Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Shane Patton to bring policing ‘back to basics’
Victoria’s top cop Shane Patton has revealed his plan to strengthen the public’s trust in and respect for the force.
Victoria
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The police in schools program will return to Victoria, Chief Commissioner Shane Patton has announced.
Mr Patton also wants to develop a system through which victims of crime can track the progress of their cases, as part of his move to bring policing “back to basics”.
Mr Patton told the Herald Sun the police in schools program was important for generating respect and trust between the law and children.
“We see the importance, I see the importance, of being in schools so we get that respect for police,” Mr Patton said.
“But not only just the respect for us, it’s a two-way street. And so that we can understand and influence kids who might need some guidance, who might need to be engaging with police, and we can help them out.”
Another key plank of Mr Patton’s plans is developing a way for victims and others to be able to be able to get feedback on matters they had reported to police.
One model being looked at by the force’s service delivery transformation command is a publicly accessible portal which would provide updates on those cases.
Mr Patton said he understood the frustration of victims who felt forgotten after going to police.
“We want to be telling people, ‘This is where it’s at in terms of your investigation’,” he said.
“And so long as you know what’s happening, people are much more prepared to accept things. For instance, if you’re a victim of crime, and if it is taking a little bit longer for us to solve the crime.”
Mr Patton said this was in line with his wanting police members talking to the community and increasing their presence in community hubs and on the roads.
He said such policing — partly based on a New York model where individual members have responsibility for a section of their area — was clearly what the public wanted.
“We’ll be going back to, for lack of a more sophisticated way, some town hall meetings,” Mr Patton said.
“Just talking to them and saying, ‘Well, this is what we’re saying — what do you think? What do you want us to do?’ Being accountable to them. So the really basic stuff doesn’t sound terribly complex. But I think a lot of a lot of people really want to see that.”
Mr Patton conceded the force had taken some “small hits” in terms of image after months of intensive COVID-related policing last year.
He said mistakes had been made but his members had been operating in uncharted law enforcement waters. “We were doing things that you would never have dreamt … tasking police to go and stop people fighting over toilet paper at a supermarket.”
Q&A WITH SHANE PATTON
Can you tell us a bit about your move to bring back the police in schools program?
Shane Patton: I’ve got a review that just landed on my desk just the other day where we’ve looked at what we used to do in the past police schools involvement program, which was really valuable. Saying, what are we currently delivering throughout youth resource officers and everything, but also saying, so what is the environment now that we need to deliver this in?
I’ll be making a more formal announcement about that in the near future … but the reality is, the public can be guaranteed, we see the importance, I see the importance of being in schools so we get that respect for police. But not only just the respect for us, it’s a two-way street.
And so that we can understand and influence kids who might need some guidance, who might need to be engaging with police, and we can help them out. It’ll be something that will be more formalised in moving forward.
Is it also about trust?
Definitely. I think most people would know, we can’t function without the trust and the confidence of the community. And so it is absolutely about that trust and just by our investment in being in schools in showing this is important to us, engaging with the kids, engaging with the young adults, but engaging with their parents. So that there is that respect and trust.
How would your plans to keep people up to date with the results of investigations work?
We want to be telling people, this is where it’s at in terms of your investigation. And so long as you know what’s happening, people are much more prepared to accept things. For instance, if you’re a victim of crime, and if it is taken a little bit longer for us to solve the crime.
How can we keep them informed? And so it’s about communicating with the public and just really letting them know what’s going on.
Police, talking to people letting them know, this is what we’re doing for you. And vice versa, the community telling us these are our problems.
Can you tell us about your plan for more visible policing?
It’s back to basics. It’s people out there listening to the community, talking with the community, looking after all the small things. For instance, people don’t think it’s significant, but it is when you have people doing burnouts outside your house, and all of those things.
So visible police presence, both in foot patrols and out on the highways. We’ve got more increased visibility on the roads.
The back to basics approach is also the community engagement and we’re running a couple of models. We’re running one out in the eastern region, which was loosely based on the neighbourhood policing model in New York.
