Ron Iddles: Cutting police numbers benefits no one

WITH the community increasingly fearful about crime figures, police must be seen on the streets and in stations — we can’t have compromise, writes Ron Iddle.s

Over the past five years, police numbers have not even come close to keeping pace with Victoria’s growth, writes Ron Iddles. Picture: Yuri Kuzmin

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THIS week Victoria Police announced it would flood the northwest of Melbourne with officers for a week, citing that people are fearful after a number of recent incidents during which youths broke into homes to steal car keys.

There is no doubt that we have a community safety problem and that it is getting worse.

At the same time, concerned communities at Endeavour Hills and at Waurn Ponds have also been told that their police stations will start to close as part of trials, supposedly designed to get more police on to our streets.

On the surface it sounds logical — that when crime is rising at the rate that we are experiencing in Victoria, taking police from stations and putting them on the beat will help. What doesn’t make as much sense is why this approach must come at the expense of other services that the community need every day.

Sadly, local police have been forced to make one of two competing decisions — either they close the stations’ doors or they accept that they can no longer properly attend to all calls for assistance. These are not decisions police want, nor a they decisions that they should have to make.

When concerned residents question changes like this, they are told that the only thing police do at a police station is sign documents, so it’s better to have them on the street instead.

The reality, however, is a little different.

Most officers will tell you how much police work and investigations are generated from people walking through the door of a station. There is no shortage of family violence victims who attend stations seeking refuge at all hours, when other community services have closed and they have nowhere else to go.

Recently, at the height of a spate of carjackings, police told members of the public that if they felt they were being followed or were at risk, they could drive to their closest police station for help.

Generic crime scene images showing Police tape. Crime Police Forensic. Pics Bill Hearne

That’s sound advice, but only if you can assure them the station doors will be open when they arrive. Crime is hard to predict and it doesn’t happen only during business hours or so-called peak periods.

Imagine if your fire or ambulance station suddenly reduced services because data showed that there were fewer heart attacks on a Monday night or because fires happen more on weekends. Imagine if hospital emergency departments closed midweek so that they could put on extra staff on a Friday night when they are busiest.

In reality, no one can predict when emergency services will be needed and police are certainly a part of those services.

Waurn Ponds and Endeavour Hills are symptoms of the bigger problem of police resourcing that the Police Minister and Victoria Police must address urgently.

Shuffling current resources and cutting back on services is not the answer — we need more police to handle the state’s burgeoning population and the increase in our crime rate.

Over the past five years, police numbers have not even gone close to keeping pace with Victoria’s growth or the increasing challenges with which officers are confronted.

Geelong Police Station. Picture: Mike Dugdale

POLICING is more complex than it has ever been so, in many ways, today it is right for government to examine police resourcing — but not as a cost-cutting exercise.

The suggestions on the table are that rationalising services, and injecting new technology like computers and tablets, will replace the need to resource the front line with real police. Neither solution will act as a deterrent or be a safeguard against crime.

When you listen to members of the community, they tell you what makes them feel safe, what will reduce crime and break the cycle that has become a game of “cat-and-mouse” between crooks and cops. To some extent, Victoria Police has become so focused on establishing taskforces to investigate crime that it has started to neglect the very services that prevent it and make people feel safe.

It’s not that crime investigation isn’t important or necessary, but it is counter-productive to spend more time dealing with the consequences of something than it is to stop it from happening in the first place.

Policing is not rocket science and the majority of crime that worries the community is caused by opportunists who act when we are not looking.

The community wants to see its police on the streets and in its neighbourhoods, but not just for a week, well after the horses have bolted.

People want police visible all the time. They want to be assured that they are safe where they live and work and they want to be able to speak with police and build relationships with them.

Yes, that also means they want to be able to go to a station and meet with us. To know there is a safe place for them or their family if they have nowhere else to turn.

The new Police Minister has promised 300 frontline officers and has shown a willingness to listen to police and consult their association. But unless police numbers are increased even more substantially, many communities will have to accept that their local police will have to make more tough service decisions.

To get this right, we are ready to be consulted and offer the insight on this issue that only police officers on the ground can provide.

RON IDDLES IS SECRETARY OF THE POLICE ASSOCIATION VICTORIA