Qld Police Union reveals ‘unresourced job’ levels amid calls for tougher controls on DV offenders

Overworked officers are turning up to domestic violence jobs that are more than a week old, Queensland’s police union says, as it lays bare the grim reality of reporting a crime in the state.

• Bombshell DV crackdown plan

Overworked police are turning up to domestic violence jobs that are more than a week old, Queensland’s Police Union president Shane Prior has sensationally said.

During a press conference on Friday morning Mr Prior said Logan as of 7.35am had an “unresourced job rate of 141”.

“Now 72 per cent of those unresourced jobs in Logan are domestic and family violence,” Mr Prior said.

“To put that into perspective, of that unresourced job load they are taking 25 per cent of the state’s load of unresourced jobs.

“Now I can guarantee you in that 141, you are going to have multiple, multiple domestic and family violence jobs that are more than a week old.”

Mr Prior’s comments come on the back of the union’s DV blueprint to go after the state’s worst domestic violence abusers.

Under the union’s five-point proposal the state’s worst domestic violence offenders would have to share their device passwords and have their movements tightly controlled like registered sex offenders and bikies.

Police officers should also be able to use rapid response video calls to respond to non-urgent mid-level domestic violence call-outs to save thousands of hours of frontline work, if perpetrators have left scenes and victims are not at risk, according to the union.

The push from the union comes as officers attend about 200,000 domestic violence occurrences a year, with each job generally taking between four and six hours.

The police union has set out a DV blueprint to go after the state’s worst domestic violence abusers. Picture: istock

The union has proposed that control orders be placed on the worst high-risk domestic violence offenders similar to NSW laws for organised crime figures and bikies, which would restrict associations with people, stop them from having certain things and restrict where they go and who they communicate with.

They’d also be banned from using online dating platforms and attending nightclubs.

The proposed control orders would also require offenders to hand over similar details as registered sex offenders including their email addresses and passwords, and allow police to access their mobile phones and electronic devices.

It would apply to people with two or more orders against them within a five-year period involving different partners; or any person convicted of strangulation; or a person deemed to be a “controlled perpetrator” by the courts.

The scheme would operate with the already announced GPS tracking for the state’s worst offenders to ensure they complied.

Mr Prior, who has headed the union since last year, said the current system did little to curb the “appalling behaviour of serial offenders”.

He said police were attending a domestic violence job every three minutes around the state. Reform was needed or the situation would worsen, he said.

“The risk is that next year we are going to be talking about 220,000 occurrences and the year after that 230,000 occurrences,” Mr Prior said on Friday.

“Instead of police attending a DV every three minutes, we are going to be talking about police attending a DV every two minutes.

“The trajectory is ridiculous. We need to do something better as a community and we need to call out this behaviour and start treating serial domestic violence offenders as the criminals that they are.

“We as a police service are drowning in these jobs but the community should be outraged that we are on track to reach 210,000 occurrences.

“As of right now, it seems to me that the most dangerous place in Queensland is in your own home.”

QPS Union President Shane Prior. Picture, John Gass

The union said the rapid response video response system would allow officers to engage with victims virtually, in non-urgent situations, replicating what the frontline already does.

A trial by the Kent Police in the United Kingdom which uses the model found response times for high-priority family violence cases reduced from a mean average of 32hrs and 49 minutes, to just three minutes.

In that model, when an abuse victim calls their emergency 999 number, a rapid video response dispatcher can be connected in a live video call with them, if they meet their criteria.

As previously revealed in The Courier-Mail, the union is also campaigning for an offence of “commit domestic violence”.

Mr Prior said police should also be able to inform new partners of serial offenders the risks they are facing. He said he had sought feedback from those in the domestic violence sector who had helped him incorporate new ideas and proposals.

The union is also campaigning for an expansion of body worn camera video as evidence in chief for court proceedings after it was successfully trialled in Gold Coast and Ipswich districts.

The union has also proposed a stand-alone Commissioner of Domestic Violence and that the Police Minister takes over administrative responsibility for the Domestic and Family Violence Protection Act to streamline processes.

A spokeswoman for Police Minister Dan Purdie said the government was examining all measures to protect victims and prevent domestic violence.

“Minister for Police Dan Purdie has been working closely with the Minister for Domestic and Family Violence Amanda Camm on DFV reform,” she said.

“The Crisafulli Government is committed to ensuring that our police have the laws, policies, and procedures they need to keep vulnerable people safe.”

Originally published as Qld Police Union reveals ‘unresourced job’ levels amid calls for tougher controls on DV offenders