Solving crimes ‘getting harder and harder’ because of a lack of resources, Wayne Gatt says

The Police Association says the Andrews government’s under-resourcing is making investigations hard but the Deputy Commissioner says the force is prioritising investigations into serious and violent crimes.

Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent says Victoria Police is not under-resourced. Picture: David Geraghty.

Victoria Police is crippled by an acute officer shortage that means the force can’t even open stations, let alone investigate so-called low level crimes.

Wayne Gatt, secretary of Police Association of Victoria, unloaded on the State Government for under-resourcing the force and breaking election promises.

It came after the Herald Sun exclusively revealed 85 per cent of non-aggravated residential burglaries and 64 per cent of motor vehicle thefts remain unsolved from last year.

Mr Gatt said Premier Daniel Andrews had promised to grow Victoria Police, but instead it was “shrinking”, making it “challenging” to solve crimes.

Victoria Police Association secretary Wayne Gatt says the Andrews government has under-resourced the force and broken election promises. Picture: David Crosling

He said the force needed thousands of extra officers.

“These crimes like burglaries, thefts, aggravated burglaries, they are important to solve and they leave the community feeling really quite violated when they are committed against them,” Mr Gatt said.

“But it is getting harder and harder because our resources in Victoria Police are becoming fewer and fewer by the day. So instead of the force growing as the government promised ahead of the last election, it is shrinking. It is not keeping up with the attrition of police officers. It is getting smaller and smaller and that means we will continue to be challenged in solving crime.”

Mr Gatt added the force was at a record low with stations being forced to close due to a lack of resources.

Wayne Gatt says more officers are needed to investigate so-called low level crimes.

“We are at a point where we are struggling to see it worse than what it is – I mean, police stations are struggling to keep their doors open. 

“We are having to rationalise what we are doing on a regular basis due to a lack of frontline police. It is real. And a consequence of that is how many police we can put out on the street.”

Mr Gatt said the force had 800 vacancies and another 800 officers on long term sick leave.

“We’re not growing by the amount the government predicted we would need to under its modelling. 

“What this means is we have to rationalise what we can do and prioritise what we can do and that’s challenging for us as police because there’s nothing more that we like than catching crooks.”

Mr Gatt said the decline in Victoria Police had been a gradual process but it was now “increasingly a reality” that 24 hour stations like South Melbourne, Williamstown and Avondale Heights would have to close its doors.

“This is the product of about eight years of policing methodology. It’s defocused from frontline policing, community policing.

“The chief commissioner of the day is trying to refocus, but he’s doing it at a time where he’s got no people to do it.

There are concerns over a lack of frontline police. Picture: Ian Currie

“We have just over 17,000 sworn members to look after five and a half million people. We need to fill the 800 or so we’re behind, we need to get the 800 or so off work, back to work, and we then need to climb that number by thousands of more police as the government predicted over this term of government.”

Mr Gatt added the state government needed to “properly invest” in the force so “our people can get out on to the streets and do police work.”

“They are using IT systems out of the dark ages. 

“The state government screams poor but then I see them set up things like a public drunkenness reform that’s going to cost tens of millions of dollars and I go ‘well, where are your priorities?’ 

Deputy Commissioner Rick Nugent said Victoria Police was not under-resourced. Instead he said that the force had to prioritise serious and violent crime investigations.

However, when a talk back radio caller told the Deputy Commissioner about his experience, he said that in cases when a low-level crime case was reported some members could be “slack” and “clearly from time to time, we give a poor service.”

“I get reports regularly about where our members have gone above and beyond in the work they do to keep the community safe. But from time to time, I get examples of this. 

”Unfortunately we do reflect society a bit and sometimes some of our people just don’t get it right.”

The Deputy Commissioner also admitted that the strategy to put investigations into high-level crime, did mean some cases were not followed up.

He added: “What we are doing is working but we still have more to do and we want higher clearance rates, absolutely we do, and we’ll continue working hard to achieve that. But there are examples of where it is not meeting the service level that the public rightly require.”

A state government spokeswoman said they had delivered the biggest increase in police in Victoria’s history, adding more than 3000 new workers since 2016.

“We’ve funded Victoria Police to help them run an extensive recruitment campaign to invite more people to consider a job in policing. Victoria Police have also been running career expos, reaching out to previous applicants and streamlining the recruitment process.

“Decisions around staffing levels & where those staff are deployed are a matter for Victoria Police”