Not a rise in serious police misconduct, just a backlog being cleared

johnboy said :

Not saying they did nothing.

But a backlog suggests they were not being addressed appropriately.

In my opinion, the biggest issue is timeliness of internal investigations. That is, they tend to take way too long. Perhaps such a backlog suggests there a too few investigators too cope with the workload.

Tooks said :

Robertson said :

I think Tooks is saying that the time to finalise a complaint has increased year-on-year for the last 3 years running. Does he have any stats to back this up, though?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the backlog is probably increasing because complaints are coming in quicker than they can be cleared, partially because they take so long to investigate. Can I produce stats? No. But nor can JB to support his opinion that police previously did nothing with complaints (although I understand why he tried to spice up an otherwise dry story).

You should probably taze him to stop him doing it again!

Robertson said :

I think Tooks is saying that the time to finalise a complaint has increased year-on-year for the last 3 years running. Does he have any stats to back this up, though?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that the backlog is probably increasing because complaints are coming in quicker than they can be cleared, partially because they take so long to investigate. Can I produce stats? No. But nor can JB to support his opinion that police previously did nothing with complaints (although I understand why he tried to spice up an otherwise dry story).

I think Tooks is saying that the time to finalise a complaint has increased year-on-year for the last 3 years running. Does he have any stats to back this up, though?

Knowing someone who works in AFP PS, a civilian, I’m lead to believe it’s neither an easy job, nor do some of the officers make it easy on themselves.

I see you’ve still got your tinfoil hat on, Johnboy.

The reason they have a backlog is because PRS take a ridiculously long time to investigate and finalise complaints, even relatively minor ones. If a copper took as long to investigate a criminal offence as PRS take to investigate their own cases, he’d have his arse kicked, and rightly so.

Not only is this unfair on the complainants, it’s unfair on the officer being investigated.