Victoria’s new top cop Shane Patton eyes gangs, ice and pollies
As Graham Ashton retires as Victoria’s top cop, Deputy Chief Commissioner Shane Patton is stepping up to take over the reins. Crime reporter Andrew Rule looks at what it takes to lead the state’s police force and the challenges that lie ahead.
Andrew Rule
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The first thing a new police chief should do is to leave politics to politicians and concentrate on police work without fear or favour. It’s harder than it sounds.
For Victoria’s new chief commissioner, Shane Patton, there is frontline police work: traffic, family violence, child exploitation, street offences, burglary and theft. But his main task goes beyond those.
The massive challenge that all police forces face is organised drug trafficking — mainly of “ice”, which spawns so many other offences.
The malign effects of ice flow downwards, amplifying crimes of violence, robbery and culpable driving. Meanwhile, some of the huge profits flow up to reach people linked to union corruption, land development rorts and branch stacking.
Certain crime groups have always cultivated “sleepers” who rise quietly inside professions and official positions that benefit their crooked patrons. Others use blackmail, bribery and intimidation to compromise insiders in the police force, courts, tax office, motor registration and so on.
Politicians and their advisers are prize targets for “fixers” working hidden agendas for crooks.
For senior police, these things spell danger. It’s in their long-term interest to avoid any potential influence, even from apparently legitimate figures in business or politics.
One problem with seeming to take political sides is that the chief commissioner’s job might outlast the government that appoints them, let alone the tenure of a particular premier or police minister.
No matter who he has met on the way up, once in the top job a prudent police chief should treat politics with polite disinterest, the way a seasoned umpire runs a football game. Leaving this neutral default position is risky: if the political wind changes, an over-friendly police chief is trapped on the “wrong” side. Tame dog to lame dog in one news cycle.
When the day comes that the media drops a bomb on the premier, suddenly it’s every man for himself. A prudent police chief who has maintained social distancing at Spring St dodges the shrapnel. If political scandal leads to political coup, an independent chief survives.
The trouble with being “grateful” to those that appointed you is that inevitably they will want a favour for someone, such as a party donor. The free lunch turns toxic when headlines hit the street.
Perception matters. Even when a shiny new chief does a picture opportunity with the premier or police minister of the day — a happy snap of the “polly” pinning the badge on the “pally” — it sends a mixed message. No matter how proper the relationship might be, those images can soon look too cosy.
At the first whiff of scandal, the backroom pressure to pull strings is a nightmare for anyone whose job looks to be a political appointment. If the police seem to downplay the scandal, the media and public will be sceptical, and rightly so.
The day comes when pollies want a docile police command to hide, muddy or delay crime statistics. Both sides of politics love being seen as “tough on crime” before elections — and demand stats to suit. Trying to appease outside interests leads to huge embarrassments like the “ghosties” breath test scandal, in which Victorian police systematically faked 258,000 breathalyser tests.
The message for any new chief is to be wary of politics but frank with real people. The largely silent majority that votes governments in and out don’t want senior police who tie themselves in politically correct knots to avoid uncomfortable truths. Do not play the politician’s evasive game and hide behind euphemisms and jargon, because the public doesn’t buy it — and neither do rank and file coppers. Speak plainly.
Speaking of the chief’s relations with the troops, it is in everyone’s interest for force command to have a civil relationship, not a civil war, with the police union. Because a united front is vital for the force to take on the greatest challenge of our time: drug-trafficking networks.
It starts at street level with teenage gangs that rob and assault people and sometimes kill each other. It is true that there have always been violent youth gangs but the modern ones are often pawns for outlaw bikies and crime families, who audition them for gangster life by using them to do their dirty work. Why would a bikie gunman steal a getaway car if he can get a crazy kid to do it for him?
The massive problem for police forces (and society) everywhere is the “ice” plague. It is the modern equivalent of Dickensian London’s squalid gin mills and the bootlegging gangsters of the US Prohibition era. Bikie gangs and crime families run a huge drug distribution network, with “side hustles” in car theft, prostitution, wildlife trafficking and arson.
The ice scourge touches everyone. It breeds street crime, robberies, random assaults, extreme family violence and terrible road crashes, such as the one that killed four police earlier this year. It erodes conventional morality and contributes to the sexual exploitation of women and children.
Hard times call for tough measures. Australia needs all police leaders to make the case that commercial ice trafficking deserves draconian sentencing for repeat offenders.
Every time our new police chief sees a politician, or a judge, he should argue the merit of getting the law into law enforcement.