Rookie cops cracking big cases despite no detective training
THEY might not have the formal training of detectives, but Regional Enforcement Squad officers are cracking some of the state’s biggest drug and firearm investigations.
NSW
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IT sounds like the plot of a television cop show — a bunch of aspiring rookie detectives cracking huge drug and firearm cases without any training — but this time the truth is better than fiction.
The Regional Enforcement Squads are supposed to be the “breeding ground” for cops who want to take the next step but these units are racking up the arrests without the training of proper detectives.
Now Police Commissioner Mick Fuller wants to give them better training, to both prepare them for perhaps becoming detectives, and also to make sure the big fish they are hooking don’t slip through the net when it comes to the court case.
There are 11 RES units based around NSW, including five new ones put into regional areas in the past 12 months to tackle drug and gun crime in the bush.
The units in Surry Hills and the South West Metropolitan Region have had immense success in tackling the mid-level drug supply, including busting lucrative cocaine rings in the CBD and putting socialite drug dealer Richard Buttrose behind bars.
In March, the North West Metropolitan RES arrested six people over a bush drug lab that was manufacturing large amounts of MDMA.
“The RES units … are very much a breeding ground for detectives because that is the sort of work you are doing,” Mr Fuller said.
“They are doing jobs now that are the same level of many detectives with no more training than the investigator’s course.
“The need for me is to provide more training for those RES units to ensure they are using legislation and they understand the complexities that go with brief preparation and a whole range of other things with dealing with mid-level criminals.”
RES officers catch the investigations that might be too big for a local area command but too small for the State Crime Command.
In a bid to ensure RES officers are properly trained to continue locking up organised crime figures and taking kilograms of drugs off the street, senior police are looking at a new, tailored investigators course.
The training would also put RES officers on a faster track to becoming detectives.
As it stands an RES officer’s experience does not go towards their eligibility to become a detective — a long and involved process.
Mr Fuller said if an additional course was introduced for RES officers, it would not erode the training already given to detectives.
“It is not eroding that trophy at the end which is well regarded, and I know that as a detective,” he said.
“It is not about changing the numbers of detectives in the state.
“It’s about trying to line up all of our investigative training so it all equals something at the end of the day, not in isolation.”
* Follow Ava-Benny Morrison on Twitter @avabmorrison or email ava.benny-morrison@news.com.au