PLENTY OF CHALLENGES AHEAD FOR POLICE BOSS

WHOEVER is selected to become the Gold Coast’s next top police officer will have their work cut out for them. They will inherit a police force that has been flogged with extra workload after two years of the pandemic, which saw the thin blue line spread thinner than any other time in living memory.

Road border duty. Airport arrivals duty. Escorting arrivals duty. Quarantine hotel duty.

More recently, they have been handing out masks, doing random venue checks for the unvaccinated and enforcing potential fines for people who have not been doing the right thing.

And all the while trying to attend the normal duties police are more usually paid for.

Crime doesn’t take a break because police are busy doing other things. And they have been, which has meant less attention on normal duties (is there anything normal about a police shift?).

The police have admitted it. Two years ago when resources were stretched along the border line keeping out interstate arrivals, then Chief Superintendent Mark Wheeler revealed to the Bulletin police were stretched in factoring in hotel quarantine duty.

At the time, Melbourne was a basket case in constant lockdown due to private security looking after its quarantine hotels housing international arrivals.

Chief Supt Wheeler freely admitted that stretched as they were, the quarantine hotel duty was critical to avoid ending up like Victoria.

The police have felt the impacts of the pandemic as much as any sector, including healthcare workers.

More recently, the Bulletin revealed that along with dozens of staff off duty sick with Omicron, the police were also being roped into hospital transports on behalf of the Queensland Ambulance Service.

The new appointee to the hot seat is going to inherit an exhausted bunch.

Not only will the challenge be to reinvigorate the ranks after a marathon period of extra duties. But tackling the perennial and worsening headaches of youth crime, delinquency, youth car crime in particular on the Gold Coast and other severely anti-social trends du jour such as hooning.

To do that, the police also need their political masters to support them with the necessary resources.

It is going to be time for a stocktake as the city re-emerges from the pandemic and visitor numbers return or surge past normal levels not seen for 24 months. It did not take many off with Covid among the rank and file to highlight the pressures of having to spread themselves even thinner.