Mark Buttler: Shane Patton made mistakes but youth crime, bail and tobacco wars are government-made problems

Former Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton made mistakes but issues around youth crime, revolving-door bail and tobacco wars are primarily rooted in government decisions and inaction.

It was the policing equivalent of the “full support of the board” moment, which has preceded the dumping of so many AFL coaches over the years.

Thirteen days ago, Police Minister Anthony Carbines was asked about whether Shane Patton would be reappointed as Victoria Police Chief Commissioner.

“He has the government’s confidence,” Mr Carbines responded.

By last Friday, that support had ebbed at such a rate that Mr Patton was told he would not get a promised second, five-year term as chief.

Eighty-seven per cent of Police Association members had just voted against their boss in a resounding no-confidence motion.

Shane Patton resigned on Sunday evening. Picture: Nadir Kinani

Mr Patton had expressed frustration with Victoria’s bail laws. Picture: Supplied

The jittery government acted with notable speed to decide within hours that Mr Patton would finish in June.

Perhaps it was too cynical for critics to suggest this decisiveness was due to a misguided hope that there is traditionally no better time to “take out the trash” than late on a Friday evening.

None of that is to say that he could have stayed on after such an overwhelming condemnation from his own staff, many of whom believe he had not advocated hard enough for them in pay negotiations.

But the irony of Mr Patton being removed by this government was, to some, glaring.

His supporters say youth crime, bail laws and the tobacco wars are just a few of the areas where the government has not done its bit.

Of those, youth crime is perhaps the worst.

This is a government which for years tried to minimise what was going on and whose supporters dismissed the whole thing as a beat-up.

Now, between the nightly teen rampages and regular smoke shop blasts, the impression of high-crime being out-of-control has never been more stark.

This morning — ho-hum! — it was a bunch of kiddies breaking into a Mornington Peninsula house as people slept inside, stealing their car and then rocketing along a freeway at 200kmh.

This would have been big news 15 years ago but now it looks like it’s spat out on a police media unit template, such is the frequency of such releases.

Police Minister Anthony Carbines had previously backed Mr Patton. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

Victoria Police long lobbied for a tobacco licensing scheme amid the tobacco wars. Picture: Valeriu Campan

It would be nice to be able to put a few dollars on at least one of those youngsters having been the recent beneficiaries of Victoria’s liberal bail laws or that there was some kind of state care involvement in their lives.

These are factors a Chief Commissioner can only do so much to control, even if his force specifically assigns 70 officers every night to what looks like an increasingly futile task.

Mr Patton was not perfect and he admitted the force’s Covid response, which has publicly damaged the organisation, could have been better handled.

Even his most ardent backers would have to admit that many of the available performance yardsticks were heading the wrong direction and, whether it’s fair or not, that’s how the leader of a big organisation is judged.

In the end, though, Mr Patton was not moved on because of those indicators but because of the no-confidence vote.

The government did not have the stomach for worsening instability in such a key area as law and order and decided on a reset to end the sorry saga.

Nobody knows what weekend negotiations — if any — preceded Sunday night’s announcement that Mr Patton had decided to go, effective immediately.

“I hope he made them pay,” one former colleague said.

Mark Buttler is the Herald Sun’s senior crime reporter