Victoria crime wave: Short-staffed police swamped, 000 calls held for hour ‘regularly’
UPDATE: The recruitment of hundreds of new police officers has been fast tracked by a year in a $26 million plan to rush more resources on to the front line.
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- Ron Iddles comment: Embarrassing choices for hard-pressed cops
UPDATE:
THE recruitment of hundreds of new police officers will be expedited by a year in a $26 million plan to rush more resources on to the front line.
Police Minister Lisa Neville announced the decision this afternoon after the Herald Sun revealed the Police Association’s urgent push for 3300 extra officers to help relieve short-staffed stations.
The government’s move means the police academy will run at capacity so 406 new officers can be sworn in and serving the community by the end of June next year.
The first extra officers will hit the beat early next year.
“We aren’t wasting a second in making sure Victoria Police has the resources it needs to cope with growing demand for police across the state,” Ms Neville said.
“This decision to bring forward recruitment of 406 additional officers will see the Victoria Police Academy running at capacity.”
“We will continue to give the Chief Commissioner the resources and the powers he needs to fight crime and keep Victorians safe.”
Police Association of Victoria secretary Ron Iddles welcomed the government’s move but said it should be just the start of a bigger recruitment boost.
“This response from government is one that shows they are listening and finally recognises we are in the midst of a critical resource crisis,’’ he said.
“However, short-term commitments like this are not sufficient to fix the problem.
“There is no solution to this issue other than an urgent injection of police numbers.
“This can only be the start of a conversation to ultimately provide further commitments to deliver 3301 police over the next six years.”
Mr Iddles added: “This issue must rise above politics and government has to act now in the best interests and safety of the Victorian community.”
“These commitments should be made before we fall further and further behind,’’ he said.
EARLIER:
VICTORIA’S crime wave is swamping short-staffed police who are regularly unavailable for an hour or more to answer calls where lives could be at risk, senior officers say.
An extra 3300 officers are needed by 2022, the police union says.
One in four general duties senior sergeants surveyed said they “regularly” held “Priority 1” jobs, such as armed robberies, serious car accidents and home invasions, as they scrambled to deal with record crime.
Stations even struggled to put patrol cars on the road, police said.
An unprecedented Police Association of Victoria study surveyed 329 senior sergeants, who laid bare chronic understaffing they said sometimes left them unable to send officers to jobs at all.
The public and police officers were being put at grave risk, they said.
“A fix to this police numbers crisis cannot be delayed any longer,’’ Police Association secretary Ron Iddles said
Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton told the Herald Sun that work to deploy more officers where they were most needed was well under way.
“We know we are stretched in a range of areas,” Mr Ashton said.
“The (staff) modelling is around avoiding getting this situation again.
“We are not sitting back,” he said.
Of general duties senior sergeants surveyed:
84 PER CENT said call-outs regularly went unattended.
89 PER CENT felt the time jobs were being held risked public safety.
26 PER CENT said “Priority 1” jobs were regularly held for an hour or more.
67 PER CENT regularly struggled to get police vans on the road.
The 3301 extra police being demanded by 2022 — 550 a year — are mostly first-response officers, but also investigative and special-unit staff.
The union says there are 115 fewer first-response police than in 2014.
“Members are at breaking point,” Mr Iddles said.
The former homicide squad detective said: “They are overworked, stressed and placing themselves in dangerous situations more and more because they are working at under-resourced stations. This needs to be addressed urgently.”
The union wants the growth areas of Casey, Wyndham and Whittlesea to receive the biggest influx of recruits to achieve a target ratio of 102 first responders for every 100,000 residents.
The association believes some areas are currently operating with as many as 23 fewer frontline officers than deemed necessary.
“It is plain dangerous when first-response police are spread so thinly that their response to urgent jobs is being delayed,’’ Mr Iddles said.
“Not only does this place the community at risk, but it places police themselves at increased risk of injury and stress as they are constantly forced to make difficult resource allocation decisions that could ultimately have fatal consequences.
“Priority 1 jobs should be just that: priority No.1.”
Mr Ashton said the staff allocation model — that from next year would deploy 300 extra first-response police, mostly to growth areas — was nearly complete.
