TIME TO LOOK VICTIMS IN EYE
JUST before 10am yesterday, Police Minister Mark Ryan was on his feet in State Parliament, during ministerial statements, to respond to concerns voiced in this newspaper about GPS trackers for domestic violence offenders.
“A very angry Police Commissioner has told me that recent claims about GPS trackers on the Gold Coast are wrong, ridiculous and reckless,” the Minister said.
Mr Ryan was heckled by the Opposition. Coast LNP MPs accused him of hiding behind the courts and now the Commissioner.
He battled on. The Commissioner had confirmed “yet again that the trackers are monitored in real time every second of every day”.
“That is not an opinion. It is not a claim. It is a fact. If someone with a tracker attached to them ventures into a no-go zone or breaches a curfew or tampers with their tracker, an alert is immediately sent to police,” Mr Ryan told the Parliament.
“The commissioner says if an alert of this type is raised police act swiftly, within minutes. The commissioner has also confirmed that if a Gold Coastbased magistrate orders a tracker for a person, then that tracker can be delivered to the court within hours if the court requires it.”
All these statements are designed to give peace of mind to Gold Coast victims, and to ensure voters understand the Government is following through on domestic violence reforms.
“This Government’s priority is making Queensland a safer place. That is why we gave the courts this additional monitoring option when releasing offenders back into the community,” Mr Ryan continued.
The Bulletin then sent the Minister 15 specific questions related to the trackers. Those questions were based on concerns raised by technical experts, lawyers, welfare workers and terrified victims.
They were simple questions: Was it Police or Corrective Services responsible for the checking on devices? Was there a private operator involved? Is the monitoring 24/7?
What was a no-go zone? How did this work? What would happen if a victim stepped outside the no-go zone where an alleged thug isn’t being watched?
At 5.30pm Mr Ryan said he would not answer the questions and referred them to Queensland Police.
At Parliament a debate was continuing about the Government providing paid leave for domestic violence offenders.
The answers to the questions, later sent by police, will only add fuel to the wider parliamentary debate about who is being protected here.
A private operator in London is monitoring the offenders.
Responses on numbers of staff and whether they were working 24/7 were not given. We were told the monitoring was in fact “near real time”.
A defendant has to keep the battery on their bracelet charged. If the battery ran low, an alert would be sent by the monitoring centre in London advising them.
What the Bulletin wanted to obtain was some reassurance of the safety of a victim if they moved out of an area an alleged offender is prohibited from entering. You know, trying to get on with their lives while constantly looking over their shoulder. That alleged thugs were being watched, not monitored reactively.
The response was that for the GPS to detect what would be a breach, it must be able to obtain, track and record the location of the victim and perpetrator simultaneously.
“The current arrangements do not provide for the victim to be monitored,” police said.
Not only that, there would be problems with GPS coverage by the satellite service if the 3G mobile network was experiencing difficulties.
When the network access is unavailable, the device cannot communicate the location of a tracked person.
In mobile phone black spots like Coomera on the northern end, residents constantly complain about the poor service.
Were our concerns, as the Minister maintained earlier in the day, so “wrong, ridiculous and reckless”?
The Bulletin today extends an invitation to the Police Minister and Police Commissioner.
Please come down here and meet the women who are afraid of their assailants. Look them in the eye and promise them they will not come faceto-face with those they fear the most.