Cops unable to attend 100-plus DV jobs as mum allegedly set on fire
Police were unable to respond to more than 100 domestic violence jobs in Logan just hours before a young mother was allegedly set on fire by her former partner.
Police & Courts
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More than 100 domestic violence jobs in Logan were unresourced just hours before a mother was allegedly set on fire by her former partner.
Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior said as of 2.30pm on Friday, the Logan District had 199 unresourced jobs on the board – a shocking record for the district.
Of those 199 jobs, Mr Prior said 59.7 per cent – or 118 jobs – were domestic violence-related reports.
The next morning, Destiny Otton-Rakuraku was allegedly set on fire by her ex-partner in a horrific domestic violence attack.
Mr Prior said police rushed to her Kingston home under “code one” – the most serious classification – and arrived in a short time.
Officers were confronted with a harrowing scene which Mr Prior said will stay with them for the rest of their service.
Across Queensland at 2.30pm on Friday, 628 jobs were unresourced. More than 30 per cent were located in the Logan District.
Mr Prior said police in Logan were in the “fetal position”.
“It says to me that we have a problem here in Queensland,” Mr Prior said.
“It doesn’t matter if you have been a police officer for six months or 30 years, our police are always sickened by [what they see on the job].
“The reality is police in this state are being called to 525 domestic and family violence incidents a day and on those numbers alone, we are failing to adequately protect victims and change behaviour.”
“We need to do something different, figures are saying we are not protecting our victims despite our best effort,” he said.
“We must do better and control this escalation of domestic and family violence in our community.”
It comes as figures show people breaching domestic violence orders in Queensland has skyrocketed fourfold in the last decade, with police struggling to keep up with the demand.
Figures show the rate of order breaches was 329 per 100,000 people in 2014, but the rate in 2024 was 1241, with almost 70,000 breach offences.
Between July and December last year domestic violence offences increased 11 per cent and breaches 14 per cent, compared to the same period in 2023, with more than 200,000 offences annually.
Commissioner Steve Gollschewski told The Courier-Mail that officers were “red-lining” most days with the level of demand put on them.
A single domestic violence job took between four and six hours to deal with.
“We are talking about over 200,000 occurrences in Queensland alone (annually) and it’s probably 80 per cent under-reported,” Mr Gollschewski said last month, when speaking generally.
“There is a real huge societal issue in that about the attitude of men particularly, because it is gendered, of violence towards women, that really has to change.
“Police will keep doing what they have to do but we’re not going to change that (societal issue).”
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