It factors in not just population but crime, call-out demand and time to attend jobs. It will include other factor, like socio-economic disadvantage.
Mr Ashton questioned the union’s findings on delays with Priority 1 calls, saying it didn’t marry with data from the Emergency Services Telecommunications Authority, which fields triple 0 calls. Its figures show that of 139,000 jobs allocated to police in the past 12 months, only 1 per cent had been held for any time.
But the police union said ESTA dispatching a call didn’t guarantee a unit would attend.
Senior-sergeants said they regularly faced no-win situations. One said: “For example, family violence, over a hot aggravated burglary, over a dangerous driver, over an armed hold-up alarm.”
Another said: “Last night, my staff had a choice between a five-car prang, a person injured/trapped, and a lost 12-year-old girl.”
Police Minister Lisa Neville said the government had funded 1156 police personnel.
TWO HOURS TO GET TO MY GIRL: PAIN LINGERS FOR MUM
THE family of Rekiah O’Donnell, shot dead by her boyfriend in 2013, say they are bitterly disappointed by the length of time people in danger are being forced to wait for police help.
It took police officers two hours to respond when Rekiah and her boyfriend, Nelson Lai, were having a violent dispute.
Two months after that incident, Rekiah, 22, was shot dead by Lai when he was coming down from an ice binge.
Rekiah’s mother, Kerryn Robertson, said she was shocked at the number of police jobs that were regularly held for one hour or more.
“I would hope we would be better than this, three years on,” Ms Robertson said.
“Given all the discussion around domestic violence since then, and the knowledge there is about the issue now, you would have thought police response times would be better in 2016.”
Ms Robertson was told by Sunshine police that no one could come out after she rang triple 0 on August 11, 2013.
She had made the call after hearing on the phone a blazing row between Rekiah and Lai.
Ms Robertson said police even advised her and her husband to enter Lai’s house to investigate.
“It was terrible to have to wait two hours for police,” Ms Robertson said. “But what I found just as bad was police advising us to go into the house ourselves.
“It was like they couldn’t be bothered. It wasn’t the first time and police would have known about him, he would have been on their records.
“We had to ring triple 0 twice to get somebody to come out.
“A lot can happen in a few minutes, let alone an hour.”
Last year, Ms Robertson made a submission to the Royal Commission into Family Violence.
“I just heard this great big argument on the other end, most of it from Nelson, swearing, threatening, and telling someone to get out, which I presumed was Rekiah,’’ she wrote.
“The phone then hung up and despite numerous phone calls and texts from me to his phone and Rekiah’s, he refused to answer again, even though I threatened in text messages to him that I would call the police if he didn’t tell us what was going on.’’
Ms Robertson and her husband drove 45 minutes to Sunshine North and, after repeatedly knocking, called the police. But she had to call triple 0 twice before they were phoned back.
Rekiah was shot in the head by Lai in November 2013 as he came down from ice. She had suffered 14 months of abuse, including repeated bashings and threats to kill.
He was convicted of manslaughter in April 2015, successfully beating a murder charge by arguing he didn’t know the gun was loaded.
AGONISING DELAY FOR VICTIMS
A NEAR half-hour wait for police felt like an eternity for Richa Walia when four thieves stormed her home.
Days later, it took 55 minutes for officers to arrive when youths circled her Caroline Springs property in the early morning, taking photos.
Ms Walia — who with her parents and brother, 16, woke to intruders using a rock to smash a glass door on July 16 — twice phoned triple 0.
The intruders, armed with poles and baseball bats, demanded the keys to the family’s vehicles before taking them, a mobile phone and expensive basketball shoes.
“We have more cars and our first fear was they were going to tell their friends and they were going to come and get them,” Ms Walia, 26, said.
“The other fear was they would come back and harm us. You think you are safe in your own home, but obviously you’re not.”
The family have had difficulty sleeping and no longer have confidence in the police.
Ms Walia called triple 0 three times in the second incident. “You think that’s the emergency line and it’s an emergency and they will be there immediately,” she said.
Two teens were arrested.
