Doreen Langham’s death a result of ‘suboptimal’ DVO system

The Queensland Police Commissioner says there is “something wrong” with the state’s DVO system after it failed to protect Logan woman Doreen Langham.

Queensland’s top cop has labelled the state’s DVO system as “suboptimal” after it failed to protect Logan woman Doreen Langham in the days and weeks before her death.

Ms Langham was killed in a house fire at her Browns Plains home in the early hours of Monday after she had been granted a temporary protection order in the Beenleigh Magistrates Court on February 9.

Doreen Langham

She had called police for help hours before the incident and had provided them with CCTV footage and a dossier of information to prove her former partner was ignoring a domestic violence order.

Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll told 4BC there was “something wrong” with the system and it needed to be rectified immediately.

“Something in the days and weeks before went wrong where this wasn’t picked up and sadly it resulted in a tragic death,” she said.

“The decision about the dispatch on the information under any framework would be correct but there’s something wrong, suboptimal in the system.”

Queensland Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll during a press conference in Brisbane. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

She said police in the Logan district had “extraordinary demands.”

“I think there were 3500 DV’s in Logan just this year so it’s the busiest district and the busiest district for DV,” she said.

“I think when a system is under demand there’s stress and there’s gaps but that should not be the case at all.”

Commissioner Carroll said she would meet with her assistant commissioners across the state today to work to rectify gaps in the process.

“I don’t know if we’ll ever get the perfect system but we need to make it as perfect as possible because it wasn’t good enough on this occasion.”