‘Red-lining and overworked’: Qld cops called to 100k jobs a month

Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior has taken a subtle swipe at the Commissioner saying he had been “shouting” about officer exhaustion for months since taking on the role.  

Commissioner of the Queensland Police Service, Steve Gollschewski. Picture: Richard Walker

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Commissioner Steve Gollschewski says frontline police are red-lining and overworked, with new figures showing the service is being called to more than 100,000 jobs a month.

Officers were tasked to 558,702 calls for service between July and December this year, a 6 per cent increase of 30,000 calls compared to the same time last year.

Domestic violence offences have increased a staggering 11 per cent and breaches 14 per cent, comparing the same period, with more than 200,000 offences annually.

“We are operationally red-lining most days,” Mr Gollschewski told The Courier-Mail. “We are under the pump, every day trying to deliver those services and at the same time we are trying to take on an ambitious reform program.

“This is why the recruitment side of it and all the investment side in improved systems is so important for us.

“We’re red-lining trying to deal with these things.

“I think the analogy I always use is that we’re trying to build the plane while we are flying it … and not crash it,” he said.

Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior. Picture: Liam Kidston

On Saturday, Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior said he had been talking about the exhaustion of frontline officers since he took on the role this year.

“The Commissioner has now publicly admitted what I’ve been shouting about since becoming QPU president… our frontline people are exhausted, compassion fatigued and pretty much at their work limits,” he wrote on social media.

“At lunchtime today, Caboolture had 11 outstanding jobs, Toowoomba 34 outstanding jobs including five for DFV (domestic and family violence) and one GD (general duties) crew there has been off at a DV for hours already. In Townsville, four crews are handling DVs and a fifth is still processing a DV from earlier in the day. It’s obvious there’s very little time for proactive policing or discretionary patrolling.

“Reform is needed urgently in rostering and the way jobs are categorised, and actually processed. Forget about plane analogies, how about some leadership in rectifying problems that inhibit the frontline and lead to burn out.”

Mr Gollschewski said his main focus of reform was alleviating pressure on the frontline so officers could be involved in more proactive policing.

Queensland Police Commissioner Steve Gollschewski says cops are overworked. Picture: Liam Kidston

He said there were 880 recruits in the academy and another 2300 in the pipeline.

After he started his role as Commissioner, Mr Gollschewski brought in Whiskey Legion – a surge capacity operation where extra police are sent to areas identified as high-risk and high-harm, to help other police divisions.

The aim is to offer more help and relieve pressure on the exhausted frontline.

“We’ve had a total offenders of 4764 adults on 11,833 offences and that includes probably around 800 kids, I think, in that as well,” Mr Gollschewski said.

Crime had stabilised in Queensland after increasing about 13 per cent in 2022-23, Mr Gollschewski said.

In this financial year property crime, such as break-ins, has decreased but personal crime has risen about 4 per cent, driven mostly by domestic violence-related assaults.

The road toll would likely be more than 300, for the first time since 2009.

Mr Gollschewski said discretionary time for police had “eroded”, with increases to DV taking four to six hours of a police shift.

Police officers are overworked across Queensland.

Mr Gollschewski said new technology – including the auto filling of forms – was already being trialled and electronic servicing of some paperwork would happen in 2025.

“Our officers have to put data into our system, and then they have got to go re-enter data, and then they’re going to go re-enter data – it should be single data entry,” he said.

“And in fact, you should have systems – and we have been trialling these of course – that it’s all done for them, and then they’ve just got a quality control with it that takes off so much time.”

Mr Gollschewski said he wants his legacy to be about improving the frontline, whether it be general duties, detectives or another non-policing area in the service.

“I want them to actually think yeah this guy actually gave it a crack and made a difference for us,” he said.

“Made their job a bit easier and actually valued us, appreciated what we did.

“I come from a policing family and I’m the only one that ever achieved any rank and I’ve got an obligation to the first responders that went before me to do what I can, otherwise my dad would turn in his grave.”

“And I’m not saying fix everything, I’m saying make it better,” he said.

“I’m not naive enough to think I’m going to magically fix domestic and family violence. I think our whole community needs to step into that space.”