Top cop on notice to deliver reforms

EVEN skimming the final report of the Commission of Inquiry into Queensland Police Service Responses to Domestic and Family Violence, Commissioner Katarina Carroll would have felt no certainty about keeping her job.

The “raw and confronting” report was critical of her leadership of the QPS and her lack of understanding of her own disciplinary system, particularly the use of local managerial resolution.

Among the 78 recommendations delivered after five months of evidence were that police would no longer investigate police, with a civilian-run integrity unit set up, and that a “pocketsized checklist” be produced for officers responding to domestic and family violence. Given the scale of the task, now is not the time to chop down the current leadership and bring in sweeping personnel changes which would greatly slow the implentation of the report’s recommendations.

A fact not lost on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk who publicly backed Commissioner Carroll to stay in the job.

“… At the end of the day this is about improving response to domestic and family violence,” she said.

“But what this report does is it essentially rips the Band-aid off and says there are some deep seeded culture issues about the way in which some members, and let me stress, some members of the service interact with first nations people … and how they interact with women. “These will be nation leading reforms.” Ms Carroll still has two years to run on contract, but the Premier makes it obvious completing that term is contingent on the Commissioner implementing all recommendations as soon as possible.