ACT is to get 20 new Police in the budget

You sound like my wife!

Thanks Thumper! And apologies for the language. I’m having a shit week, and I feel it only fair that everyone suffer….

So if my house gets broken in to 3 times in a year, I should not bitch about it, I should consider myself lucky because if I lived somewhere else it might have happened 4 times?

We may be “lower crime than some places” but we are not “low crime”.

Marcus said “People who like to complain about how bad we have it in Canberra need to take some time out to look at some other places.”

I fucking HATE statements like that! I couldn’t give a shit what crime was like elsewhere. I don’t live elsewhere. I live in Canberra, and there is crime, I don’t like it and I want more police!

The 20 new police are on top of those required to replace natural attrition – it is a net gain of 20.

And as for this being a low-crime place, yes, frankly it is. People who like to complain about how bad we have it in Canberra need to take some time out to look at some other places.

We’ve got it good, make no mistake. Could always be better, but we’ve got it good.

My understanding is that the ACT has an AFP training regime far superior to NSW.

In that there is a short, intense training period, followed by active deployment, and then a program of ongoing training and deployment.

It means police don’t get institutionalised in the same way as the NSW police with long years in Goulburn.

It also means they have more practical knowledge with which to question their ongoing training.

But first and foremost it means it does not take years to put police on the beat.

if they aren’t delivering in this financial year it means absolutely nothing.

To make a promise of a mere twenty in future years is worse than nothing IMHO.

Funny that Stanhope dodged this very issue all throuhout the end of last year, yet now they do something about it. Surely this would have been something to crow about during the election, not 3.5 years from the next? hmm… conspiracy theories abound!

There are a number of police, mainly in NSW, who want to come back right now but keep being told they cant, that there is an 18 month wait to join the AFP. There is no money in the budget this year for more police, just a forward estimate that the money will be provided in 2007 and beyond. Thats not funding it now, thats why it will take so long to see the change.

Numbers is the biggest problem we face. If Marco thinks Canberra is a ‘low-crime’ place then he can’t have been here long.

The ACT Govt has been told than many times that at least 120 extra are needed to bring us somewhere near the national average.

People would be absolutely stunned to know exactly how few police are servicing our streets at any given time. It is nowhere near as many as you may think.

Numbers is critical to everything. The more we have then the better service that can be offered, as police will be able to devote more time to situations without feeling that they need to move on quickly to the next thing.

The fact that the bosses have frequently lambasted staff publically shows how blissfully ignorant they are of what is happening at the front end. Police stations aren’t unmanned for fun. There is a good reason behind that infrequent glitch…..staff numbers.

20 is a drop in the ocean, and nothing more than a symbolic gesture. Its better than nothing, but not much better

Yep. I think we need to ask the guys who are out there doing the job whether they need more of them. From my point of view, yes, we need more cops in Canberra. And I’m pretty sure the guys who have to work every bloody Christmas and Easter because there are so many fuckheads on the roads may agree with me!

And I’d like more traffic police so that next time the dickhead in the silver commodore tries to pull a stunt like he did last night on Copland Ave, he gets busted.

Overworked and underpaid just like every other mass worker service that the community needs. More staff means less stress on the existing officers as, most importantly, they don’t need to feel so alone when staring down the barrel of a righteous ass kicking at the hands of some crim scumbo.

I suggest you ask a front line officer what the ‘problem’ is.

And yet in previous posts where I’ve stated that more police are needed in the ACT, certain people started screeching that I needed to pull my head out of my arse.

Talk of actual police numbers is well and good, but I’m more interested in actual policing performance.

If the police we have are clearing up the crimes – and this doesn’t seem like a high crime place – then the issue isn’t police numbers.

Seems to me that a low-crime place like Canberra needs less police officers than a higher-crime place.

Here is what Steve Pratt had to say about the annoucement

Shame they wont be on the sreet for another 3 years…