Domestic violence case management not ‘core business' of police, Queensland's top cop says
The Queensland police service on Tuesday released a 100-day review of its operations and structure, finding that the police have been the victim of 'significant mission creep', with officers increasingly tasked with non-core functions such as mental health response, domestic and family violence case management, and prisoner transport.
At a press conference on Tuesday morning – before the report was made public – the acting police commissioner, Shane Chelepy, said the state had seen the 'fundamental role of policing changing to [addressing] societal issues'.
'If you look at domestic and family violence and mental health issues and other social issues, our role of policing has expanded into those societal and social issues. What this report says is that's very important, but police are not the ones who are trained to do that,' he said.
Chelepy said the police force needed to better define where its role starts and stops.
Asked if parts of the response to domestic violence or mental health crises were outside 'core business', he said that police would still attend callouts, but would seek a clearer referral process to other agencies 'once we've done our job and kept the community safe'.
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He said there should be a greater role for 'wraparound services to reduce that repeat calls for service that we see'.
'The reality is, police are there to do policing. We're there to keep the community safe … there's a time in that response where the best support to be provided to the member of the public is through a specialist of another organisation, not a police officer.'
The police minister, Dan Purdie, a former cop, said shifting resources back to crime detection and prevention would help QPS 'refocus on their core priorities of fighting crime'.
'I look forward to working with the other ministers and those departments through cabinet, and likewise, to build better systems to help our police refocus their attention on fighting crime,' he said.
'We need to build that capacity.'
Purdie said the government was already making investments in other agencies to pick up the slack.
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'Whether it's child safety issues or mental health issues our police cannot arrest their way out of that problem,' he said.
The government recently introduced legislation into parliament to reduce the paperwork burden on police responding to domestic violence incidents – which are widely understood to represent a large proportion of their time on duty. If passed the laws would permit police to issue an on-the-spot order to an alleged domestic violence offender, a proposal that some experts fear could put vulnerable women at greater risk of harm.
Queensland police commissioned officers union president, Kerry Johnson, and Queensland police union president, Shane Prior, welcomed the findings of the report, at the Tuesday morning press conference.
'I want to see places like child safety actually doing a 24/7 roster, much like police do,' Prior said.
'I want the Department of Health to actually start dealing with this mental health issue that we've got in society and not be left at the feet of police. Things have got to change.'
The report makes 65 recommendations. Chelepy said they include reducing the size of the police executive leadership team from 44 to 26 and a reduction of the senior executive. No jobs would be lost in the change, he said.
In Australia, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732. Mental health support is available at Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, Lifeline on 13 11 14, and at MensLine on 1300 789 978. Other international helplines can be found via www.befrienders.org
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