Home-based studies for trainee cops
POLICE officers will do less face-to-face training, instead spending four weeks of a sixmonth training course at home doing non-compulsory quizzes and webinars.
The changes in the Queensland recruit training program come as 53 new police officers prepare for deployment in Townsville — the cops promised by the State Government before the last election.
Under the Queensland Police Service’s new “Distance Based Pre-learning Pathway”, Townsville’s latest intake of officers will spend a month doing readings and online tutorials before they start at the academy proper, but the work isn’t compulsory and their participation isn’t logged.
QPS defended the program, saying the course hadn’t been shortened and recruits were
“highly motivated” to complete the coursework and the material would be covered in greater detail once the cleanskins hit the academy.
Hundreds of police officers, mainly at the Oxley campus, are going through recruit training under the new changes. The new pathway was rolled out in Townsville on January 6 as part of its latest intake of 60 aspiring cops.
“The introduction of DBPP has provided an opportunity to concentrate on other skills that are vital to frontline policing,” a QPS spokesman said.
But North Queensland Opposition spokesman and former cop Dale Last has demanded to know if this was a cost cutting exercise by the State Government.
Police Minister Mark Ryan and Commissioner Katarina Carroll in September last year announced a plan to fast track their election pledge to have 53 officers in Townsville by the end of 2020, following months of pressure from local police who had been screaming out for extra cops on the beat and questions about whether the promised resources would come to fruition.
A total of 28 general duty police officers will be delivered to the district by the end of the current financial year, with the remainder to be in place six months later.