When I’d been over there, I’d seen it and where police own certain areas, if you like, they talk to the people and understand what’s going on. That’s the philosophy that we’re going to have. You’re right across the state, engaging with the community, police visibility, we’ll be going back to, for lack of a more sophisticated way, some town hall meetings, just talking to them and saying, well, this is what we’re saying, “What do you think? What do you want us to do?” and being accountable to them.
So the really basic stuff doesn’t sound terribly complex. But I think a lot of a lot of people really want to see that. And it’s one of the key things that whenever I talk to anyone they say, we want to see police, we want to see them on the highways, we want to see them in the shopping centres, we want to see them in the nightclub precincts.
There was some polling last year that indicated a dip in support for police. How much has the COVID enforcement activity affected the force’s image?
I think generally speaking, there’s still a real lot of confidence in policing. But there’s no doubt we did take some small hits in relation to that, because we were doing things that you would never have dreamed … tasking police to go and stop people fighting over toilet paper at a supermarket or setting up a separation between rural and metropolitan Melbourne where you’re demanding people’s papers for lack of a better word.
It’s been really tricky getting the balance right. And at times, we’ve had to go harder if you like in issuing infringements, and then we pulled it back.
We’ve issued thousands and thousands of warnings, as well. So it hasn’t just been infringements, but by default when you’ve got the police doing roles that we normally wouldn’t be doing, it can diminish public confidence to a small degree.
I mean, clearly some mistakes were made.
There’s no rule book, there’s no playbook for this in any area whatsoever. Most people I speak to say, by and large, our members have been absolutely fantastic. Many people get to go home and stay home and avoid the COVID risk. Our members have to put on the mask and go to the COVID risk.
Do you anticipate in coming months a freeing-up of your ability to perform bread and butter policing?
It really is now a situation where we can get out there and do a lot more of that proactive policing work. But also, it’ll be that community engagement happening that had to drop off necessarily so because we were tied up in so many different views. When you say in the coming months, it’s actually now when we’re doing it.
Are you expecting issues with the anti-vaccination movement in terms of protests over the jab rollout in the coming period?
I’m not expecting but I’m planning for them? We don’t know what people will do.
I mean, generally speaking, the community has been brilliant with their compliance in everything and it’s only been a very small group of people who we’ve had to engage with from an enforcement perspective. But we will. Yeah, we’re certainly planning that.
If we do have demonstrations, or any attempt to stop the progress of vaccinations, we’ll be well in a position to deal with that. It hopefully won’t come to that. It’s just too important for us not to plan for it.
How soon do you hope that your members will be vaccinated?
In the next couple of months. They are being given priority. We’re involved in face-to-face contact with so many people who are at risk of COVID, or present or with symptoms. It’s just so important, because, as I said before, we actually go to the threat. We don’t get to stay at home.
Are police getting anywhere with multi-offender violence such as street assaults, carjackings and home invasions?
Those types of crimes really strike at the heart of everyone. I’ve always called them youth gangs. We don’t shirk away from that but I think we’ve made a real lot of inroads with Operation Alliance.
We are, I think, much more advanced now where we’ve made a requirement of all of the regions, all of the divisions to really understand the environment that they’ve got. So, who are the gang members because they’re not just committing one crime, they’re committing multiple crimes.
And a key focus for me has been saying, hold them accountable, lock them up, remand them. And that’s the type of thing we’ve been doing where we have repeat offenders and who were involved in those youth gangs. But nonetheless, it is a challenge for us. I think it’s been a challenge … forever in policing and will continue to be.
What was your reaction when you saw those images we published last week from Richmond of those scenes of drug-affected people at and around the primary school?
They’re obviously very confronting. Children … no one should be seeing people lying around if they’re drug affected in the streets. But for us, that’s why we put so much focus into areas where we have drug activity anywhere in the state whatsoever. And we’ll continue to do so. Obviously, you can’t be everywhere all the time. But we do what we can to target any areas, in any suburbs where we’ve got high levels of drug use, or whether we have any criminal activity
Do you have any concern with the injecting facility there, though?
That’s a decision for government.
