Steve Price: Shane Patton does not deserve a new five year contract

Victorians have been living through a terrifying crime wave like nothing we’ve seen before but the state’s top cop, Shane Patton, thinks he should be rewarded with a lucrative new five-year contract. Spare me.

Steve Price speaks with Chief Commissioner Shane Patton. Picture: Jason Edwards

Fourteen months ago, at the end of 2023, I wrote in these pages that I thought Victorians were being failed by the two most powerful people in the state.

My targets were the newly minted Premier Jacinta Allan and her Chief Commissioner of Police Shane Patton.

Fast forward to February 2025 and nothing has changed – we are still being failed. How then, as reported by the Herald Sun this week, is Commissioner Patton being lined up for a new five-year well-paid contract?

It simply beggars’ belief.

After that 2023 column, which I am told the police chief took great umbrage at, the Herald Sun sought a face to face interview between myself and the police chief. It took six months to organise, and we published the results of that sit-down in May 2024.

In hindsight – and this is hard for me to confess – I believe I was seduced by Patton’s personality and put offside by the location of the chat: Patton’s high-rise office at the top of police HQ in Spencer Street in Docklands. We even took a tour of the helipad on the roof that hosts the police helicopter for a series of pictures.

Steve Price speaks with Chief Commissioner Shane Patton at Police HQ. Picture: Jason Edwards

I let myself down – and the readers of this column – and many of you let me know it in the comments section. You were right and I was wrong.

In the months since, Patton has made it clear he wanted the decade-long Labor government to roll over his contract, giving him another go. I made the point back in the original criticism of the commissioner that I thought he was too close to his masters in Spring St, originally Daniel Andrews and now the Premier and his new boss, Allan.

Nothing has changed. No, in fact, policing in this state is horrendously worse. We are in the middle of a suburban crime wave that we have never witnessed before involving repeat home invasions, armed and bailed teenagers wearing masks and terrifying people in the middle of the night. And this bloke thinks he should be rewarded with another quarter of a million dollars a year for another five years.

Spare me.

Adrian King from the Preserving Middle Park Village has enlisted a private security firm to help patrol the neighbourhood. Picture: Tony Gough

Communities across the southeast and eastern suburbs have so little faith in the ability of police to protect them they are hiring private security firms to patrol their streets at night. In areas around Middle and Albert Park, on-street parking has led to criminals cherry- picking luxury vehicles to remove expensive wheels and even doors on a steal-to-order parts crime spree.

And since the October 7 terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel – murdering men, women and children in the most horrific way and taking hundreds of hostages – Victoria Police have under Patton’s command allowed our city every Sunday to be taken over by Palestinian protesters, many carrying and chanting anti-Semitic slogans. These city-disrupting protest marches are allowed week after week with police unwilling to intervene.

Anti-Semitism has reached dangerous new levels culminating in the destruction of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Ripponlea back in December. It was classified as a terrorist attack and as of now there have been no arrests.

Pro-Palestine protesters in Melbourne. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Add to that the terrifying suburban teenage crime wave, carjackings and apparent inability to stem the use of bladed weapons including machetes, plus the dangerous baiting of police in high-speed car chases. As this has unfolded with dire consequences – including the death of a man who intervened – the force has been crippled by an inability to land a pay deal until last week – and that is now in doubt with talk of a no confidence motion aimed at Patton.

Police vehicles had been smothered in industrial action graffiti and the morale of thousands of police has collapsed, with hundreds quitting.

We are told, and the numbers are fluid, but there are claims of 800 vacancies at Vic Pol and an estimated 900 police on sick leave. The industrial action lasted two years and will cost taxpayers $456 million – all under Shane Patton who wants five more years.

Going further back to the dark days of Covid and under Commissioner Patton’s command – and I asked him about this – Victoria Police were ordered to fire on ordinary Melburnians protesting Dan Andrews’ Covid lockdowns. Pepper spray and rubber bullets were used and we even had people urging non-compliance to vaccines handcuffed in their own homes.

Protesters are confronted by riot police at the Shrine during a protest over Covid lockdowns. Picture: Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images

Then, back in 2023, we had up to 43 police stations cut down on their opening hours with 23 of them locking their doors after dark and on weekends and public holidays with the excuse being that would allow a freeing up of police to the front line. Rubbish. In country Victoria it gets worse and as reported at the time, places like Portland in the west didn’t have a police station within 100km.

At that Q&A meeting we had, the Commissioner laughed at the suggestion I had made that he was seen by the wider public as being too woke. This was after he turned up at the Yoorook Truth Telling Commission set up by the Andrews government. He admitted to this group that he agreed that the police uniform represented a symbol of fear for some indigenous Victorians.

He went further and apologised unreservedly – his word – for past and present actions of the force that inflicted trauma on first nations people.

Woke? Not much, he’s not!

Shane Patton denies he is too woke. Picture: Jason Edwards

Look, face to face Shane presents as a good bloke and someone you’d be happy to have a beer with. You also get the impression that he would much rather be the tough copper he probably was as a junior in uniform or as a detective chasing down violent criminals.

His first five years, though, and potentially his 10 years running the force, has in my view seen him become politically too close to Labor to keep his job at the top.

Sadly, Victoria hasn’t had a great run with our top cops, including the failures of people like Christine Nixon during Black Saturday and Simon Overland and his Lawyer X involvement.

Victoria badly needs a tough, politically independent old school police chief to tackle the mess we are in.

I don’t believe that person is Shane Patton.

Dislikes

• Premier Jacinta Allan’s cynical sudden concern over bail laws days out from two by-elections

• PM’s slap in the face to cost-of-living concerns by renting out his new beach house at Copacabana for $1000 a week

• The Sam Kerr London cabbie vomiting case – sad

• Victoria’s budget position again facing an agency downgrade

Likes

• Weekend of Victorian by-elections with Werribee a real test for state and federal Labor popularity

• Sydney woman the sole winner of $100m in Oz Lotto

• Invited to a yoga session at Ocean Beach Yoga Sorrento this week results on The Project Monday night

• Federal parliament back for 2025 means we are a step closer to a federal election