‘TRY BEFORE YOU APPLY’ TACTIC LURES OFFICERS TO CAPE JOBS
FAR Northern police are taking a try-before-you-apply approach to fill 12 vacant positions in remote towns across Cape York.
“There’s no getting away from it, it’s difficult to fill positions in some of the more remote areas,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Brian Huxley said.
Five of the vacant roles are at Aurukun, which increased its 10-strong force to 18 following the riots in late 2015. And will target hot spots and repeat offenders between Gordonvale and Smithfield, and beyond if needed.
“This is a very, very intensive taskforce … what we’re trying to do is get ahead of the these are close to being filled with the panels for those spots nearly finished.
There are still another seven roles open in areas like Kowanyama and Pormpuraaw.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Huxley said some officers were reluctant to apply because of preconceived ideas about what the job would be like.
“So we advertised the vacant positions and allowed people to come up there for a month and just try it out, see if they liked it,” he said. game; we know over the next month or two, crime will really start to increase and in fact, it actually spikes at around March,” Police Northern Region Acting Assistant Commissioner Brian Huxley said.
“It was a matter of just trying to get people a better idea of what it was really like in these communities.”
The approach was met with an overwhelming response as more officers put their hand up than positions available.
Acting Assistant Commissioner Huxley said some remote vacant positions were backfilled by officers from Cairns, but this didn’t put a strain resources.
“We’ve got the largest floating taskforce in the state with our Tactical Crime Squad, we’ve got 41 officers … so
Thirty-five officers have been pulled together to form the roving taskforce, which will focus on property offences like burglary and car thefts, and will move where crime is occurring based on police in- they’re a fantastic resource, I can deploy them anywhere,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Huxley said.
In response to comments from the Queensland Police Union that officers were at breaking point, Acting Assistant Commissioner Huxley said this was not the case in the Far North.
“People are not burned out, they do get tired, everyone gets tired. We have our fair share of physical and psychological issues as do most other places,” he said. “The morale of the place is really quite good.” telligence. “The reality is that we still have 2200-plus homes and businesses broken into in the greater Cairns area each year and we have nearly 600 cars stolen,” Acting Assistant Commissioner Huxley said.