broderick found there had been a cultural shift regarding sexual harassment in the past 12 months and attributed it to the Police Commissioner’s zero-tolerance stance, which has been drummed into his senior officers.
Police have fully supported all the Broderick review’s 30 recommendations, including the establishment of a sexual harassment unit that will field complaints — whether it be via text, call or email — and advise commanders on how to deal with the issue.
Senior police are working on a new promotion system, which would put more emphasis on the best person for the job rather than the result of an exam.
Given the nature of policing, a 24/7 job where on-call detectives can be called away for weeks at a time at a moment’s notice, some roles can only be full-time, Mr Fuller said.
Originally published as NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller vows to overhaul Force
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