PERCEPTION KEY TO COAST COP CONFIDENCE
OUR police are about to be under increasing public scrutiny. Officers on the beat are our protectors on the street. Coronavirus and the increasing need to enforce lockdowns and ongoing restrictions will only open the doors for potential clashes with residents defying the government’s list of rules.
Perception is, and will remain, everything.
Just like in Sydney, Coast officers will almost certainly and unfortunately need to undertake enforcement beyond telling someone to put on a mask. They will have to shut down parties, patrol beaches to ensure social distancing. We need to trust them and their judgment more than ever. The wave of public opinion needs to be on their side.
This is what makes the timing of today’s special report about police internal investigations so remarkable.
The Fitzgerald Inquiry into allegations of corruption in the Queensland police force, conducted between 1987-88, created structural change that left civilians confident about the ethical and professional behaviour of police.
But today’s reports suggest that despite the reforms authorities never quite got it right.
What has sparked this new focus on the internal discipline process is domestic violence. Fitzgerald’s spotlight was on SP bookies, bribes and brothels.
The words which resonate from today’s reports are from a female Queensland Police Service employee, who complained of not being supported when she sought to take a domestic violence order.
Gold Coast investigations deemed their was insufficient evidence to grant an order. Ultimately, she had to go to Beenleigh court to get her own private protection order.
“I requested that the investigation be kept out of the Gold Coast district,” she wrote in an affidavit. She admitted that “one of the factors” in her deciding not to proceed further with the case “was the lack of support I’d received by the police service, and my despondency in the ability to have an order enforced”.
Her DV complaint triggered an internal investigation. The Bulletin’s reporting found the senior officer involved in overseeing the initial complaint had been appointed to the Ethical Standards Command’s review of how police handled the enquiry.
The QPS insisted there were “separations in regards to the investigations”, the officer was not asked to review his own investigation and the ESC reaffirmed his decision not to pursue the matter based on a lack of evidence.
DV is a complex issue, but the processes of how police investigate each other should not be. Reforms are urgently needed. Perception of police is everything.