$4m cops unit unveiled

Extra police officers in town for bumper weekend

BEEFED up police numbers and a new hi-tech $4m centre showing a birds-eye view of the entire city will be working to keep the peace during this weekend’s GC600 festival.

An extra 50-60 officers will descend on the Gold Coast for the Supercars street race around Surfers Paradise.

Their job will be made easier by police trialling for the first time the new command centre operating from an undisclosed location.

The centre is a vital new addition to help law enforcement provide security and safety during next April’s Commonwealth Games and it is being trialled during the Supercars weekend as a dry run.

It allows police to combine information from all emergency services radios and GPS locations, mobile phone photos from emergency services and social media posts to get a wider understanding of how the crowd is behaving.

Queensland Police Assistant Commissioner of the Commonwealth Games Group Peter Crawford said the centre would have access to the hundreds of CCTV cameras installed across the city. “We will also have access to a range of other technology that we use in policing and don’t like to talk about (for safety reasons),” he said.

Inspector Bruce Kuhn, overseeing major events, said an extra 50-60 officers were being brought in for the GC600, which attracts an estimated 200,000 through the gates during the event. “They are not here to arrest as many people as they can but to keep everyone safe and provide a safe environment to enjoy the race,” he said.

“We’ve had very few incidents the last couple of years.

“People are here for a good time and the majority of them are old rev heads.”

Inspector Kuhn said the arrival of the light rail system three years ago had been a game changer in terms of reducing traffic problems during the GC600.

“Since light rail our traffic problems have dropped off significantly,” Inspector Kuhn said. “Traffic was a huge problem but it is tailormade for this event.

“It drops them at the front gate and picks them up in the afternoon, getting them out of the city.”