Paul Weston: What is the real story behind the grim blue line as crime statistics are fudged and police funding cut on the Gold Coast
WHAT is the real story behind Gold Coast coppers?The debate daily bounces from the city’s soaring crime rate to reduced allocated budgets for police districts and now falsified reporting of incidents.Let’s take a stroll behind the grim blue line.
Opinion
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THE real story behind Gold Coast coppers bounces daily from the city’s soaring crime rate to reduced allocated budgets for police districts and fudged reporting of incidents.
Let’s take a stroll behind the grim blue line.
On one side is the LNP Opposition with shadow police spokesman Tim Mander and northern Coast MPs Michael Crandon and Mark Boothman running hard on a law-and-order campaign heading into the state election.
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Their target is new Police Minister Mark Ryan, a fresh-faced Caboolture MP who graduated from a leading Brisbane private school and worked as a solicitor before rising rapidly in Labor’s ranks.
Caught in this political crossfire is the Coast region’s top cop, Assistant Commissioner Brian Codd, who must also oversee the Logan police district.
Directly below him is Chief Superintendent Terry Borland, responsible for the Coast district. His superintendents include Craig Hanlon and Michelle Stenner.
Ask yourself, if there was a police line-up of these suspects, who would you recognise?
Before being sent to his office in Surfers Paradise, Assistant Commissioner Codd was renowned for his flood recovery work in the state’s north. He was head of the Ethical Standards Command. Those posts suited his passions.
Colleagues will tell you his strengths are his ethics, common touch and connection with the community and empathy for his fellow officer.
One of his first initiatives here was to rework rosters so stressed Surfers Paradise officers had more weekend leave with their families.
He wants coppers to be more mobile, out in cars with iPads driving to the faster growing suburbs in the north. If the concrete and mortar of a new cop shop cannot be funded, send your troops there.
Superintendent Borland, from the Sunshine Coast, is more comfortable in the saddle or coaching rugby league players than fronting press conferences.
He will take calls from reporters, give direct answers but they will tell you the dialogue can be as illuminating as that in a Clint Eastwood film.
Supt Craig Hanlon is relaxed in front of the cameras but appears to have disappeared from the media spotlight.
Supt Stenner made headlines in late 2015 after details of a private meeting with colleagues at Logan were publicised. She admitted to having “inherited a number of matters which I need to resolve”, including unprofessional behaviour.
But in recent times a search party would need to be sent out to find Supt Stenner for a media gig.
Assistant Commissioner Codd, his good nature stretched, continues to front every police media opportunity, including a recent fiery session about police budgets.
“Codd was left holding the baby,” a police insider said. “It’s wrong. He’s not the district officer. He has found himself in the equivalent of Queensland police’s Afghanistan.”
All of this begs a final question. How long will it be before there is a shuffling of the lower decks?
Have you been pressured by police to withdraw a complaint?
Tell us in the comments below.
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