Are you confident that the release of people like Tony Mokbel, Rocco Arico and Rob Karam (over the Lawyer X informers’ scandal) can be averted?
What I’m confident in is that we’ve been completely open in respect to all of our disclosure issues as much as we can. Obviously, we’ll step through the process and there’s a lot of evidence in respect to a lot of people. We’ll just make sure that we fully support the DPP in whatever decisions they make and make sure we present absolutely all of the evidence … to make sure that the cases are the strongest they can be.
Do you hope members more broadly have learned from the Laidley photos issue?
I can’t really speak about the Dani Laidley issue at this time, because we’ve got three members pending court who’ve been charged. We’ve got a number of discipline hearings this week in relation to that. I think that goes to show how seriously we treated that information disclosure. Speaking generally, when people have a right to privacy, they should have an expectation that we will treat their privacy appropriately. And I think the way we responded in that matter, and the subsequent investigations have demonstrated it’s a clear message in line that that’s the expectation. So I certainly believe that there should be no doubts as to what my view and what the view of the organisation is.
Do you think the community is making any headway against methamphetamine use?
It’s still a huge issue for us. Are we making inroads? We’ve released our drug strategy recently. And we’re giving greater guidance to our members. We’re seeing continual, significant arrests. Unfortunately though, as soon as you lock someone up, there’s another one there. That’s the reality.
It still seems to be a factor in a lot of your really major critical incidents.
Yeah, it is. But it’s always been — if it wasn’t one drug, it was another drug, and then another drug falls into its place.
Victorians have an insatiable appetite for drugs. We know that we’ve seen it over many years. Through our drug task-force and through a range of all the crime command operations, where we’re seeing significant arrests.
It’s been said you can arrest your way out of it but arresting is a significant component of it, because there’s got to be deterrence and accountability.
What do you say to women who don’t feel safe in our state? What’s your message to them?
I want everyone in the state to feel safe. Everyone should feel safe. We’ll continue to do everything we can to hold any offender accountable for any type of offending. And the whole visible police presence is designed to do exactly that.
It’s designed to make people feel safe, anybody who’s out and about and so that we deter crime, and we detect people committing criminal offences. What I say is simply we’re about the entirety of community safety, and will really continue to push that it is the number one, two, and three.
Do you believe policing is more challenging than when you started?
It’s certainly more complex but, at its core, it’s still got the same requirements. It’s about community safety. It’s about police officers getting out and engaging with people.
It’s about the street craft and … actually pulling the cars up and searching the cars and speaking to people in the street who are behaving suspiciously and everything.
So you’ve got body-worn cameras now, you’ve got tasers, you’ve got automatic number plate recognition and so much modernisation … but at its core, there is a street craft in policing.
You need to be able to have a feel for it and get out and speak with people and understand them, respond to them.
Does the threat of litigation have an undue impact on policing?
I would like to think not. I’ve gone out of my way, my command team has gone out of their way to … give as much clarity to them as we can. And if members are acting in good faith, they’ve got nothing to be worried about. So do I think it’s an issue? It may have been at one stage, I’d like to think it’s not now. We want people to make decisions.
Are you satisfied there was no interference from abroad in the George Pell matter?
Definitely satisfied. We certainly took that allegation very seriously. It was AUSTRAC that produced material in relation to that. Australian Federal Police took primacy of investigating. We allocated a senior police officer from crime to be a liaison officer with them. There’s no evidence whatsoever in respect to any of that at all. If there was, we certainly would have done something about it, but there’s nothing.
Do you understand some community anger at gangland figures, flaunting their wealth on social media when they appear to be unemployed?
I think that’s been going on forever. Now, it’s just, it’s magnified. We’re not going to chase them over their social media. We certainly target any organised crime investigation – we target their wealth. It’s a real way to hurt them. We use our Criminal Proceeds Act. We’re working with government to continue to strengthen our criminal organisation control legislation. They’re just trying to big-note themselves so we won’t be chasing him singularly on all that, but we’ll continue to look at unexplained wealth and everything we should be doing to target them when they’re involved in crime.
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