Queensland Police Service 100-day review finds officers 'suffering burnout'

Australia Broadcast Center

3 days ago

Queensland police officers are "stretched", "fatigued" and "suffering burnout" with many doing jobs of other government departments instead of protecting the community, a major review has found.
The Queensland Police Service (QPS) has handed down its 100-day review into its workforce which contained 65 recommendations.
Acting Commissioner Shane Chelepy said the review found staff were overworked and needed more support on the frontline.
"This year we will see our staff attending to over 60,000 mental health calls for service.
"That's in addition to the work that our staff do every day in keeping the community safe by arresting offenders and attending to calls for service."
Acting Commissioner Chelepy said the review provided an "honest assessment" of the organisation and he accepted each of the recommendations.
He said a key recommendation of the report is to restructure the QPS to allow frontline officers to have greater access to welfare and mental health support services.
Under the proposed changes frontline officers will also have more autonomy to make decisions.
"Decisions that affect the frontline and the decisions that affect the way that we deliver our policing services in our regions and in our stations shouldn't be made by Brisbane," Acting Commissioner Chelepy said.
The review also found need to "realign the organisation" to focus on its core business of policing and keeping the community safe.
"It finds that we're doing jobs that we shouldn't be doing," Acting Commissioner Chelepy said.
"There's functions here where we have highly trained, very important, paid, sworn police officers doing that they don't need police powers to do."
Under the restructure, the executive leadership team will also be scaled back, with resources rediverted to support its frontline staff.
Acting Commissioner Chelepy said while it could take years to implement all of the recommendations, he conceded the issues facing officers are not unique to Queensland.
"This is something that all police commissioners in Australia are grappling with… in fact, if you go into the UK you will see that these are also things that the UK have been dealing with."
The review was conducted by the QPS commission and internal review team.
There were more than 500 submissions made by police and 170 engagement focus groups and roundtables were conducted.
Police Minister Dan Purdie said the government would work with the QPS to deliver its recommendations.
"We need to return our police back to being a world class policing organisation and this report is the first step in doing that," he said.
Queensland Police Union president Shane Prior said the review showed the force had "lost its way" due to significant job creep.
"Police in this state are doing every other government department's job," he said.
Mr Prior said he wanted the role of police in transporting and guarding prisoners to be limited.
He told ABC Radio Brisbane the current situation was putting the community in danger because police were unable to attend the "jobs [they] need to".
For example, he said at any one time, there could be up to 200 unresolved jobs in places like Logan that officers simply could not get to.